Recognition is something desired. Playing the game, however, goes only so far. If you are doing this as a business, then do it as a business, not a popularity contest.

When #1 ceases to mean anything, then find the next #1 and go for that ... and it might not be ON the web.

When #1 ceases to mean anything, then find the next #1 and go for that

I understand where you're coming from however I produce and supply my trade widgets globally, the business is doing fine.

What seems to have happened is that for the first ~15 years of the www, many trade buyers and project specifiers used The Net to learn and source widget products however for the past ~10 years the desire to search and learn seems to have died online.

Does this mean that "users" are no longer interested in the widgets, absolutely not since our participation at trade shows clearly demonstrates users want and are prepared to specify our widgets, therefore why so much less traffic than there used to be for clearly popular widgets? And I have to say that this is not confined to just one or two widgets, it's swathes of them, entire widget categories seem to drive no traffic yet if you saw the actual high widget production levels it doesn't make sense unless ...

Unless so many users are all so happy with their current widget suppliers that they quite simply do not find the necessity to change their specifying sources? Is anyone else seeing similar in their widget trade?

I must also point out that I am not the only one querying this widget trade "phenomenon", every company I talk to, and that runs into the thousands from many different countries, all of them have experienced precisely the same except for one specific widget area ... care to take a guess?

Trade secondhand / used machinery, this is by far the biggest sector on one of my sites and has been since 1998 when I created that site, new machinery, small tools etc, there is very little interest but used, quite remarkable.

A couple few points oft forgot (you, RedBar, sound much more attuned to real business and the web than many):
* G is a mass consumer product that may also contain business level users. So even after bots are discounted the overburden to ore ratio can still be discouraging.

* B2B via general SE has seen signal to noise decrease greatly over time both as general population uptake and commodity uptake increased. Both audience and associated info bubbles have changed.

* There is still a B2B audience but it is less inclined to use SE beyond initial info acquisition. The pita is finding where one's particular 'with intent to buy' and 'with authority to buy' audiences have migrated.

* this is especially true if one knows that niche and/or product interest/sales have not declined in line with SE referral conversion as that is a strong indicator of a disconnect.

Both audience and associated info bubbles have changed.

Yep, the global trade still actually needs this info however the public's appetite / interest for it seems to have mostly disappeared after many of these widgets also went mainstream public, not just projects, from the mid 90s onwards as production costs fell dramatically.

Although still expensive widgets, they are seen as expected widgets these days especially in new-builds everywhere.

The more I write this the more I am realsing precisely what has changed with the public side of the trade, thanks for jogging my grey cells:-)

That's one aspect that shouldn't be ignored when doing kw research - don't forget to check that actual SERP's. For example, your article probably isn't going to rank well if Google is only showing product pages for that query or vice versa.

Place CPM or CPC ads on the pages with your content on. You should be monetising it to feel you're getting something for your effort.

Place CPM or CPC ads on the pages with your content on.

I was doing that from June 2003 with AdSense, it was removed from all my sites in April this year owing to its collapse in CTR and EPC. Perhaps you missed this:

I produce and supply my trade widgets globally, the business is doing fine.

This isn't a how to monetise my sites question, it's a why and where have all the visitors gone whilst ranking well.

Amazonland, EBayland, Alibabaland, Wikipedialand, Whereverland, are they no longer interested in further knowledgeland, or is it simply couldn't care lessland?

Your originally asked, if there was a point to being number 1 in the SERPs.

There is, especially for branding purposes.

I suspect there are some lightbulb moments going on for many of us faced with similar situations.
People don't search in the same way, and we've been discussing this in another thread. [webmasterworld.com...]

There is, especially for branding purposes.

However branding means nothing if no one is actually seeing it plus, in my case and many other realworld manufacturers, branding means nothing to the retail buyer, granted it does to the global bulk trade and project specifiers.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.