This feels like mostly a PR piece to me. And reports seem conflicting.
Google doesn't seem to say what they did beyond that they "developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience."
Techcrunch claims Google "compiled a list of hundreds of merchants (including DecorMyEyes) that provided “bad user experience” and algorithmically forced them lower" (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/googl/).
Hopefully this is PR spin. If it's not, it's pretty disturbing that allegations of one mean merchant can cause an algo change. How many businesses will be collateral damage of this update? How many fake negative review campaigns with this spawn? If this is a real algo change, it was done in an extraordinarily hasty, reactionary, and cavalier manner. (Please don't ding my site G, nothing personal)
Google doesn't seem to say what they did beyond that they "developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience."
Danny Sullivan claims they are "Using Online Merchant Reviews As Ranking Signal" (http://searchengineland.com/google-now-using-online-merchant...).
Techcrunch claims Google "compiled a list of hundreds of merchants (including DecorMyEyes) that provided “bad user experience” and algorithmically forced them lower" (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/googl/).
edit: typo