Threadwatch noticed this article from Forbes that says that Google will be launching GBuy (a Paypal killer?) on June 28. The big thing of note for me is the statement that "On its core search results pages, Google will designate each merchant accepting GBuy as a trusted GBuy merchant."
This brings up all sorts of questions. Will being a GBuy merchant help with rankings? Will Google use transaction data to affect rankings? After all, what better way to use "trustrank" than to know what sites users trust to purchase from? Would consumer complaints or refund requests lower that trust, hence negatively affecting rankings?
I assume the first thing Google would say is that GBuy will have no impact on rankings. Just sounds like a Google thing to say, eh? But I'll probably need to run some tests to see if I believe it or not. What about you? 🙂