This, exactly. Google's primary motivation is that the searcher gets the "best" answer with as few clicks as possible. They've gone so far as to penalize adver

This, exactly. Google's primary motivation is that the searcher gets the "best" answer with as few clicks as possible. They've gone so far as to penalize advertisers that are paying THEM if they're not seen as the best answer using all those metrics that Google harvests. If people seem to stop searching after they've hit a Youtube video or Wiki then Google considers those were the satisfactory answers. If an advertiser tends to be the end of a search a lot that advertiser becomes Google's favorite search result for that term. The SEO guys' favorite tactic any more are shady paid links to their content from other sites. That's Google's 2nd best signal that you're good content, always has been, but it gets less valid every year and they know it. They give much less credibility for external links to your site than they used to. SEO guys killed their own golden goose by overusing that. How do I know all this? I'm tasked with managing a small company's Google ads, and I've worked on various small organizations' websites (purely white-hat SEO tactics) since the web was young. I despise Internet ads. I've come to respect Google's approach to them. You really have to earn your relevancy score, and even if you're willing to pay a LOT for your ads you struggle if they consider you a "bad" answer for the chosen search terms. My current employer insists on bidding on several overly-generic and/or branded keywords and he pays through the nose for them. I applaud Google for sticking that to him so hard.