Ad free results is not always the best experience for everybody, or at least not in todays context. I remember hearing a commentator on a podcast (I forget if t

Ad free results is not always the best experience for everybody, or at least not in todays context. I remember hearing a commentator on a podcast (I forget if they worked for goog or not) who pointed out that so much of online activity is economic so that ads (pay for placement) is a powerful relevance indicator. I think the example they gave was if someone searches for “Taylor swift tickets” then they are more likely to be interested in the paid results from someone who wants to sell tickets than in the million forum posts discussing tickets (even tho they have the same keyword match). And their data proves this. Maybe there are ways to be “smart enough” to avoid this indicator, but a lot of “relevance” is a guess on user intention so seems like a damned if you do damned if you don’t.