"... it doesn't look like they're getting even a single digit number of visitors from Google." So? What if that is not the goal? Is it possible that some use

"... it doesn't look like they're getting even a single digit number of visitors from Google." So? What if that is not the goal? Is it possible that some users might not type their searches in a Google-sponsored search bar or a Google-controlled browser's "omni" bar? Is it possible that some websites might get traffic from their domain names alone, because these names are descriptive? No search engine needed: Type your search into the address bar and add .com. I believe this is called "direct navigation". Presumably, these sites generate small scale (but targeted) traffic on a site by site basis that might only be significant when aggregated across many sites. Contrast this with the immense traffic received by a search engine acting as a portal to the rest of the web, for which each site must compete... by purchasing ads or placement or "SEO" services. Interestingly, there is no AdSense on the imposter site mentioned in the article. The only outbound links is a search form pointing to https://www.google.com https://www.google.com. Thus this imposter site is not a landing page for Do Re Mi but for Google.