[account42]

> I think it's fairly clear that Amazon and Ebay would show up as the top organic results.

Why? How websites are ranked "organically" is somethine that is up to the search engine. A user-focused search engine would have no problem including factors like price (for shopping sites) that the user cares about. An even better one might provide the user with options to refine the ranking criteria for each search.

Meanwhile you keep assuming that somehow the site willing to give you the best deal will also be the one winning the advertising bid. That makes no sense as they are also the site spending the most on advertisement which they have to recoup somehow.

> As a consumer, I want to be able to learn about that offer, make my own decision where to buy the pan.

You seem to be under the impression that you would be missing out on an offer without ads. But if you only look at a finite set of links you are always missing some offers - ads only change which offers you see. And they do that not based on any judgment of wheter it would be a good offer for you but only by how much those sites paid.

[sokoloff]

In such a world, I’m assuming their listings would be near the top as lots of people click on Amazon’s and EBay’s organic results (due to the wide selection on their marketplaces and generally very competitive pricing and good delivery track record). What people click on seems a good proxy for a search engine of “what are people looking for? (also phrased as “what will bring people back to my search engine next time?”)

In terms of winning the SERP paid ad bid, I don’t care if the search engine shows me the ad that’s best for them, because that will still give the newer business the chance to win the bid. If they choose not to, well, in that case I don’t see their ad. If the search engine doesn’t have ads, then in all cases I don’t see their ad.

If they go completely insanely rogue (like showing me a paid mesothelioma ad regardless of my search term), they either lose my future search traffic (“foosearch never has what I’m looking for”) or they lose the advertiser (“mesothelioma ads convert well for us on barsearch but not on foosearch; I need to lower or pull my bids on foosearch”)