[dindobre]

I'm not sure I agree that the people doing the search are the customers here

[Sai_]

I’m really curious to know who exactly you think are Google Search’s customers in the context of this thread about SEO.

[BrandonMarc]

Google Search's customers are companies who advertise on the SERPs.

Google Search's users are people who do the searching.

If a service is free to use, you are the product.

[tough]

People paying ads to show up on google's users search results are google's customers

people using google's free services to see those google results that have gone to shit since the past 10 years or so, and also are full page of ads without ad blockers, are google's product, which is acquired through offering free product and services that hook those customers to stay hooked even through the enshittification that has proceeded on those since the web 2.0 golden era

[edf13]

The advertisers

[nurtbo]

Advertisers?

[mcny]

but think logically for just a second, why would advertisers advertise their turd if they could just have their turd show up on the search results for free?

For a turd sandwich to work, you have to wrap your turd (ads) with high quality results so people actually search on Google and then you can show them the turd along with the good stuff.

[tough]

plenty of turds do show up on google search engines, ai generated copy pasted mumbo jumbo full of more google ads inpage

somewhat google is happy to serve you turd they can double dip on