My man Jakob Nielsen has a very interesting take on how the search engines fit into the overall ecosphere of the web.

The answer: They’re the leeches of the web.

I gotta tell you, after I think about it a bit, I can see his point. He illustrates it by explaining a scenario where the search engines (through paid search) can really reap the benefits of improvements in other people’s web sites. As you can afford to pay more for traffic, the bids will rise to compensate and the only one winning is the big G (or Y!, I suppose). Google would say their use of clickthrough and relevance stats in ranking their paid search negates this, but I don’t think it does… at least not long-term.

The bottom line is, the search engines are hurting the content providers on the web. Like I’ve always said, the SE’s and the content providers and merchants need to realize they’re in a symbiotic relationship… and neither would live without the other.

He also makes a good point that organic results are all well and good, but you just can’t rely on them. We’ve seen this firsthand when well-ranked web sites just disappear from the listings. Kinda reminds me of gambling.