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Your second part is wrong. According to the data most users don't dig deeper, they just stop at the answer Google already gave. MortgageSite doesn't even get the traffic in the first place.

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I was using that example to establish that the sites (that are losing the clicks) are just as scummy as (if not more than) Google for "stealing" the clicks. That, in turn, helps explain why users might be reluctant to dig deeper, showing that general scummy practices are at least as much to blame as Google "stealing" their content.

Those sites or sites like them made the content initially that google now steals.

I remember a world without lyric sites. These sites provide value. The top links google shows may not because of page layout or bloated sizes but those are the links google presents there are lyric sites with no javascript. Meanwhile tons of mortgage related calculator pages exist on most bank sites and other non-spamming pages.

Clicking a google search result takes seconds to load the link while clicking a ddg link feels much faster. The additional tracking and redirections start to make things feel sluggish.

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