The effort behind search engine optimization wasn’t based on the goal of improving any specific product flow (usually). Most if not all changes were gated behind the outcome of before/after and A/B experiments which were almost solely measured by growth and increased traffic. The problem is that there is obviously a huge disconnect between activity and experience. I often made jokes about putting a 100% interstitial “click me” div over the page and demonstrating our impressive click through rate as a win.

So I would say, the incentive here was to increase search traffic and instigate user activation. Many folks now work at Reddit and are repeating the same playbook. Many folks cut their teeth at places like Facebook or travel search engines.