At Google there was a poster that read, "For every search there is the perfect Ad" and someone had written on it, "most times that is no ad at all." which lasted for maybe a week and a half before it was taken down.
So often there is no "value" to the person doing the action, the "value" is between the web site and the people who want to get information about you.
Someone came along and added a note “do you have appropriate permission to reproduce this image?” And if I recall, both parts stayed up indefinitely.
There is value in saying "here's the number of a guy I know and trust". Curating options is valuable. Basically you need to be a honest broker: https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-brok...
There is also value in preparing leads with good information, filtering out tire kickers, and abstracting marketing or billing away. Some people want to work on their craft without thinking about SEO and the like.
For example, I work with people I trust to take over when the information on my website is not enough. "This is all I know. If you need a lawyer, call Fiona, she helped me a lot and I trust her advice". For some of the people I recommend, I get a kickback. As I see it, everyone in this transaction gains something.
Do you disclose this?
Eg., suppose a pipe breaks, you search for plumber, you find a plumber. That search is a lead generator for that plumber.
That search is "free", by intuition, kinda destroys our sense of value in lead generation, right? Google should NOT be free for that plumber; the plumber should be paying quite a lot for the service.
Suppliers of services need a system which allocates demand, right? Indeed, customers need a system of finding suppliers.
The best result is almost never the ad. And in the rare situation where there ad is the best result, it’s an inefficiency because the poor plumber is paying for an unnecessary ad.
We’re hitting a point where we always get shitty plumbers because they have good ads and don’t need to be good plumbers. Or even worse, most plumber ads are just lead generation where I get some random plumber driving 90 minutes because they bought the lead and responded first.
I’d rather be in a world where the search surfaced the best plumber. Not some arbitrating middleman sucking value away from the plumber and the person with a backed up toilet.
The search itself has to be paid for; the search itself is lead generation. The search is the "middle man".
Who is paying for google search?
Without that, they lose the users thst drive revenue.
But that makes the service into an ad. The last thing I'm going to do is take any recommendations from someone who is being paid to give recommendations.