"I worry that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index," writes Jakob Nielsen in his latest Alertbox.
"We've known since AltaVista's launch in 1995 that search is one of the Web's most important services. Users rely on search to find what they want among the teeming masses of pages. Recently, however, people have begun using search engines as answer engines to directly access what they want -- often without truly engaging with the websites that provide (and pay for) the services."
Free search is fine, of course, if it sends you visitors, but Jakob argues that "paid search confiscates too much of a website's value".
The solution is, he says, to keep visitors coming back to your site without them clicking on expensive ads.
