hannamyluv - 6:42 pm on Jan 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

They send me traffic that earns profits for me, and it doesn't cost me a dime.

Neilsen point though is that increasingly, Ses are not making the person actually go to the webpage to get the info. They just display the answer from your site on their site. Right now, the cost/benifit is there for you, but his argument is that SEs are increaingly moving that way. How much will you be able to let a SE display on their page before it is not worth it to you? Do you have a choice either way?

users were finding sites via links and keeping track of their favorite sites long before today's search engines arrived on the scene.

But they are increasing losing that ability. SEs make it easy. Seeking out links is hard. For the same reasons they don't go beyond 1 or 2 SERPs for a search, is the same reason they will increasingly depend on SEs rather than searching for information outside a SE. Ask the average user, and they will tell you that SEs contain every webpage out there. You put up a site and it is magically in the SE, as far as they are concerned. So why make the effort to look further than a SE?