I believe it's not that direct. It's optimising for what most people search for and how to keep them using Google most. That in turn leads to more ad revenue.
Ads? What ads? I see no ads.
I actually forgot there's ads in Google's result pages. It's been ages since I've last seen them, uBlock is the first thing extension I install on a fresh Firefox.
Yes, one tends to forget about ads ;)
Ah yes, forgetting... I feel we should maybe commemorate the atrocities of the past in some way... Like a National Remembrance Day for the Fallen Ads, we could have a moment of two minutes of ... loudly over-compressed slick fast talking sales pitches trying to make you feel bad about your life without their product.
Oh, the nostalgia :) Actually thinking about it, I can get nostalgic and enjoy viewing certain ads sometimes, provided that they're over 10 years old. It's that whole icky feeling of being manipulated even while believing you know they do it (except they do it worse) these grabby greasy fingers reaching into my brain. After a about a decade, ads lose that power and they just become quaint. Like the "Jazz Solo Design" from the 90s (image search it and you'll recognize it immediately).
This is the algorithm deciding that it’s way results in more ad revenue for Google. What do you do? You repeat the query again and they show you a second lot of ads.
But let’s be honest if Google could show you as many ads without returning any search results at all, they’d do that in a heartbeat.