If search works too good you are gone too quickly. Amazon figured this out A LOOOONG time ago. If Google makes you rephrase your search 10 times that 10x ads they can show you. If they take those opportunities to also drive you to crap sites that waste time but are heavily monetized by Google ads then that's even more for them. It's no different than grocery stores putting the most commonly purchased items all the way in the back. Want to run in and get milk? Maybe, we have 6 gallons that expire in the next 5 minutes up front, but if you want more you gotta walk past chips, beer, frozen pizzas and a wall of cheese.

It's definitely an accelerating trend though, online search is getting so much worse and even fast food menus are insane now. You need to the app to see anything other than the most profitable combos in many cases.