Search sites (such as Google , Yahoo , Altavista etc etc) are an essential in finding stuff on the internet.

How they work is a wondrous mystery to most of us , but they are infinitely useful.

However I wonder if some of their commercial deals (OK they have to make their money somewhere) are good for them or their customers.

Jane Doe wants an exotic pet so she keys in "muff diving African grey parrot".

First find is Ebay with "find a muff diving African grey parrot on Ebay"

Trouble is nobody is actually selling such a beast on Ebay.

Qui bono ?

PS If anybody actually has a muff diving African grey parrot please PM me and I will try and give you an amusing reply.

Shit, I have a yellow parrot, not grey, what if I paint it ?

But I do know what you mean, sometimes it does cost some time to filter out these bogus unusefull search hits.

agreed , advanced search is the minimum starting point .

The paid search results are much less intrusive than the massive spam that littered search engines years ago. I miss Altavista's tweakability and advanced search, as it was superior to Google's, but like many great things, Yahoo bought it and wrecked it.

I used to be able to search in Google and get good technical information.

Now it assumes I want to buy.............