Google can only get too relevant from one point of view: paid search. The question is what this means for the natural search listings and search engine optimisation.

This statement from an article about search around the world caught my attention because I’ve for some unknown reason never considered that a search engine can become too relevant. In my mind it has always been an obvious truth that Google’s ultimate goal is to present its users with the most relevant search results. Yes, I am blond and probably (evidently) also pretty naïve, but it just seemed logic to me that if Google wanted to keep its dominant market share, it had to keep providing its users with the best search results.

At first glance it would seem like great news if 25% less people clicked on paid search in 2008 compared to 2007. It would provide our clients with even more incentive to shift SEM budgets towards SEO, and it would give our sales people valuable ammo to throw at potential new clients. Especially with the news that one of the US's biggest buyers of search marketing, LendingTree.com, has said it would rely on natural results and skip its paid search. But, it also threatens Google’s primary source of revenue.

The above statement assumes that the decrease in clicks on paid search is due to Google’s organic search results being so relevant that people apparently see no need to click on paid search. I am not sure what the author bases this assumption on, but even if the 25% decline is accurate, I have to point out a few other factors that may have affected the decline in clicks:

1. People dislike advertising and are getting increasingly aware that the top- and right side links are exactly that.
2. Perhaps the soft US economy is starting to drag down the online market.

It doesn’t change the fact, however, that Google needs to make money. If, for a minute, we embrace the idea that the organic search results can get so relevant that people stop clicking on paid links, then how is Google going to make money? And do we as SEO specialists risk digging our own grave by helping make paid advertising superfluous?

Of course Google isn’t the only search engine out there, and even if Google lost its monopoly like status, search engine optimisation would not loose its importance in the online world. However, it is a rather amusing thought to entertain that the success of search engine optimisation might ultimately overthrow the search engine that we are currently relying so heavily upon.