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I’m highly confident that you’re being cynical, but I can give you some information. I know for a fact (I used to work with one such company), that you can pay to have your site come in in the top 3 ads. BUT, I don’t know of Google offering this service. There are companies that can make sure the algorith puts a certain site at the top of a list, and they’ll monitor and modify their paramaters to keep you there. The company I was associated with charged about $1,000, and that was a bare minimum for certain search terms. If you wanted to have your site be on the top all the time, it would cost you big time. So, in case you are actually serious about if the claim is true, I can verify that you can pay to appear at the top, but I don’t know of Google itself offering that. I do know that private companies will get you are the top, and that it is quite costly. You’ll have to look them up yourself though, I have zero interest in Google, and refuse to use, endorse, or support it in ANY way.

I wasn’t personally being cynical, because I know its business and product placement is a reality in the marketplace. If you go into a convenience store, that’s part of a chain, or a grocery that is also part of a chain, every product that is prominently placed or placed in the easiest reach has been paid to be there.

I would suggest old fashioned shoe leather to increase web traffic.

I’m told that one of the best ways to increase foot traffic is to make sure that there is something new about it on a daily basis.

There are companies that can make sure the algorith puts a certain site at the top of a list, and they’ll monitor and modify their paramaters to keep you there. The company I was associated with charged about $1,000, and that was a bare minimum for certain search terms. If you wanted to have your site be on the top all the time, it would cost you big time.

That's the SEO industry. Ironically, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That is to say, optimum for the searchee, not the searcher. I am the searcher (I don't really have a web site I want to promote, LOL). Thus, SEO is my enemy, not my friend. It is also Google's enemy, because it reduces the effectiveness of the Google search engine as perceived by its users (me).

Folks seem to have trouble understanding the search engine business model. To a search engine, the searcher is the product, not the customer. The customer is the advertiser, to whom the search engine delivers eyeballs. The search engine wins by delivering eyeballs to advertisers. It best does that by delivering the best search results with the least effort on the part of the eyeball.