Ah, the argument is that Google intentionally avoids showing you the most relevant results, or at least avoids "solving" the problem of webmasters who attempt to 'game' the system.

>>>> Is there some search engine that you think could have become popular and not ended up with SEO optimization?

>>> One you pay for yourself !

>> SEO is the practice done by webmasters of optimizing a website to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results.

> They do this because they benefit from their site being visited or the information they are providing being noticed.

>> If you are paying to use your search engine, does that mean webmasters are no longer incentivized to/will not try to improve their visibility/ranking in your search results?

> I see no reason it would have that effect.

Agreed.