The reason this happens is because the Google result shows my words in the excerpt, but when I click in, there's zero percent of the content to be found. That feels like a bait-and-switch akin to the taxi analogy.
My relevant results now either don't exist, or is in an absolute sea of mind-bogglingly bad results that it wears me out such that I would rather have had no results to begin with.
In this sense, I feel like Google is absolutely purposefully showing me results that I didn't want to go to.
This happens in real life all the time. Cab drivers get kick backs from specific places they have relationships with if they deliver people there, so you have to wonder whether they're actually recommending a better place for you or a better place for them, just like you do with Google.
And yes, I've been referred to a place by a cab driver when asking for a recommendation and found it didn't actually serve my needs at all, and in retrospect it was obvious from the conversation I was steered there without care for what I really wanted.
Google is more like the following.
"Hi, I would like to go to Morton's meats"
"Sure, I can take you to Shelly's"
"No, I said Morton's"
"Oh, the steak house downtown. Sure, I can take you to Billy's"
"What? No! Morton, you hear me"
"Ah, yeah, Morton, here you go.... by the way, the other places paid for ads"
Much less transparent, much more obnoxious.
I’ve seen this too, but I’ve always assumed it has to do with meta tags or something.
