Google argues that an acquisition, however, would not increase competition for online travel sites, as the search engine giant currently drives traffic to these sites and analyzes the data.

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The company already has a standalone product-search service that specializes in "hard" goods such as electronics and draws traffic from the main search engine.

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Last summer Blekko launched a search engine that has been gaining significant traffic by a war on useless Web sites.

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Microsoft hopes it will juice up the traffic on its search engine, ultimately improving how much it can earn from click advertising.

FORBES: Microsoft's Advertising Stunt

Early on, Davis says, much of the traffic to Lycos' search engine came from Yahoo!

FORBES: Deals

Because search results can be so important to website traffic, considerable effort is spent trying to manipulate search engine results, artificially moving a web page up the rankings.

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Google France had said earlier that the plan "would be harmful to the internet, internet users and news websites that benefit from substantial traffic" that comes via Google's search engine.

BBC: Google threatens French media ban over proposed law

To draw traffic, they created an on-line medical search engine called Medsite.com, which reviews and rates medical and health-related Internet sites -- and was getting 250, 000 hits a month after six months.

FORBES: What the doctor ordered

To draw traffic, they created an on-line medical search engine called Medsite.com, which rates and reviews medical and health-related Internet sites -- and was getting 250, 000 hits a month after six months.

FORBES: What the doctor ordered

Mr. DANNY SULLIVAN (Editor, Search Engine Watch): Anybody who had a classified ad probably would want the traffic from Google coming to them.

NPR: Google Base Poses a Dilemma for Businesses