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Back before Google, other search engines would let advertisers pay to boost their search ranking. Google promised not to do that. Ads are labeled and advertising is a separate division from search ranking.

These days, most of the first page for some queries may be covered with ads, but they are still labeled as ads. It appears that technically Google hasn't broken that promise for the actual search results.

(But if you know otherwise, please share.)

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They may be labeled as ads, but they still appear at the top of the search results as if they were search results. The only difference is that there's a small word with the url line that says "ad"; otherwise looks exactly the same as the results. Having ads presented in such a way I choose to interpret that as breaking that promise. Especially considering with an ad blocker the Google experience feels much different.

If they were boosting actual search results, your ad blocker wouldn't work, because there would be no way to distinguish them.

The fact I have to use an ad blocker to avoid having them pollute the search results proves my point I believe.

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