I want to learn about a game. Google offers a steam link and a gog link. I click the steam link thinking that any tiny cost to load a store page or stream a video will go to steam. Maybe it's only pennies, but I'd rather apply that teeny cost to them and not gog.

But maybe the cost is completely insignificant? Maybe doing so registers more "activity" for steam than gog, so it would actually be better to click the gog link? Maybe all of this is so insignificant it doesn't matter at all?

if in doubt, dont click.

(pretty sure that was an advert for internet safety at one point?).

Alphabet are evil. Use Brave.

Will it hurt GOG? Not really.
Will it help GOG? Maybe - if the person "wanting to learn about a game" has never heard of GOG and becomes a GOG customer, after clicking the GOG link.

However: any person "wanting to learn about a game", most probably has heard of (and is even using) Steam already, and therefore will prefer that link, anyway.

What Valve pays for displaying this page to you must be a fraction of a cent.

On the other hand, by choosing GOG you may help position it higher in the search results which is much more important. When I type game title into a search engine, Steam is almost always in top 3 results, but GOG can be significantly lower.

This is what I was wondering, whether search listings might be a more important factor than server costs.

I wouldn't worry about this. As ssling said, store pages are a fraction of a penny per visit per user. Maybe if you were GOGDB pulling the whole store's info more frequently than once a day, you can slightly dent their bottom line.

It's already included in the cost of doing business with their service provider. And people need to load their store pages at least once to actually add items to their wishlist/cart.

There's some fat they can and should be cutting elsewhere rather than compromising the bare minimum shopping experience of their customers.