>> And it so turns out that finding and surfacing the best content aligns well with the number of people who link to that content,

It's like saying Burger King offers "the best" food, because it's popular.

And there's not really a reason(besides a little bit of money) for Google, The global monopoly, to insist on doing that. It's not that hard to have an easy option for quality content.

For example: Google's forum search, which was cancelled.