How to game Google Scholar

In agreement with the article, it is worth everyone knowing that Google isn't acting like a peer-reviewed source, and it has decided not to be a filter for what qualifies as academically worthy content.

As a scholar, you should know what journals are reliable and which are not. Google scholar, because it doesn't insist on peer-reviewed articles, is actually stronger because one can find the state-of-the-art papers that haven't been published anywhere yet. In that sense, it's more of a tool built for active researchers than undergrad/high school projects.

If you use "appears on Google Scholar" as an indicator for quality, then yes, you'll have problems---but you get the author affiliation, citation tree and journal, which can all be strong, useful signals of quality (esp. if it's your field).