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Surely Google has already thought of this.

Is it that Google actually benefits from having an algorithm that is susceptible to being gamed and therefore they are disincentivized to move away from that?

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The more likely but less interesting explanation is simply that once something becomes highly commercially valuable to game, it’s an ongoing cat and mouse situation. Google may or may not see it as a high priority to fix but I doubt it’s a deliberate conspiracy.

Google has several conflicts of interest. The first is that if they provided users with exactly what they are looking for then the users would accept that and not click on any Google search ads.

The second is a lot of the spammy sites are running Google AdSense so it is in Google's interest to send people to those sites even if they aren't what the user is searching for.

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