Absolutely: the challenge is that any signal that you use to identify "good websites" from "bad websites" will be adversarially optimized by incredibly motivated people.
You are dealing with a moving target that has a huge financial incentive. It's a very difficult problem.
I don't agree. You start whitelisting good content manually. If babygearlab is the best result for baby gear, you start hardcoding it. If seriouseats is the best result for recipes, you hard code it. If someone better comes along, they get moved up the priority list.
You figure out a way to crowdsource certain decisions and establish who you can trust. Ask them questions with right and wrong answers. You start to tackle it one product category at a time. Instead of pagerank, which was a web of who linked to who" you start figuring which voters you have who consistently turn in good feedback.
This is some form of metamoderation that slashdot tried to implement.
If you are going to be a tastemaker, stop hiding behind "the algorithm" having some mind of its own that cant be controlled.
You are dealing with a moving target that has a huge financial incentive. It's a very difficult problem.