This is arguably more Google's fault than the content, obnoxious though it is. Google has been sacrificing search quality at the altar of search ads KPIs for a decade or more now and it shows.
It's totally Google's fault. The original PageRank algorithm was more resistant to low quality content - it was fundamentally about a reputation web of trust.
As Google shifted from valuing high quality sources referring to you to other signals, it became more gameable.
Note that the "high quality" part matters - it's harder to game getting, say, a link from real humans at a high quality place than it is to generate yet another SEO blogspam website with 10,000 backlinks from other SEO blogspam.
Links between sites stopped being as relevant to content quality ranking when the web became commercialized. Much of the high quality content (along with low effort junk) moved to commercial sites which mostly don't link to other sites. Or, if they do have external links it's because they're getting paid.
I agree with the other comments that Google definitely has sacrificed search quality "at the altar of ad revenue KPIs".
However, I think your comments are fundamentally incorrect re "The original PageRank algorithm was more resistant to low quality content - it was fundamentally about a reputation web of trust. As Google shifted from valuing high quality sources referring to you to other signals, it became more gameable."
PageRank became unusable as a primary source of quality long ago due to stuff like link farms and the like. This is a classic example of Goodhart's Law, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law.
Again, I'm not saying Google couldn't have done better by focusing more on search quality and less on ad revenue, but the idea that the "reputation web of trust" can't be totally gamed by extremely motivated spammers is just flat out false in my opinion.
Right, but this gameability could have been improved leaning more into reputation scores across the pagerank-style calculation. Yes, this means some manual curation, which Google is allergic to, but it's also much cleaner long run.
I agree Goodhart's law is inevitable for Google search, but it's very hard to game "high reputation human cares about it". The high reputation human has to be bought out, but that should also eventually trigger a downrank of their reputation as a response.
The original PageRank algorithm wasn't set in stone. If it was, it would have become completely obsolete because it reflected the design of the 1990s internet. Back then, there weren't a million me-too sites on the same exact topic, all trying to capture the traffic of the #1 site in the segment. If you're looking for the Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Whatever In 2024, you have an embarrassment of riches to choose from. /s
PageRank also relied on backlinks as a quality signifier, assuming that more backlinks = more reputable. This has probably been the longest-lasting piece of the algorithm, as gaming this via "link-building" through ugly infographic embeds and blog post syndication on Medium.com, LinkedIn and Substack continues to be popular.
