This is actually what google does. They find the 50 sites for your query and then do a multi-armed bandit test to see which one gets the most clicks but with a bias towards sites that serve ads from the Google ad network. A search engine without that bias is not gameable because it will converge on the results that is most popular for a given query and not because it also serves ads that affect the search engine's bottom line.

Popularity is gameable but not the same way as Google is currently gameable because as soon as a site becomes popular and starts exploiting its ranking it will be easy enough to add a decay factor to prevent such sites from dominating the top results during the multi-armed bandit stage of ranking.

In any case, the logic of why Google is going to shit is obvious. Arguing about fixes is not going to change their underlying business model and why spam is dominating their results. As long as they are a search engine, an ad network, and a corporation that must maximize profits their results will continue to deteriorate until the top results are all just spam.

> I don't think it was a pedantic argument or a misunderstanding. I think Lascaille understood your position and disagreed with you, not just pedantically but over the substance.

Then that wasn't clear and seemed like a pedantic point since it's obvious that any algorithm is gameable and I should have made it clear that I wasn't talking about a perfect search engine but one that was not susceptible to profit driven spam (which is currently the reason that Google results are going to shit).