We don't know if the task is impossible because Google has no incentive to do it at all, so we can't assume they are really doing their best. They created this situation and they profit from it just the way it is.

> We don't know if the task is impossible because Google has no incentive to do it at all,

On the other hand, they have an incentive - increased competition, they can still monetize better pages, search is what makes them money.

Build a better mouse trap etc, if the task was possible, DDG / Bing / Whoever could absolutely dominate the search market by providing a ”no crap results” option

Kagi is trying to build a better mouse trap. I quite like it. Open beta is coming along with subscription model. I will be a subscriber.

They would only bother to try if they could monetize it, and the only model for that which won't create the same incentives is paid user subscriptions. The market for that may just be way to small for the big guys to consider.

I wonder how hard would it be to create ML algorithms that can classify something as crappy content. I am pretty sure it should be quite doable.

Check out Neeva. This is what we are all about.

The top two organic results for that precise query are pretty informative articles from Wirecutter and Good Housekeeping. Unless I'm misunderstanding and you are expecting something better than this: https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home-products/a25473658/bes...

> 1) view their page for ads 2) click on their affiliate links 3) buy the product they're selling.

1 and 2 are trivial to detect. 3 is harder but still not impossible given Google's machine learning capabilities and existing datasets.

Downrank or ban ads & affiliate links and you remove any incentive for creating spam sites in the first place.

So you’d downrank sites like Tom’s Hardware or wired.com? Both of which show ads and have affiliate links

If other content that doesn’t have those annoyances matches my search query then I would absolutely want to see it first.

This would also put pressure on content creators to tone down the ads or explore alternative monetization models.

Do you pay for Consumer Reports?

I paid for Which? which is the UK equivalent. Would've subscribed again when I needed it (and there's been a few times since) but their dark pattern upon unsubscription put me off from going anywhere near them again.

I also spend 50£/month on Patreon to support the creators I watch regularly.

The problem is half the time the ads are Google ads anyway.

That's the ultimate problem - Google has a conflict of interest with their users which is why the quality has gone to shit.