Back when I still used Google, in the dark old days of mid-late 2025, it sure seemed like the SEO was winning. Once you got to page 3, where the ads ran out, you would then smoothly transition into total scam. A common one was where they'd show you scraped SO (remember that one?) content which somehow placed higher in the rankings than actual SO, and there'd be like 3 of those in various skins. I assumed they wanted to show me more ads, though those were much more easily handled with an ad blocker, unlike Google's search results. I assume it's continued to deteriorate from there, does anyone know?