"This sort of ranking cannot be gamed by SEO spammers, because ... why get their site to the top of the rankings if they can't put any advertisements on it?"
Because it links to pages with advertisements on them?
There are easier and more objective methods for ordering search results.
Alphabetical, chronological, relevance, etc.
People who grew up in a world before Google used these extensively. They were everywhere. I used these in libraries for decades.
"Developers" want to pretend these methods were inferior.
When I think about people trying to game alphabetical business listings by naming their business "A-1" it seems delightfully quaint compared to the sociopathatic "dark patterns" of software developers.
"Rankings", a subjective measure, powered by a secret, ever-changing, hand-tweaked algorithm, are superior because they can be used strategically for commercial gain by intermediaries like Google.
When the intermediary becomes wealthy and influential enough, acting as gatekeeper to vast amounts of information, then the other, objective methods might seem inferior.
Google accelerates the death of objectivity. It's an advertising company, not an academic search think tank.
Because it links to pages with advertisements on them?
There are easier and more objective methods for ordering search results.
Alphabetical, chronological, relevance, etc.
People who grew up in a world before Google used these extensively. They were everywhere. I used these in libraries for decades.
"Developers" want to pretend these methods were inferior.
When I think about people trying to game alphabetical business listings by naming their business "A-1" it seems delightfully quaint compared to the sociopathatic "dark patterns" of software developers.
"Rankings", a subjective measure, powered by a secret, ever-changing, hand-tweaked algorithm, are superior because they can be used strategically for commercial gain by intermediaries like Google.
When the intermediary becomes wealthy and influential enough, acting as gatekeeper to vast amounts of information, then the other, objective methods might seem inferior.
Google accelerates the death of objectivity. It's an advertising company, not an academic search think tank.