I have little to no experience in SEO. Does Google have a history of weighing in on situations like this and manually penalizing bad actors? If so, I would love a link to read about.
replies(6):
Using google search console you can determine if a manual action has been applied to your own website: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en
Rather than determine the ranks, these actions remove / punish offending websites from the ranks, effectively making room for 'good' actors.
Manual actions often come after a a significant change in ranking algorithm or policy, and can be reverted / resolved in some cases. This usually requires removing or disavowing (in the case of unauthorized or unresponsive sites) the links pointing to a website.