The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam

Same story for various Wordpress plugins and widgety things that live in site footers.

Google has turned into a cesspool. Half the time I find myself having to do ridiculous search contortions to get somewhat useful results - appending site: .edu or .gov to search strings, searching by time periods to eliminate new "articles" that have been SEOed to the hilt, or taking out yelp and other chronic abusers that hijack local business results.

Also phone problems: Google a problem with a phone and the top hit will be a whole bunch of churned out articles with generic copy on the cause (sometimes there are bugs in the software, so reboot your phone).

Any technical issue, really. There's a ton of autogenerated content out there with low-effort troubleshooting tips. A lot of it is used as lead generation for scammy antivirus/antimalware/"cleaner" software, paid tech support, or outright tech support scams.

These results are incredibly frustrating. Google should de-rank these autogenerated tech troubleshooting sites.

Yes, I clicked the link because it exactly referenced my issue. But it's not helpful to just see the same 5 tips copy pasted from elsewhere by an algorithm.

>These results are incredibly frustrating. Google should de-rank these autogenerated tech troubleshooting sites.

Why? Google makes money from advertisements either way, it's not in their interest to improve search results. If anything, terrible search results make users more likely to click on ads, which now look better by comparison.

Google became very popular very quickly because it gave much better results much faster. The more that Google allows quality to decline, the faster they approach a non-recoverable tipping point. Just ask Yahoo how quickly that can happen. Google may seem entrenched, but they have a shaky hold on search that is only as strong as its result quality. They are entrenched in advertising, but only because that's where searchers go to search.

Users may be entrenched in other Google products-- Gmail, gcal, docs, etc-- but not search. Someone using all those other Google products could change their default search engine and have zero impact on the rest of their digital life.

I'm shopping around for a preferred alternative right now, I just haven't settled yet.

That was pre-IPO Google. That company doesn't exist anymore. Money is their God now. Every Googlers high salary depends on it.