...but, you know. Can you see anything else they're doing that would give them that kind of ranking? These pages are just piles of crap, and google is pretty good at filtering that sort of stuff out.

If it was that easy, google would be filled with spam everywhere.

The chance that someone did something random thats very uncommon (block back) and it happened to be a super effective signal to google seems:

a) like an edge case they didn't think of

b) like it'll get fixed pretty fast

c) not that unlikely.

Compared to, say, the idea that some random spammers have built a network of incredibly sophisticated ML-generated pages that can subvert googles algorithms which seems:

a) not substantiated by any obvious content on the pages

b) requires a very high level of sophistication which seems totally lacking

c) very unlikely

...but I mean, who knows right?

We're all just speculating. I guess it'll get fixed soon, and we'll never know.