There was a pre-Google search that was really bad. Then Google raised the standard by optimising for good results. The trick was to stay one move ahead of SEO devs. First people spammed keywords, then people spammed backlinks, etc.
The issue is now that it's very outdated and the best thing for websites to do is go spam AI articles about everything. The obvious move would be to move websites with higher specificity to the search query up.
The problem is that Google can do that and optimise for fewest actual clicks on links instead of needing to click 3 to get a result. Instead it's better to click 3 pages with 3 sets of ads then hopefully the "I got what I came for" feeling is in the goldilocks "enough to be interested but not to stop". This means more screentime, which is more ads that mean more money.