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Google search seemed to work fine before that stuff was tracked.

That's because way less people were trying to game it.

And because websites used to link to other websites for non-profitable reasons (blogs, directories, and webrings).

*according to Google.

I spend 5 minutes on american recipe websites to scroll through the SEO bullshit before finding the actual recipe, but that doesn't mean it's useful.

So, no, it's just Google telling you to let them collect analytics on every aspect of your life for "search improvement purposes".

also the worse the search results will get if someone put a bunch of ads in before the search results for people to click on instead of the search results.