I'm just confused, I'm defending Google on this one. Yes, search result quality has been affected in some ways, with some types of searches. Do I see this degradation in my general day-to-day use of Google as a search engine? Not much. To vet my next statements: I'm a .NET developer. I spend 8 hours a day or more on my development workstation, and more time on my personal computers, and this is my observation. Most of what I have noticed is centralized around product searching. If I'm looking for something relatively popular, or very general, I tend to get more of the "scraper" type sites. This is something I see on all search engines though. Just an example... or a few: Today, looking for a way to use the OnStar system in my vehicle via bluetooth (way cool by the way). The Search: http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GPCK_enUS410US410&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=onstar+bluetooth Very good results, and I found exactly what I was looking for. Next, looking for a way to connect to an X session on an android phone. The Search: http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GPCK_enUS410US410&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=android+display+x+via+ssh+tunnel Found what I was looking for without trouble. Some programming things: Looking for a reference on the "RenderBeginTag" for writing server controls in ASP.NET. The Search: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&ie=UTF-8&q=RenderBeginTag Good results, found exactly what I was looking for. Looking for a refresher on how to serialize an object to XML. The Search: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&ie=UTF-8&q=serializing+object+in+.net You guessed it, found exactly what I was looking for. Lastly, looking for a quote from the late and great George Carlin. The Search: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&ie=UTF-8&q=George+Carlin+The+Public+Sucks Wow, found it. ----- And that's just a *very* small sample of my searches for the day. Granted, there wasn't much in the way of product searching in my examples, but I don't think Google is all that great for that. There are better tools: epinions, Amazon, etc. Is the OP correct? Yes. Google does need to do their best to promote original content and provide accurate results. Do scrapers suck? Yes, and we have a right to complain about them. All I'm saying is: it's not bad. Google does what it can and they do a great job. Oh and the public sucks. :)