Comment by mjamesaustin

Shitty results increase the number of queries, because the initial query fails to produce a desired link, and it increases the number of ad clicks because the ads are comparatively helpful sitting next to the steaming pile of crap that is the results.

I thought the author covered this well in the breakdown of the "Code Yellow" results in 2019, and what happened when the resulting update reversed optimizations that had cut down on SEO spam.