PageRank was brilliant, and worked as expected. It's now been superceded by... whatever is going on over in Googleland. Some of which isn't Google's fault, per se; the Internet is a lot bigger now than it was two decades ago. Some of it is. Their entire profit model depends on people using Google in a way orthogonal to "search and find and move on," as it was back in the 00s. People pay Google to game Google results. No corporation is going to overlook that.
are you referring to ads? cuz Im not aware of a way to pay Google to game search and it doesn't make any sense. Is there some dark alley in Mountain View where I can drop off a bag of cash? to game the search? Really curious now.