Our traffic wasn't "monetized" directly -- we never had ads of any kind on the site. We offered a service that people who were interested in the topic we blogge

Our traffic wasn't "monetized" directly -- we never had ads of any kind on the site. We offered a service that people who were interested in the topic we blogged about generally found desirable, so our content was generated to bring people in to the site and expose them to this service, hoping they'd decide to pay for it. That sounds like an "actual business" to me. Most of the aggressive SEO players I know about are supporting "actual businesses", not content farms that survive on ads. Our aggressive competitor had no content to monetize directly and no ads, they were competing with our service. Note well that suggesting Google may not be all-knowing draws out the lackeys accusing anyone who may speak this heresy of not running an "actual business". Implying, yet again, that the only reason someone would speak ill of Google is because they're too perfect. Give me a break. All of this misses the point regardless, because it's not "gaming" the system when you're playing by the rules. Google wants you to believe that its algorithm is perfect, so it says the best way to rank is to write good content, which they will magically identify and publicize. So you pay someone to write good content for your site and, as long as this content is actually original and useful, you're doing exactly as Google directs. That's not what "gaming" is. SEO is still a thing because people come in naive enough to believe that good content will stand on its own merits, like I did, and then quickly learn it doesn't actually play out that way in real life.