It was early SEO that helped to do in AltaVista. When spammy, irrelevant search results started plaguing it, and AV's pages began to be crammed with ads, a neat

It was early SEO that helped to do in AltaVista. When spammy, irrelevant search results started plaguing it, and AV's pages began to be crammed with ads, a neat little upstart came along with a very simple search page and a clean user interface, that returned better search results. This, of course, was Google, and guess what's happened to Google in the meantime? We've come full circle. The SEO gaming, of course, continues unabated, and will continue as long as search engines exist.