Google used to actively fight the spam. Some time around '08 or '09 it was like they very suddenly gave up and never seemed to give it a serious attempt again,

Google used to actively fight the spam. Some time around '08 or '09 it was like they very suddenly gave up and never seemed to give it a serious attempt again, as if they'd simply surrendered. Unfortunately, they also made searches much more "fuzzy" around that time or (IIRC) a couple years before, foiling manual attempts to avoid spam by using very specific language or unusual phrases.