> Downrank the New York Times because it has ads and uprank your local conspiracy theorist because he doesn't? If the only difference in ranking between the NY

> Downrank the New York Times because it has ads and uprank your local conspiracy theorist because he doesn't? If the only difference in ranking between the NYT and the local conspiracy theorist is the presence of ads then yes absolutely. Realistically speaking there's no way the local conspiracy theorist will get the SEO "juice" of the NYT (including domain age/reputation, backlinks, etc), but if he does then he deserves his place. I don't want a search engine to be the one deciding what is considered the "truth".