This has nothing to do with changes in the algorithm. I've been in search for 20+ years, so I'm quite familiar with how Google works. ;) My article explains why

This has nothing to do with changes in the algorithm. I've been in search for 20+ years, so I'm quite familiar with how Google works. ;) My article explains why it's likely happening. TL/DR is that spammers are likely exploiting two loopholes. 1. Longtail keywords are low competition and may trigger different algorithms. 2. Some/many of the search queries the spam ranks for trigger the more permissive Local Search algorithm Plus there are other reasons why those sites are getting through, which are discussed in detail in the article.