[lmm]

> we could of course try to (reaching here) argue that these SEO's improve google because they are forcing it to up its game but I think the web as a whole would be better off without all this crap.

The alternative is what, that the result you'd get for, I don't know, "home insurance" would be essentially random?

Google has some opinion on what properties the best result for that would have. Sites will naturally conform to the google policy (which is good when google promotes things that are good for the general web, like fast load times and accessible markup, and bad when google promotes things that are bad for the general web). The SEO industry just makes this process more efficient, meaning changes to what Google "wants" in results take effect faster. Even if Google's policies were effectively random (which I don't think they are), the worst-case result would be that businesses who paid attention to keeping their SEO up to date would appear higher in search results than businesses which didn't - which is at least some kind of barometer of a healthy business.