Earlier quoted context omitted.
To properly compete with Google search you have to: 1. Create your own index/crawl and true search engine on top of it, rather than delegating that back to bing or Google. In doing so, solve or address all the related problems like SEO/spam, and cover the “long tail” (expensive part) 2. Monetize it somehow to afford all of the personnel/hardware/software costs. Probably with your own version of Google’s ad products.…
I often wonder if banning (or very strongly penalizing) websites with affiliate links would largely get rid of spam results. Sure, some very useful websites have affiliate links, but perhaps it would be worth it to at least let users hide them?
A solution could be more than one algorithm being used to rank results, i.e. other engines, other rules. They'll likely use many of the signals available to them that Google uses for quality and relevance, but highly unlikely a genuine alternative search would rank them exactly the same- and much more unlikely an SEO could rank well in multiple engines.
The aff links aren't the problem, it's the proliferation of pages that are created solely to rank and get the links clicked on. Sometimes the content is useful, sometimes it's padded nonsense.