Despite the risk to shock someone, we will answer YES: Google is an intelligent system.
In our opinion, Google is the most advanced system of artificial intelligence which exists today.
The reasons to considere Google as an intelligent system are very simple:
- The problem which it tries to solve is one of most complex than one can imagine: to find in a split second the BEST answer to any question among billion pages.
- The result is considered to be satisfactory by the majority of its users. It is probably not a coincidence if this system has become in a few years the absolute reference as a research engine. To satisfy human beings is however a challenge that very few data-processing programs manage to take up.
- This success gave to the creators of Google a fabulous means to improve their system. And what do they do with this power? They improve their system every day!
If you think that you can swindle the research results by simplistic easy ways, it would be preferable to re-examine your opinions. Google is so sophisticated today that it is probably more able than any human to judge (in a split second) the REAL interest of your pages, of their editorial quality, their originality, and your honesty with respect to your visitors.
It is possible that such or such easy way still allows, during some times, to gain "artificially" some point in the results. But Google evolves each day and is likely to penalize you tomorrow for what works today.
Our advice is thus simple: do not construct your pages according to the supposed behaviors of the search engines. Build them according to the visitors who will come to read them. Make your pages INTERESTING, easy to read, quick to load, original, attrative, inspired.
Be good, and Google will pay you back!