I wish web designers spent more time thinking about the flow of traffic through their site and less time worried about what Google think.

IMHO the big question should simply be if a web site is achieving its goal. For example a landing page is designed to funnel traffic to another site. The success of the landing page is determined by whether or not the people hitting the page click through to another site.

The success of an education site could be measured by how much time people spend on the site.

The success of a review site is determined by how many people click on the reviewed items, and so on. Trying to make the numbers of a site appear the way that Google wants them to appear generally ends up reducing the experience of the users.