Do "Articles" really work?

I checked one specific article.

I clicked on one of the "Article Friendly"-powered sites, Echievements.com
There was an article titled "Crash Course In Forex Education - What You Need To Know To Get Started" by Nick Makaryk.

The article started with:

The foreign currency exchange, or Forex, is about trading money. Currency from every country is traded, sold and bought... (truncated)

Google search by that phrase returned "about 6400 results"! I assume, this article has been automatically submitted to every "article" website. Or it was a part of the "starter" database and therefore instantly appeared on all those sites right after the installation. This way or another, Google finds too many of them to have any importance, I think.

Now, the article (and some its clones) ended with

Nick Makaryk is an Internet Publisher, Copywriter, and Founder of Best Credit Cards . A Free consumer credit card comparison site helps consumers find the Best Credit Card while avoiding high interest rates, charges, and fees.

Searching by that footnote returned only 677 results in Google. Shouldn't Google return the same "about 6400"? Probably it should, unless the large portion of clones did not have the attribution to Mr. Makaryk....

Finally, the footnote had links to creditcardcredit.net
However, Google search by link:http://creditcardcredit.net/ returned only 2 results! (1,400 results for the same search in Yahoo, though).
The creditcardcredit.net website has Google PR 2

Should I say that "article" websites do not work, based on this discouraging test? It's probably still too early to say.