There is more artificial intelligence in the search results
Google isn’t done with spam, but it is making the most of its changes in search — an example from the Hairpin site, an Iowa newspaper website, and an educational website
Google is rolling out a few new changes to its ranking systems in search, which are designed to help surface good content in your results and hide some of the worst and most cynical stuff on the web. The company says that it is doing a better job of downranking content that exists only to summarize other content — which can sometimes be normal SEO stuff but is also increasingly a job for generative AI tools — and in combatting some of the tricks people use to trick its ranking systems.
In February, WIRED reported on several AI clickbait networks that used domain squatting as a strategy, including one that took the websites for the defunct indie women’s website The Hairpin and the shuttered Hong Kong-based pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily and filled them with AI-generated nonsense. A website of an Iowa newspaper was converted to a repository for posts on retail stocks. This type of behavior is now labeled by Google as spam, based on their new policy.
There are two kinds of behavior, the second one being site reputation abuse. This is when an otherwise respectable website rents out part of its site for spammy nonsense; I won’t name and shame anyone here, but you’ve surely seen the sites that make you wonder why they have coupons or why there’s a whole part of the site that seems irrelevant and AI-generated. The third is “expired domain abuse,” which is when someone buys an abandoned but high-ranking domain and fills it with crummy content that then jumps to the top of search. One example of how this can happen is the current state of The Hairpin.
In addition to domain squatting, Google’s new policy will also focus on eliminating “reputation abuse,” where otherwise trustworthy websites allow third-party sources to publish janky sponsored content or other digital junk. The example in the post is the pay day loan reviews on a trusted educational website. While the other parts of the spam policy will start enforcement immediately, Google is giving 60 days notice prior to cracking down on reputational abuse, to give websites time to fall in line.
The job is not done, of course. The reckoning over AI-generated content — what it means, who wants it, how it should rank — is only just beginning and will cause Google plenty of internal headaches as it both tries to bring AI to everyone and tries to save the web from being overrun by it. The search engine is increasingly anArtificial Intelligence machine. There are always new ways to get into the top of the search results. This is a headache of Google’s own making: most of the chum on the web exists entirely to game Google, and so Google will always be one step behind.
“It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google,” says Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at the marketing agency Amsive. It can change everything.
The spike in domain squatting is just one of the issues that have tarnished Google Search’s reputation in recent years. The owner of the digital marketing firm has stated that people can spin up these sites easily. “It’s been a big issue.” (Boyd admits that he has even created similar sites in the past, though he says he doesn’t do it anymore.)
The company has been working on an update since the end of last year. The company has been working on ways to fix low-quality content in search. Nayak says that they have been aware of the problem. It takes time to develop these changes.
