Google takes action against algorithmically generated spam. The search engine giant just announced upcoming changes, including a revamped spam policy aimed at removing AI-powered clickbait from search results.
“This is shaping up to be one of the biggest updates in Google's history,” said Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at marketing agency Amsiv. “It could change everything.”
Google claims in a blog post that the changes will reduce “low-quality, unoriginal content” in search results by 40%. The company will focus on reducing what it calls “massive content abuse.” This is when malicious parties flood the Internet with large numbers of articles and blog posts to trick search engines.
“A good example of this, which has been around for a while, is the abuse around obituary spam,” said Pandu Nayak, vice president of search at Google. Obituary spam is one of the most egregious types of digital copyright infringement, where people scrape and republish death notices, sometimes trying to monetize them on social platforms like YouTube. Recently, obituary spammers have started using artificial intelligence tools to increase their output, making the problem even worse. If Google's new policies are effectively implemented, this type of spam should become less likely to appear in online searches.
This particularly aggressive approach to combating search spam specifically targets “domain hoarding.” Domain takeover is when scavengers use name recognition to buy websites and leverage their reputation, often replacing original journalism with AI-generated articles designed to manipulate search engine rankings. This kind of behavior existed before the AI boom, but with the rise of text generation tools like ChatGPT, it's become increasingly easy to churn out endless articles in order to aim for Google rankings. .
The proliferation of domain takeovers is just one of the issues that have tarnished Google Search's reputation in recent years. “Sites like this are very easy to set up,” says SEO expert Gareth Boyd, who runs digital marketing firm Forte Analytica. “It's become a huge problem.” (Boyd admits he has created similar sites in the past, but says he no longer does them.)
In February, WIRED reported on several AI clickbait networks that used domain occupation as a strategy. Among them was a network that took over the websites of defunct indie women's website The Hairpin and shuttered Hong Kong pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily, and embedded them with AI. -generated nonsense. Another company turned the website of a small-town Iowa newspaper into a bizarre repository of AI blog posts about retail stocks. According to Google's new policy, this type of behavior is now explicitly classified as spam by the company.
In addition to domain takeovers, Google's new policy also focuses on eliminating “reputation abuse.” This means that third-party sources allow trusted websites to publish junky sponsored content and other digital junk. (Google's blog post describes “payday his loan review on trusted educational websites” as an example.) Other parts of the spam policy go into effect immediately, but Google is cracking down on reputational damage. I am giving him 60 days notice. Time to stand in line.
Nayak said the company has been working on this particular update since late last year. More broadly, the company has been working since 2022 on how to fix low-quality content in searches, including spam, generated by AI. “We were aware of this problem,” he says Nayak. “These changes take time to develop effectively.”
Some SEO experts are cautiously optimistic that these changes could restore Google's search efficiency. “Hopefully, things will go back to how they were before,” Ray says. “But we'll have to see what happens.”