Increasingly, Google search doesn't seem to work the way it used to.
Search engines, which have become a 21st century staple in virtually everyone's lives and are used billions of times a day, are struggling with unintended consequences from recent updates. Basically, it's all spam. Welcome to the spam era of web searches.
“This is the worst quality of search results I've seen on Google in my 14-year career,” said Lily Ray, senior director of search engine optimization at digital marketing agency Amsive Digital. ” states.
Pop-up windows, ads for fake products, and links that lead you to download irremovable malware are common on the Internet. But you usually don't see them scattered among his websites on Google. With billions of searches a day, along with countless websites across the internet, Google is playing a digital game of whack-a-mole to catch these scammers before they show up again. There are only so many things you can catch.
“Right now, it feels like the scammers are winning,” Ray says. luck.
Essentially what happened, Ray said, was that Google released an algorithm update that pushed user-generated content higher in the rankings of search results. The idea is that users can ask questions and see answers from other real people who might have the answers, further democratizing the web and reducing the power of gatekeepers, such as The idea was to keep them away from news sites. luck. Google calls it the “Hidden Gem Update” and it brings a series of changes from May to November 2023. Ostensibly, it was supposed to find the best answer from across the internet, regardless of who posted it. Now, let's say a user searches for “What's the best used muffler?” or “How do I know if my homebrewer has gone bad?” They'll find answers from people with car trouble or from more experienced homebrewers.
What ended up happening, Ray said, was that unscrupulous sites realized they could exploit the new policy by putting spam links in places where Google's new algorithm would prioritize them.
“Google Docs, Google Maps, Linkedin, Reddit, anywhere you can think of a forum, spammers are using it,” Ray says.
A recent study by German researchers examining the quality of product review websites, previously reported by 404 Media, echoes Ray's claims. According to the study, pages that ranked highly in the searches they conducted tended to have lower quality text and more affiliate links aimed at monetization. However, Google's search quality was better than its competitors Bing and DuckDuckGo. The company also had the most effective mitigation strategies compared to other search engines, but spammers will eventually find ways to circumvent them as well.
“I've never seen Google so confused,” Ray told Gizmodo about the current state of web search.
“SEO parasite” infiltrates legitimate web pages
The reason some malicious actors have found it worth spamming new search updates is because of something called affiliate links. This is a common online practice where a website earns a commission when a product is purchased after clicking on a link posted on a website's page. If a website with lots of affiliate links ranks high in her Google search, it will be a significant profit for the website owner. And scammers take advantage of this rule by trying to sell you worthless products through useless website links.
Ranking high on Google is a business in itself, known as search engine optimization (SEO). Last year, SEO was a $76 billion business, according to market research firm IBISWorld. This is also a very common practice for almost every company with an online presence (including every article published by this reporter). Fortune.com). SEO has become an important part of most online marketing and is considered a specialty in the advertising industry. When done well, it allows the most relevant information to appear in the most prominent places on Google.
For example, if you live in an area where hurricanes are expected to make landfall, trusted sources of weather warnings, such as the National Weather Service or local news outlets, should appear near the top of your Google search. An annoying side effect is that many search results look the same. A simple search for “best bed sheets” will yield titles like “8 Best Sheets of 2024,” “22 Best Bed Sheets,” or even the more colorful “These Are Our Favorite Sheets.” Dozens of the same articles appear. To catch Z. ”
Critics of SEO will argue that SEO has turned online search into a homogeneous experience where all results repeat the same information. filter world, new book by new yorker By Kyle Chayka, Staff Writer Today, nearly 30 years after the internet changed the world, the power of algorithms cuts across cultures to curate a “feed” of countless everyday experiences, including the bizarre. They claim that they have very similar coffee shop aesthetics. world. Proponents, on the other hand, will argue that it's a way to reward the best websites, especially for small businesses that can't afford huge advertising budgets for paid spots at the top of Google's search results. .
“The continued struggle of multi-billion dollar search engine companies against targeted SEO affiliate spam is an example of how web search is a dynamic game with many players, some with malicious intent. “should be the case,” the study authors wrote.
A Google spokesperson said the study was flawed in that it only looked at specific search terms. “This particular study is a narrow examination of product review content and does not reflect the overall quality and usefulness of search for the billions of queries we see every day,” they wrote. said. luck on mail.
Another issue that has caused the decline in the quality of Google's search results, according to Ray, is what she calls the “SEO parasite” that is “ripping off big publishers.” This is when a reputable website leases space on its site, and importantly its domain name, to a third party for sponsored content. These third parties leverage the parent site's traffic and reputation to stuff their affiliate links into sponsored posts. While technically allowed, it doesn't make for a great experience.
“People are exploiting Google's loopholes,” Ray said.
A study by German researchers also found that the prevalence of affiliate links may be correlated with lower quality websites. “We further observe that there is an inverse relationship between affiliate marketing usage and content complexity, and that all search engines are falling victim to large-scale affiliate link spam campaigns.” says the study. “However, we are also finding that the lines between benign content and spam in the form of content and link farms are becoming increasingly blurred, a situation that is sure to be exacerbated by the influence of generative AI. It will get worse.”
Since the early days of AI, watchdogs have warned that it could be used to facilitate fraud. AI-generated voice recordings could impersonate the person or their loved ones as part of a ruse to access banking information or medical records. For online searches, on the other hand, AI allows scammers to create junk content that clutters Google's search results on an unprecedented scale.
A Google spokesperson pointed out: luck to Post to X Ray highlighted Google's response to complaints about questionable content hosted on Harvard URLs, saying the company is working to “take steps to appropriately address this type of third-party content.” said. Google's account also said it “was not intentionally trying to host the content, and the site was likely not aware that this content was being placed.”
Google also acknowledged in a statement to Fortune that it has “initiated concrete improvements to address these issues.” [highlighted in the study]Google said the study itself points out that Google search has improved over the past year and is performing better than other search engines. “More broadly, a number of third parties have measured search engine results for other types of queries and found that Google has significantly higher quality than the others.”
Ray agrees that Google is aware of this problem and is working to address it, likely through a combination of user policy and algorithm updates. “Google always, always does things right,” she says. “They just need time.”
