Google is making some new changes to its search ranking system. It's designed to help show good content in the results and hide some of the worst and most cynical stuff on the web. The company says it does a good job of lowering the ranks of content that exists solely to summarize other content (sometimes this is a regular SEO job for him, but it also uses generative AI tools). role is also increasing). It is also said to be better at combating some of the tricks people use to deceive. That ranking system.
There will always be people trying to manipulate how you reach the top of Google's search results. That's just a fact of the web, and a reality for Google's search team. Google is also constantly making changes to its ranking algorithms to improve search results. I've never heard of most of those changes. “You only see what slips through your controls, so to speak,” says Pandunayak, who is Google's vice president of search. “Unfortunately, these are not things you can wave a magic wand and get rid of.”
Google is hinting at two things in order to announce the change. First, these are major changes that can significantly change the search experience. Nayak said Google has measured up to a 40% reduction in “useless content.” And secondly, Google is sending messages to the web. No more spammy and sketchy behavior.
Google is sending a message to the web: Your spammy, sketchy behavior ends now.
Nayak gave three examples of what Google currently considers spamming and intends to downgrade it. The first is content at scale. Sites that create thousands of low-quality articles a day, either through low-wage contractors or AI generators, and then target that content in search results. Nayak points out obituary spam. The Verge's Mia Sato recently wrote the following as an example of the problem to be solved here:
The second type of spamming is what Nayak calls “site reputation abuse.” This is when an otherwise respectable website rents out part of its site for spammy nonsense. I don't mean to name and shame anyone here, but I've seen sites that make me wonder why there are coupons, or why there are parts of the entire site that are unrelated and appear to be AI-generated. I'm sure you've seen it before. The third is “abuse of expired domains.'' It buys abandoned but highly ranked domains and embeds vulgar content into them, propelling them to the top of searches.Current state hairpin Here's an example of how this happens. wired It's been featured a lot in recent weeks.
Nayak said Google gives those involved in abusing a site's reputation 60 days to remove the abuse before making ranking changes. Others take effect immediately. Google has a spam problem, knows it, and is trying to shut it down. “When spammers and low-quality information providers dominate the rankings, a healthy, high-quality ecosystem is affected,” Nayak said.
Of course, the work is not done. Considering AI-generated content – what it means, who wants it, and how it should be ranked – is still in its infancy, and Google is making AI available to everyone. We're going to have a lot of internal headaches because we're trying to deliver the best possible results to the world at the same time as we're trying to save the web from a dangerous state. be overrun by it. (Even Google's own search engine is increasingly becoming an AI machine.) And there will always be new and sneaky ways to rise to the top of search results. This is a headache of Google's own making. Google is always one step behind because most of our friends on the web exist entirely to prey on Google.
But for Google to remain Google, it has to be good at finding good things on the web. The company has been moving in that direction for some time now, with plans to prioritize humans over machines and authentic content over clickbait. But it's a long road.