Google today took aim at the SEO industry, which is gaming search rankings to destroy the value of Google search results. Often when consumers search the web for product recommendations, reviews, sales, discounts, etc., they rank highly but do not provide the promised expert reviews or useful promotions. It returns low quality or spammy websites. The company says that's about to change with its latest search update.
Google on Tuesday announced a search quality update specifically focused on improving the search quality rankings of websites and will update its Google Search spam policy. In the latter case, Google's new policy will address the need to exclude low-quality content from search, including not only obituary spam but also “outdated websites that have been repurposed as spam repositories by new owners.” It is said that it will happen.
Overall, the update aims to improve Google's ranking system and lower the rankings of pages that are “built for search engines, not people,” the company's announcement explains. This means sites that have a poor user experience or that appear to be designed to match very specific search queries will be affected. Google estimates that this update and previous efforts can reduce low-quality, unoriginal content by 40%.
Google's blog post does not directly mention the term “artificial intelligence” or “AI,” but Search Central's detailed post does. The company explains the impact this new technology is having on the web by explaining that large-scale content creation methods often leverage “automation.” As these technologies become more sophisticated, it's not always clear whether content was created by humans, automation, or a combination of the two.
Instead, Google says it will focus on the fraudulent practice of creating content at scale to boost search rankings, regardless of how the site is created. This can affect web pages that appear to provide answers to common search queries, but don't actually provide much value to the end user.
Google said the ranking changes “directly address low-quality AI-generated content that is designed to attract clicks but doesn't add much inherent value,” according to spokeswoman Jennifer Kutz. There is. “The update also addresses other types of content, content that may be primarily created by humans but that doesn't add much value to users. It’s about reducing the presence of pages that lack original content,” she said. The large-scale content abuse policy will focus on content created by humans, generative AI, or other automated means, Google said.
Google's changes also address “site reputation abuse,” in which websites that typically host valuable content receive low-value content from third parties for the purpose of confusing users and relying on the site's existing reputation. It also refers to hosting quality content on a domain. The company gives the example of also including payday loan reviews on its educational website to gain a ranking advantage, but they no longer give actual practice tests and a large number of people who appear to be doing I can also imagine this impacting product review sites.
The issue was recently raised by 404 Media, who pointed to a new study by a German study that found that Google's search quality was objectively getting worse after analyzing thousands of search terms over the course of a year. Search marketers agreed with this assessment, saying that scammers are winning. Meanwhile, independent sites that focus on niche markets, like HouseFresh's air purifier review site, are being affected by an increase in SEO spam, drowning out human-driven, expert product research. “Google is crushing independent sites like ours,” HouseFresh wrote in a blog post last month, even though product recommendations from major media publishers appear not to be legitimate editorial reviews. , we discussed in detail how to outperform reviews on Google.
This update addresses the abuse of expired domains to mislead consumers into thinking new content is part of the old site, and the resale and reuse of domains to increase low-quality content and spam. We also deal with cases where
If Google is able to address these issues with search quality updates, it could have a significant impact on how consumers perceive the usefulness of Google Search, which many have seen in the wake of advances in AI. Publishers are seeing fewer clicks to their websites, and startups such as Arc's His Web Browser and News Reader are condensing information at the expense of website traffic to keep publishers' sites afloat. We are trying to use AI to do this.
Google said it would publish the policy two months before it goes into effect on May 5 to give site owners time to make changes.