Google has announced that it will begin cracking down on AI-generated content created for the sole purpose of gamifying its systems and ranking higher in Google searches. This change could have a knock-on effect on the quality of what we see online.
The company announced. blog post on tuesday. According to Google, the changes include algorithmic enhancements to the core ranking system and are more complex than regular updates. This change affects three types of content (what Google calls fraudulent), but the most notable is automated content. This includes content created by generative AI.
“This update includes information about whether a web page is useless, has a poor user experience, or feels like it was created for search engines rather than humans,” said Elizabeth Tucker, Google’s director of product management. This includes improving some of our core ranking systems to better understand how people feel.” she said in her announcement. “We believe these updates will reduce the amount of low-quality content on search and drive more traffic to useful, high-quality sites.”
The blog itself didn’t mention generated AI by name, but a Google spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email that the update “will reduce the risk of lower-quality AI-generated content designed to attract clicks.” “It’s a direct response, but it doesn’t really add much value.” ”
Tucker said Google expects the new changes to reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.
AI-generated content optimized for SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization, a set of guidelines aimed at helping websites rank higher on Google) is on the rise Your presence on Google Search is growing as a result recent months, according to multiple reports. At least some of this increase can be attributed to the increased availability and ease of use of AI tools that can create content in Google’s preferred formats in seconds.
SEO consultant Jake Ward went viral on X/Twitter last November when he bragged about how his company leveraged AI. Steal 3.4 million total traffic from competitors. Ward explained that he exported a competitor’s sitemap and based on his URL he created 1,800 articles with AI. Ward’s actions sparked widespread hate online, but unfortunately, this is just one example of how people are using AI to manipulate Google’s search results.
“You helped popularize the internet. But hey, you made money, so why bother?” user @LigerzeroTTV wrote. Ward’s post on X.
In addition to addressing AI-generated SEO garbage, Google’s new update targets people who publish low-quality content on websites with high reputation scores. An example from Google is:
“For example, a third party may publish payday loan reviews on a reputable educational website and benefit from rankings from the site. If such content ranks high in search, It can confuse or mislead visitors who have completely different expectations of your website’s content.”
Google claims that it will now consider this type of low-value content from third parties as spam.
Finally, Google has learned that some people are buying up expired domains of popular websites, reusing them with low-quality content, and using the dead sites to boost search rankings for questionable content. He said he knew. Recent examples of this practice include: hairpina women’s website that was shut down in 2018 but recently revived to publish AI clickbait.
“Search helps people answer billions of questions every day, but there are always areas where it can be improved. We will continue to work hard to display this information,” said Tucker, Director of Product Management.
