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Will AI-Powered SEO Ruin Google's Search Results? (theverge.com) 69

Posted by EditorDavid from the search-me dept.
A long read at the Verge explores the quality of Google's search results — and whether they've been affected by the Search Engine Optimization industry.

But it begins by saying that "A lot of folks' complain that "The links that pop up when they go looking for answers online, they say, are "absolutely unusable"; "garbage"; and "a nightmare" because "a lot of the content doesn't feel authentic."

If so, the question is why. SEO Daron Babin warns that "We're entering a very weird time, technologically, with AI, from an optimization standpoint... All the assholes that are out there paying shitty link-building companies to build shitty articles, now they can go and use the free version of GPT." Soon, he said, Google results would be even worse, dominated entirely by AI-generated crap designed to please the algorithms, produced and published at volumes far beyond anything humans could create, far beyond anything we'd ever seen before. "They're not gonna be able to stop the onslaught of it," he said. Then he laughed and laughed, thinking about how puny and irrelevant Google seemed in comparison to the next generation of automated SEO. "You can't stop it...!"

Nowadays, he mostly invests in cannabis and psychedelics. SEO just got to be too complicated for not enough money, he told me. [SEO Missy] Ward had told me the same thing, that she had stopped focusing on SEO years ago.
But the Verge also spoke to Danny Sullivan, the former journalist who started the SEO-industry site Search Engine Land — who was eventually hired by Google as their "public liaison for serach." And Sullivan "is pissed that people think Google results have gone downhill. Because they haven't, he insisted. If anything, search results have gotten a lot better over time. Anyone who thought search quality was worse needed to take a hard look in the mirror." Sullivan was not the only person who tried to tell me that search results have improved significantly. Out of the dozen-plus SEOs that I spoke with at length, nearly every single one insisted that search results are way better than they used to be...

This was not what I had been noticing, and this was certainly not what I had been hearing from friends and journalists and friends who are journalists. Were all of us wrong...? I began to worry all the people who were mad about search results were upset about something that had nothing to do with metrics and everything to do with feelings and ~vibes~ and a universal, non-Google-specific resentment and rage about how the internet has made our lives so much worse in so many ways, dividing us and deceiving us and provoking us and making us sadder and lonelier.
SEO Lily Ray says Google did change its algorithm in 2016 to fight disinformation, trying to favor sites with "experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness." But the point that really hit me was that for certain kinds of information, Google had undone one of the fundamental elements of what had made its results so appealing from the start. Now, instead of wild-west crowdsourcing, search was often reinforcing institutional authority...

The second major reason why Google results feel different lately was, of course, SEO... Google is harder to game now — it's true. But the sheer volume of SEO bait being produced is so massive and so complex that Google is overwhelmed. "It's exponentially worse," Ray said. "People can mass auto-generate content with AI and other tools," she went on, and "in many cases, Google's algorithms take a minute to catch onto it."

The future that Babin had cackled about at the alligator party was already here. We humans and our pedestrian questions were getting caught up in a war of robots fighting robots, of Google's algorithms trying to find and stop the AI-enabled sites programmed by SEOs from infecting our internet experience.
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Will AI-Powered SEO Ruin Google's Search Results? More

Will AI-Powered SEO Ruin Google's Search Results?

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  • Will AI-Powered SEO Ruin Google's Search Results? (Score:3)

    by sprins ( 717461 ) on Saturday November 04, 2023 @02:36PM (#63979960)

    Too late, that shop has sailed.

  • The word "will" implies the future (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Saturday November 04, 2023 @02:37PM (#63979962)

    SEO has already ruined google
    It's getting increasingly hard to find anything useful

    • By all websites catering to Google’s rules just to be a relevant search result everything eventually went to shit

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, but previously there was a need to pay humans to create SEO spam. That created a natural limit to the amount of SEO spam that could exist. Now that AI SEO spam is essentially free, the sheer volume of spam can and will increase by orders of magnitude.

    • I'm about done with Google search. It's a keyword-driven algo that dumps irrelevant shit mixed with good stuff and I have to use my noggin to spot the difference between bullshit and wild honey. Links link to other links and soon I'm paddling down the stream of water coming from the rabbit hole.

      Now I use Claude and ChatGPT to use short prompts to get extended answers. I form new questions from those answers and so on. I don't have them write my material. I use the information to flesh out my own work. By co

      • Google offers a generative AI search option (beta of course): https://labs.google/sge/ [labs.google]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        I have to use my noggin to spot the difference between bullshit and wild honey.

        So ... with AI, you stop thinking?

        I don't have them write my material.

        That's a suspiciously specific denial.

        AI chatbots are a disruptive technology for search methods.

        Only for people who don't care if the results are factual, accurate, or reliable.

        That's the thing with AI, you don't have access to any of the tools you'd otherwise use to evaluate the reliability or credibility of the source. Facts and nonsense look identical so you need to fall back to "conventional search" to check your results anyway.

        • Bullshit. Not wanting to write a goddam novel in /., I provided the necessary information to make my point. Of course, I fact-check. What in tarnation gave you the idea that I didn't? Your assumptions are your flaws.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            LOL! What was your point, exactly? Are you saying that you weren't trying to claim that chatbots were better than search for ridiculous reasons? Have you read your own post?

            Of course, I fact-check. What in tarnation gave you the idea that I didn't?

            Um... Your post. You claim to be frustrated with traditional search because it produces a mix of good and bad results that you need to "use your noggin" to distinguish between. You then claim that, instead of search, you now use chatbots to get answers to questions. The implication being that you believe, against all reason, that

      • What should a search engine be driven by if not keywords? Aren't keywords just instructions on what you want? How is a short prompt not also keyword driven? I mean you can also write in a natural language style on Google's normal search.

        You seem to have a preference for the style and format of the results from a chat bot not really an issue with the algo being keyword driven. I can understand the preference it's kind of letting it just summarize some info from the top results it often saves time for q

        • You can use search and pick through your link salvo or go this way, fact-checked by Claude and Google search:

          The Photon'sViewpoint

          CaptainDork [from the midpoint in a long conversation]
          Stipulating that a photon has no real perception and ignoring that for now:

          For me, a photon takes 8 minutes to get to me from the surface of the Sun. The photon actually never moves.

          From the photon's perspective, it never moved.

          Limiting our conclusions to just that, I can infer that I am seeing the photon "move" in slow motion

    • SEO has already ruined google
      It's getting increasingly hard to find anything useful

      Yep. My favorite proof is to try downloading a transparent PNG of something.

      The effort that's gone into poisoning the results of a search for "transparent PNG" is staggering.

      • I've had some great success in using the advanced search which you have to now click on the gear icon at the top right to find the link to. That one seems work off properties within the image rather than meta data surrounding the image like it's filename, link text, exif data etc.
    • I was just going to post that. SEO has already trashed Google. Maybe AI will improve things?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I hope we will eventually get some better filters that can remove all spam and ads. That would be something.

    • I'm actually starting to default to Yandex to search sadly. Google and bing are shit, Yahoo and excite have been shit for years and so many other search engines just regurgitate Google.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. No need for AI at all.

  • Not like google search results can't get any shittier.

    • The article: "And Sullivan "is pissed that people think Google results have gone downhill. Because they haven't, he insisted. If anything, search results have gotten a lot better over time."

      That has not been my experience.

      What I am finding lately is that google search very often gives me results that don't include my search terms, even if I take the trouble to enclose them in quotes.

      • The article: "And Sullivan "is pissed that people think Google results have gone downhill. Because they haven't, he insisted. If anything, search results have gotten a lot better over time."

        That has not been my experience.

        What I am finding lately is that google search very often gives me results that don't include my search terms, even if I take the trouble to enclose them in quotes.

        I came to post the same quote and to express the same sentiment. You're much nicer than I am though - the subject of my post was going to be "Get a clue, fucktard!".

        The only reason I can think of for this disconnect is that people like Sullivan who are 'in the industry' are so focused on advertising that nothing else exists for them. They have no concept of - in fact are incapable of conceiving of - queries which have any purpose other than finding companies or products. Finding those things - or answering

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Makes sense to me. But I cannot even remember the last time I used a search engine to find a product and the last time I searched for a company was because they screwed up massively on IT security and I was searching for the incident. What I use search engines for is finding _knowledge_. Because, you know, products is only something I need. Knowledge is something I enjoy and actually want. Cretins like Sullivan think a search engine is a replacement for a shopping catalog, nothing else. How pathetic.

          • What I use search engines for is finding _knowledge_. Because, you know, products is only something I need. Knowledge is something I enjoy and actually want.

            This, exactly. That may be part of the reason I remember Alta Vista so fondly. It represents a pre-Google era when knowledge - academic or technical papers, datasheets, useful info published by various kinds of hobbyists, or other bases for thought, inquiry, and experimentation - was pretty much all people used search engines for.

            In its early days Google was awesome. But even before their search started to circle the drain, they were already building the ad-centric enshittification which resulted in today's

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        "Purveyor of bad product is pissed customer realized product is bad." What else is new?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. Google results are just commercial crappiness at this time. Enshitification at work.

  • Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas (Score:3)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Saturday November 04, 2023 @02:51PM (#63979984) Journal

    "for certain kinds of information, Google had undone one of the fundamental elements of what had made its results so appealing from the start. Now, instead of wild-west crowdsourcing, search was often reinforcing institutional authority..."

    How interesting that "wild-west crowd sourcing" is, first of all, even referred to as "wild west", and secondly, contrasted with "institutional authority". "The crowd" isn't the wild west, it's the whole world! There's nothing "wild" about it, it's the absolute opposite of "wild". It's -- wait for it -- The Consensus. And "institutional authority" is literally the opposite of crowd sourcing.

    So basically what the author is saying here is that Google had completely turned its back on its own standards, and replaced actual crowdsourcing with corporate PR.

    • Funny I was thinking the same thing. Create a vetting process and let certain people rank the Google results for that extra level of filtering. Maybe we can start disposing of the thousands of Indian written duplicate websites that all start with "clear your cache".

  • I can do my own searches, thank you very much.

  • The POINT of SEO (Score:5, Funny)

    by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Saturday November 04, 2023 @02:57PM (#63979994) Homepage

    The whole point of SEO is to ruin search results.

  • What the heck? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday November 04, 2023 @03:03PM (#63980006)

    Are the SEO scammers now trying to pretend "SEO" is also a title now? SEO Daron Babin... SEO Missy Ward... SEO Lily Ray... WTF?

    The writing here is a mess... not that I'd expect anything less from the Verge.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      That's how you do SEO. Associate the term with the individuals offering the service. The funny thing is that it's not the scammers that did it. The Verge article isn't written that way. It's our own EditorDavid.

    • Shouldn't that be SEOO?
  • Google search has been dead for years
  • Seems to be whoever has the most money to spam online has the best position these days. Arguably better products are further down the lists in favour of the big spend groups. AI has just made it cheaper to spam more and thus cement their position.

  • If you are looking for ads. If your looking for content, you need to scroll down. way down.

  • It's all explained in one single word (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@@@tedata...net...eg> on Saturday November 04, 2023 @04:56PM (#63980262) Journal

    Enshitification [wired.com].

    Thanks to all these commercial interests, our internet is turning to shit.

    And there's nothing you can do about it . Because money. Unless you're paying Alphabet / TikTok / Meta / Any Other Internet Corporation money for ad space, you're not the customer. You're the product. So sit down, shut up, and surf away.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      >Thanks to all these commercial interests

      You're not wrong, but about 20 years late. Doctrow refers to a pump-and-abandon loop that has been honed and optimized, but the internet developed revenue-hungry cancers before the loop. These cash-hungry cancers (eg. punch the monkey, adware infections) were attracted by the smell of Septembers, it was around the myspace inundation that they really went into their blood frenzy (ie. critical mass) but we were amassing smaller pre-critical amounts of Septembers sin

    • ... when your link explaining the term "enshitification" is pay-walled ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. Fortunately not all of it, the old Internet still exists. But it takes some skill to find it.

  • The first job to be replaced... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday November 04, 2023 @04:57PM (#63980270)
    ...by ChatGPT was copywriters, i.e. people who are paid per word to write bullshit texts loaded with SEO words to put on websites to attract clicks & generate ad revenue. They paid humans to do it because it worked but now ChatGPT & other LLMs can do it quicker & cheaper. It's not a change, it's just more of the same. Information is basically about trust; How much do you trust person X to write stuff that follows (Paul) Grice's 4 maxims (AKA the cooperative principle): It must be informative (not too long but carry sufficient information), truthful, relevant, & clear. Most SEO is way too long, meandering, dishonest (it's not trying to be truthful), irrelevant, & unclear (because the writer know next to nothing about the subject matter, i.e. they're writers not subject matter experts). SEO sites contain pure bullshit that give the impression of being useful but are in fact pointless time-wasters.

    It's Google's fault for setting the metrics for success the way they have, i.e. DoubleClick, which falls under Goodhart's law, i.e. Any metric that is used for control purposes ceases to be a useful metric. SEO companies just game DoubleClick's algorithms. It takes humans to decide whether a text meets all of Grice's maxims so we're back to trust. Q: Who do we trust to tell us what we need to know? A: Authority figures, experts, people with credentials.

  • I'd be blaming DMCA copyright take-downs long before pointing fingers at Google.

  • Google already ruined its own search (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    by flooding search with sponsored links outside factors wont have a chance to ruin googles search results, google beat them to the punch

  • Ruin what now? (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday November 04, 2023 @06:09PM (#63980398)

    Google's search results are already pretty much ruined. I have a growing "-site:" list that I have to copy/paste into every search along with a "google sponsored" blocker to get at least mostly usable results.

    Now mix this with the need to use different VPNs to evade other result filtering because some nanny state thinks that you should better not see certain results and you'll find that Google is, generally, already pretty much useless. There are other search engines that, depending on what you're looking for, will yield far superior results.

  • Long live the BARD!

  • Google's search results have been ruined for a few years now

  • Google did change its algorithm in 2016 to fight disinformation, trying to favor sites with "experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness."

    And I'm sure that worked out fine and there was no blowback whatsoever.

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