Google is making changes to its algorithms to better weed out artificial or spammy content in response to concerns that the quality of its search results has decreased. The May ranking adjustments, according to the company, will “keep the lowest-quality content out of search.” Google promises that its engine will be more effective at eliminating the automated (also known as AI-generated) content that is more difficult to identify these days.
According to Google, the next upgrade will use the lessons it acquired from a 2022 algorithmic tweak to “reduce unhelpful, unoriginal content.” According to the firm, the modifications will increase visitors to “helpful and high-quality sites.” Google predicts that the adjustment will result in a forty percent reduction in spammy, unoriginal search results when combined with the updates made two years ago.
“This update involves refining some of our core ranking systems to help us better understand if webpages are unhelpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people,” Google product management director Elizabeth Tucker wrote. “This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.”
Google sounds like it’s targeting AI-generated SEO spam with its notes about scaled content abuse. The company says it’s strengthening its approach to the growing problem of sites that generate garbage automated articles (as well as zeroing in on old-fashioned human-created spam).
“Today, scaled content creation methods are more sophisticated, and whether content is created purely through automation isn’t always as clear,” Tucker said. Google says the changes “will allow us to take action on more types of content with little to no value created at scale, like pages that pretend to have answers to popular searches but fail to deliver helpful content.”
AI-generated content farms shotgun-blasting content to game the system are an increasing problem, so Google’s changes — if they’re as effective as promised — will be welcome. Although sites spamming that content exclusively may be easier to spot, it will be interesting to see if scenarios where once-reputable outlets experimenting with AI-generated spam (CNET and Sports Illustrated are recent examples) will be affected.
Another change to the algorithm will tackle the practice of otherwise reputable sites hosting low-quality content from third parties designed to leech off the site’s good name. Google provides the example of an educational site hosting a third-party payday loan review. “We’ll now consider very low-value, third-party content produced primarily for ranking purposes and without close oversight of a website owner to be spam,” Tucker wrote.
Finally, Google’s updates will allegedly do better at rooting out expired domains bought by someone else and transformed into click mills. The search engine will begin treating those websites as spam.
You won’t see the improvements immediately as Google is giving site owners a two-month notice to adapt accordingly. The search engine changes will take effect on May 5.
