AI-generated spam content have worsened web search in recent years. Google is updating Google Search to decrease “low-quality” results.

Generative AI technologies allow sites to publish hundreds or thousands of articles each day, flooding popular search results. Search results now often include AI-written content with factual mistakes and little human editing. Google has indicated it permits AI-generated content in search results, but all pieces must meet quality standards and spam is banned. However, AI-generated spam still plagues Google Search.

Google Search algorithm updates

Recent Google Search algorithm updates lower low-quality and unoriginal results. On its blog, the company stated, “Today, scaled content creation methods are more sophisticated, and whether content is created purely through automation isn’t always as clear. We’re updating our policy to focus on abusive behavior—producing material at scale to increase search ranking—whether automated, human, or a mix of both. This will allow us to act on more forms of less-than-useful material, like pages that claim to answer popular searches but don’t.

Whether these adjustments have enough impact is unknown. Spam websites may reduce output or use other methods to avoid detection. This doesn’t address AI-generated content with factual inaccuracies or useless information, which is difficult to discover because Google doesn’t take manual action sufficiently. Company testing shows a 40% drop in low-quality content.

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Google is also targeting “site reputation abuse

Google is also targeting “site reputation abuse,” where sites publish third-party content that is very different from their usual content to gain from their reputation and search rankings. Google added, “A third party may publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefits. Highly ranked material on Search can confuse or mislead visitors with quite different expectations for a website’s content. The corporation now considers expired and reused domains with low-quality content spam.

New spam detection is part of Google’s March 2024 Search core update. Changes regarding site reputation abuse begin on May 5, 2024.

Source: Google