Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., has recently announced stringent measures to curb the use of AI-generated content that aims to unfairly manipulate its search engine rankings. The company is actively improving its primary ranking systems to efficiently identify worthless web pages, those that offer a subpar user experience or those seemingly designed solely for search engines, and not for real users. This strategic change in their approach could dramatically impact the overall quality of online content.
In a recent blog post, Google's impending ranking updates scheduled for May will aim to eliminate low-grade content from appearing in search results. This move follows the significant spike in AI-generated content specifically tailored for SEO, in line with Google's ranking regulations. This increase is linked to the eased accessibility and user-friendly nature of AI tools that can churn out content in line with Google's preferences.
Besides tackling AI-generated SEO content, Google’s updates will also target individuals who post poor-quality content on reputable websites. Elizabeth Tucker, Google's Director of Product Management, explained that these updates are designed to improve ranking systems, thereby differentiating genuinely useful web pages from those merely engineered for search engines. The chief goal is to reduce the amount of low-quality content in search results, directing more online traffic to trustworthy and invaluable websites.
Google intends to utilize insights from a 2022 algorithmic adjustment aimed at reducing uninformative and repetitious content, and will apply these findings to the forthcoming update - this directs more traffic towards reliable and high-quality sites.
Google's combined updates are expected to decrease spam and repetitive search results by approximately 40%. Moreover, Google's updates will improve the detection of expired domains being reused as clickbait sites and classifying them as spam.
Website owners have been given two months' notice to prepare before these search engine changes come into effect on May 5. Site owners will have to make the required updates to their websites to ensure that their content meets Google’s new quality standards.
