--- title: "AI Garbage Is Destroying Google Results" description: "Google's search results are starting to look like an unrecognizable heap of spam, meaningless SEO filler, and dubiously sourced news." date: "2024-01-20" modified: "2024-01-20" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/ai-garbage-destroying-google-results" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "generative ai" - "Google" - "seo" --- # AI Garbage Is Destroying Google Results ![Google's search results are starting to look like an unrecognizable heap of spam, meaningless SEO filler, and dubiously sourced news.]() *\Image: Futurism\* Google Search has been caught up in a massive tidal wave of generative AI garbage. It's starting to look like an unrecognizable heap of spam, meaningless search engine optimization (SEO) filler, and dubiously sourced news. "It’s the worst quality results on Google I’ve seen in my 14-year career," eminent SEO expert Lily Ray [told *Fortune*](). Instead of filtering out scams, Google is seemingly bowing to the pressure and is instead promoting them. "Right now, it feels like the scammers are winning," Ray added. Researchers recently confirmed these suspicions, finding that Google is consistently ranking ad-filled spam. In a [year-long study](), first [reported on by *404 Media*](), a team of German researchers studied search results for thousands of product-review terms and found some shocking results. The team found an "inverse relationship between affiliate marketing use and content complexity, and that all search engines fall victim to large-scale affiliate link spam campaigns." In other words, the "search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam," the team concluded in their paper. And, as you might expect at this point, generative AI is likely playing a central role in the dissemination of this low-quality content. "The line between benign content and spam in the form of content and link farms becomes increasingly blurry — a situation that will surely worsen in the wake of generative AI," the researchers write. Despite seeing some improvement in results since the start of their experiment in terms of affiliate spam, the team still observed a "downwards trend in text quality," leaving "quite a lot of room for improvement." There's plenty of evidence that supports the theory that generative AI is slowly ruining the internet. With the democratization of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, content farms are [pumping out vast amounts]() of badly researched and often entirely unedited content. Even once respected publications are being caught using generative AI tools — and often with less-than-stellar results, like at [*BuzzFeed*](), [*CNET*](), and [*Sports Illustrated*](). And the technology's mutually beneficial relationship with SEO, the practice of tweaking content to increase its discoverability and have it rank higher on search results, is seemingly compounding Google's woes. That doesn't bode well, considering AI's tenuous connection to reality and inability to tell the truth. Google's own forays into AI-powered search leaves much to be desired. Its Search Generative Experience, which was released in beta form last year, has [trouble]() answering simple prompts like naming "countries in Africa that start with the letter k" and sometimes gives out [wildly inaccurate information](). In short, there's a good reason why users are "sharing their observation that search engines are becoming less and less capable of finding genuine and useful content satisfying their information needs," as the German researchers noted in their paper. The "[enshittification]()" and "[junkification]()" of the internet is real — and generative AI is in big part to blame. **More on Google:** *[As Google Pivots to AI, CEO Warns He Will Fire Even More Staff]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()