Search giant Google is losing its war with SEO-optimized spam, leading to lower search quality and worse results for users, according to ArsTechnica.
The study, conducted by Leipzig University, Bauhaus University-Weimar, and Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, looked specifically at the quality of searches for product reviews on Google over the course of a year.
They found that product reviews were inundated with affiliate marketing and search engine-optimized spam. The study also noted that AI and LLMs are expected to flood search results even more over the coming years, and it is not clear that Google is ready.
That said, Google did respond to the article by saying "We’ve launched specific improvements to address these issues – and the study itself points out that Google has improved over the past year and is performing better than other search engines."
