Google search and results They are getting worse, according to intensive research by scientists from the universities of Leipzig and Bauhaus, as well as the Center for Scalable Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence.
And according to researchers, one of the main culprits is SEO.
The experts came to the conclusion after spending a year studying the results of 7,392 searches for product reviews on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, in what they say is the first systematic review of the issue of deterioration in the quality of search engine results.
After reviewing countless links over the past year, the team concluded that everyone complaining about Google’s declining quality appears to be right, and with the advent of generative artificial intelligence, the situation is likely to only get worse.
“We can conclude that higher-ranking pages are, on average, more optimized, more monetized through affiliate marketing, and exhibit evidence of lower text quality,” the researchers wrote. They also found that while a small portion of product reviews use affiliate marketing, the majority of search engine results use this tactic, which only compounds the problem of search result quality.
“All search engines have significant problems with highly optimized (affiliate) content… and we also see an inverse relationship between the use of affiliate marketing and content complexity,” concluded the quartet of scientists from the universities of Leipzig and Bauhaus. Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.
The researchers also determined that all three search engines are susceptible to manipulation by large-scale affiliate link spam campaigns, and their efforts to curb such manipulation through algorithm updates are at best having a “temporary positive effect.” The Google team found that Google targeting SEO and affiliate spam was the most effective.
Either way, “search engines appear to be losing the game of cat and mouse that is SEO spam,” the researchers conclude.
Source: Digital Trends
I am Garth Carter and I work at Gadget Onus. I have specialized in writing for the Hot News section, focusing on topics that are trending and highly relevant to readers. My passion is to present news stories accurately, in an engaging manner that captures the attention of my audience.
