The most potent tool on the Internet has undergone a significant transformation over the last two years thanks to a number of improvements, including an AI function never seen before. Will Google build up or destroy the internet?
If you've ever searched for "air purifier reviews" on Google, you were most likely seeking for information similar to what HouseFresh.com has to offer. Gisele Navarro and her spouse launched the website in 2020, drawing on their ten years of expertise as writers of articles regarding indoor air quality goods. They stocked their basement with purifiers, conducted thorough scientific testing, and wrote articles to assist readers in sifting through advertising hyperbole.
A thriving sector of independent publishers creating the precise kind of unique material Google claims it wants to support is exemplified by HouseFresh. Indeed, the tech giant began displaying HouseFresh at the top of search results shortly after the website launched. The website developed into a profitable company with 15 full-time workers. Navarro was planning a huge future.
Then, in September 2023, Google made one of many significant changes to the search engine's algorithm.
"It destroyed us," claims Navarro. "All of a sudden, consumers were being sent to large lifestyle publications that plainly don't even evaluate the items by the search keywords that used to return HouseFresh. I am aware that most of the material in the articles is incorrect.
Even more harsh was the second Google algorithm upgrade that was released in March. The thousands of daily visits to HouseFresh began to decrease down to hundreds. "We were completely demolished," Navarro remarks. The majority of HouseFresh's staff had to be let go throughout the last several weeks. She claims that the website is doomed if nothing changes.
According to a Google representative who spoke with the BBC, the business only makes improvements to Search available after thorough testing verifies that the changes would benefit users. Additionally, the company provides website owners with information, chances for comment on their Search ranks, and assistance.
Google continues to maintain that the updates will improve the web, and that they are just the beginning of the improvements to the Search algorithm. At the company's annual developer conference last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai made one of the biggest announcements in the search engine's history while standing in front of an audience. In the future, Google Search will provide its own artificial intelligence (AI)-generated responses to a large number of your queries, according to Pichai. This function, known as "AI Overviews," is now available to users in the US. "The result is a product that handles the work for you," Pichai said. "Google Search is generative AI at the amount of storage of human curiosity."
Google's efforts will soon have a significant influence on what a lot of us view when we browse the internet.
Over the last two years, Google has made a number of significant modifications to its core product, AI Overviews being just one of them. According to the corporation, its recent efforts to reimagine Search will help address many of the problems besetting the web and usher in an exciting new age of technology. However, others argue that the reverse could be true. Some fear that when Google reworks its algorithms and employs AI to transform from a search engine to a search and answer engine, the outcome might be nothing short of catastrophic for the companies that provide a large portion of your favorite content.
There's no denying that Google's efforts will soon have a significant influence on what a lot of us view when we browse the internet.
Google realized there was an issue with the web, which is why the modifications were made. If you've ever used a search engine, you've probably seen it yourself. The methods of "search engine optimization," or SEO, which aim to optimize articles and web pages for improved recognition from Google Search, are the dominant style of website creation on the Internet. Google even offers website owners tools, guidance, and SEO ideas. SEO may be an inevitable game for millions of enterprises that depend on the mechanisms of the search engine.
The issue is that SEO may be misused. Astute website proprietors discovered that, on occasion, creating material tailored to Google's algorithms might provide more profits than creating it for the purpose of serving people.
Google doesn't always succeed in resolving this problem. If you've ever looked for anything like "Best Sneakers for Women" and been annoyed by what you see, you understand the problem. Popular search phrases often return pages that are jam-packed with links to shops who pay publishers a percentage of sales and plenty of advertisements instead of any real value. Frequently overlooked is what you're most likely searching for when you open Google: content from experts who are enthusiastic and informed about their field.
Google is now waging a more intense fight on fake search results. The business updated its algorithm with a "Helpful Content Update" in 2022 with the intention of eliminating material that was produced just for search engine optimization. In September of 2023, Google released an upgrade, and in March of this year, it made a third algorithmic change. "45% less low-quality, unoriginal content in search results" is the outcome, according to Google. One may consider that an enormous success.
A Google representative told the BBC that "our recent updates aim to connect people with information that is helpful, satisfying as well as original, from a diverse range of sites across the web." "We're maintaining to focus on driving valuable traffic to sites and supporting a healthy, open net as we work to improve Search."
However, the improvements also had a few unexpected side effects. For instance, according to statistics from the analytics platform SEMrush, GQ.com had a 26% decline in Google Search traffic over the previous six months, while the website for New York Magazine saw a 32% loss. According to the statistics, almost half of the search traffic on Urban Dictionary, a massively popular crowdsourced dictionary of English language slang, has decreased by over 18 million page views. Over 58% of OprahDaily.com was unavailable. (SEMrush is a widely used tool in the business, but its statistics are approximations, and this information solely accounts for traffic from Google searches.)
According to a representative for New York Magazine, these results were lacking and did not take into account the company's own research. At the time this piece was published, representatives at GQ, Oprah Daily, and Urban Dictionary had not responded to requests for comment. But the overall patterns in the statistics are all too true, academics and over six media executives and website owners told the BBC.
Reddit is seeing an unparalleled surge in online traffic. - Lily Ray
You'll be seeing a lot more of one platform in lieu of these websites: Reddit. Reddit had a spike in Google Search traffic that resulted in a 126% increase, according to SEMrush. The benefits are already being seen by the organization. Reddit has released its first set of quarterly financial results after its IPO in March 2024. Its revenue is $243 million (£191 million), a staggering 48% increase from the previous year.
Famous in the SEO field, Lily Ray is vice president of SEO strategy and research at the marketing firm Amsive. "The increase in traffic Reddit is seeing is unprecedented on the Internet," she adds. "Cooking content, adult content, video games, gardening, fashion, everything is all just Reddit."
A Reddit official refused to provide a response.
Following recent changes to Google's algorithm, Reddit is not the only winner. According to SEMrush statistics, there were notable surges at LinkedIn and Wikipedia in addition to comparable meteoric ascents at other user-generated websites like Quora and Instagram. Google was really merely adhering to a trend. In an effort to find genuine content rather than websites that were attempting to trick Google, many astute internet users over the last several years have begun appending the term "Reddit" to the end of their searches. Danny Sullivan, Google's public relations representative for search, has seen this.
"We've found that people generally want to learn from others' experiences, and so we surface content through hundreds of forums and other communities across the web," according to a spokeswoman for Google. "Our agreement with Reddit absolutely did not include promoting its content higher on Search."
However, the game of Google results is zero-sum. The consequences for the loser in this Reddit equation are just as severe: if the search engine directs traffic to one website, it must divert it from another. "Google's just committing war on publisher websites," Ray asserts. It seems as if Google purposefully targeted tiny blogs with an algorithmic upgrade. "So many people I've spoken to have had everything completely destroyed," she exclaims.
According to many website owners and search engine professionals who talked with the BBC, Google results are generally moving away from tiny, independent websites that appear to be completely unrelated to the quality of the content and towards websites with large, well-known brands.
Daniel Hart, the head editor of the UK entertainment news website Ready Steady Cut, noticed the shift right away. "Our traffic instantly dropped in half after Google's September upgrade, and it has only grown worse. Not only have we been overtaken by Reddit content in particular, but spam websites are also taking our material and replacing us. It's nonsensical," Hart remarks. According to Hart, Ready Steady Cut was forced to cut down from 20 writers and editors to only four in the months that followed due to the loss of revenue.
According to a Google representative, spammy and unoriginal material has suffered greatly as a result of the company's recent changes, and Google closely monitors the development of abusive tactics that result in low-quality information appearing in Search.
Following its adjustments, Google gave website owners advice and said that there was a way to get things back on track. Hart claims that after hiring experts and changing its direction to follow Google's suggestions, the website spent many sleepless hours updating it. Nothing helped after almost a year. "I wasted the last eight months of my life trying to follow Google's advice." According to him. "We're a good example of the kind of information Google says it wants—first-hand experience and useful context. It really is sad.
The website owners and content producers who talked with the BBC said that the AI-generated comments were the greatest offending.
Google claims that websites will benefit from its AI summaries in search results. Google's director of search, Liz Reid, said in a blog post that the company's artificial intelligence (AI) search results really drive more visitors to websites. "AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page made an appearance as a traditional web listing for that query," said Reid. "As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators." The business hasn't disclosed any of the data supporting that assertion, however, and a lot of website owners and industry insiders are concerned that the opposite outcome is just as possible.
Owner of the housekeeping advice website Housewife How-Tos, Katie Berry, believes that if Google's AI provides a solution to a query, consumers will just quit searching. People don't visit Berry's website because the AI search results "answer questions superficially, and often incorrectly." Berry states that when Google released their 2022 update, traffic to her website decreased by 70%, and once Google began testing its new AI, it decreased even more. "My site had more traffic in its first months of business than it gets now, even though my rankings have not changed all that much," she explains.
Some, like travel writer David Leiter, believe Google's AI is directly taking their material, thus they find the possible repercussions particularly troubling.
For instance, according to Leiter, searching for "Best Slot Canyons Near Las Vegas" used to result in a World Travel Guy post. But earlier this week, a search resulted in an AI-generated answer at the top of the page.
"Google has replaced my article alongside the giant AI Overview box, and it spits out an answer that is mostly wrong," Leiter explains. "It doesn't even identify slot canyons as the first four locations. The AI is unaware that a slot canyon is a particular kind of canyon with a constrained path. Instead, it only lists arbitrary canyons and a walking path."
Leiter's paper was linked in the AI Overview, but you had to take the time to click on a little arrow at the bottom of the result. As the top search result, Leiter claims he won't get any more traffic than he had in the past. Either way, it's a little comfort. 95% of Leiter's traffic was lost due to recent algorithm changes by Google, he claims.
Although Google admits that AI systems might provide false information, it claims to be continuously trying to improve outcomes. According to a Google representative, AI Overviews are often compiled from many websites rather than just one, and the answers are intended to draw attention to pertinent links. According to the spokesperson, publishers have the ability to manage whether or not AI Overviews links to their websites by using a certain tag on their webpages. It may not be able to get rid of the data after an AI model has scraped your stuff, however.
Not only CEOs in the media are doubting Google's hold on the internet. Google is facing many antitrust cases at the same time against various divisions of its expansive £1.7 trillion ($2.2 trillion) corporation. In a case filed by the US Department of Justice, which claims Google has an unlawful monopoly in the search engine business, the corporation is now awaiting a verdict. The computer giant may face severe fines or perhaps be compelled to dissolve the business if it loses the lawsuit.
More than 90% of the global search market is controlled by Google, which maintains that its better product quality is the only reason for its success. There is "immense competition" for Google, according to a Google representative, and consumers have a wide range of options when it comes to online information searches.
Navarro of HouseFresh responds, "I understand that Google doesn't owe us or anyone else traffic." "However, Google owns the highways. A town dies if tomorrow they determine the roads won't go to the whole town. "It's not appropriate to simply brush it off and say, 'Oh well, it's the free market,'" the woman claims.
"I might try working offline, packing everything up and running a store somewhere," Navarro adds. "Perhaps we were too optimistic to believe that creating fantastic original content would be enough to make us successful."
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