Have you noticed that Google searches have gotten worse lately? Every time you do a search do you have the impression that the results aren't quite what you were looking for? It's not just your impression!
A study carried out by German researchers from Der boffinß has shown that Google searches are progressively worsening, due to SEO practices bordering on illegal, such as the so-called SEO farms ei affiliate links. Let's find out more.
SEO farms
The SEO farms are a group of websites created with the sole goal of tricking search engines into believing that a website is authoritative and popular. In this way the site in question will see its visibility and position in the SERP grow.
The trick is pretty simple. All the sites in an SEO farm generally contain poor quality content, if not downright spam, and are connected to each other through a network of links. After that, simply connect the SEO farm (obviously via link) to any site, to simulate a complex network backlinks.
As we know, search engines consider backlinks as reliable indicators of a site's authority and relevance. With this strategy it is therefore possible to quickly climb the SERP, regardless of the quality of the site and its contents, and forcefully enter Google searches.
Affiliate links
THE affiliate links they are a tool of digital marketing used by companies, but also by individuals, to promote products or services. When a user clicks on an affiliate link and proceeds to purchase a product or sign up for a service, the affiliate who provided the link earns a commission.
These links are commonly employed on websites, blogs, and social media channels. They are a popular way to generate passive income, as they allow affiliates to earn money indirectly through the traffic and sales they drive to the seller's site.
Through backlink building, affiliate links can then be leveraged to forcibly improve a website's ranking on search engines.
Research
The researchers reached this conclusion after analyzing 7,392 searches for product reviews over a full year on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo, a search engine used predominantly in the United States that uses crowdsourcing to improve the relevance of search results.
The results showed that, indeed, those who complain about the decline in quality of Google search results are right. As stated in the report by Der boffinß:
“We can conclude that the highest rated pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing and show signs of lower text quality.”
Furthermore, although only a small portion of the reviews analyzed use so-called affiliate marketing, the majority of search engines favor and prioritize this tactic. In other words, reviews that take advantage of the affiliation, although few, are shown much more often than others in Google searches.
All this only increases the problem of SERP quality, a problem that will worsen further with the progressive development of IA.
How will Google searches change with the advent of AI?
For those who often browse the web, these results are not surprising. In recent months there has in fact been much talk about how Google has fallen prey to mass spam campaigns.
In 2022, Google tried to put a stop to this unfair practice, declaring that it had updated the algorithm to prioritize “people-oriented content”. An action which, as German researchers have shown, was useless. It took little time for SEO farms to figure out how to get around the problem and continue with the creation of fake backlinks.
With the explosion of the AI phenomenon we are witnessing, the problem is set to get worse. Thanks to artificial intelligence it is now possible to quickly churn out low quality texts useful for these practices. The Internet is destined to be further flooded with garbage.
The researchers found that spam domains are still rampant in the SERPs and that there is “an overall downward trend in text quality across all three search engines,” while at the same time “the dividing line between benign content and spam is becoming increasingly labile – a situation that is sure to worsen in the wake of generative AI.” However, while drawing attention to the problem is of fundamental importance, it is not yet clear how to combat it.
“Affiliate marketing itself is partly responsible for the current look of content online,” said Janek Bevendorff, head of research, but also noted that “banning it entirely is probably not a solution,” as many authentic sites use this tactic and SEO optimization as an important revenue stream.
We don't know how the situation will evolve but, following Bevendorff's comment: "in the end, it could remain a game of cat and mouse." We hope not.
