Using generative artificial intelligence (AI), even more spam can be placed prominently in search results more easily and quickly than before. Meanwhile, Google tries to only display websites that actually have useful content. Accordingly, the search engine's most recent major core update is also called “Helpful Content Update”, which means it should give priority to helpful content. Now Google wants to better filter out AI spam. It is therefore “a more complex update” than the usual core updates.
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According to the developer blog post, the March update to Google Search should show less content that “gives the impression that it was designed to trigger clicks.” Instead, we want searchers to show more content that people find useful. According to Google, anyone who sees a drop in traffic to their website in the coming weeks should ask themselves whether they are doing everything right. “There is no specific news or advice that content creators should implement as long as they provide satisfactory content for people.” Google explains the procedure on a help page. Of course, the makers of AI spam can also read these and try to use them – which has obviously worked well so far.
And how Google specifically recognizes helpful content and distinguishes it from spam isn't really revealed: “There is no uniform system for recognizing helpful content. Instead, our central ranking systems use a variety of signals and systems.”
Google's new spam guidelines
The update also includes a new version of the spam guidelines. Google generally prohibits automatically generated content “that was created by a program without original content or sufficient added value being created.” AI-generated content is part of this – unless it is helpful or exclusive in some way. The directive also covers simple translations that have not been checked and texts that have simply been rewritten or merged from different websites but do not provide any added value for the user.
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Google uses the term “scaled content abuse” to group together sites that only want to appear high in the search results. “This new policy builds on our previous spam policy for automatically generated content and ensures that we can take action when necessary to address the misuse of content, whether the content is created through automation, human efforts, or a combination of human and automated processes were created.” AI spam is affected by this, but the directive is primarily aimed at the quality of the content rather than the method of production.
“Reputation abuse” is also a new case noted in the guidelines. This involves publishing third-party content via other people's actually trustworthy sites. Google sends warnings if such cases are noticed. But not everything from third-party providers is necessarily bad; Google cites “native advertising” as an example, i.e. ads that are recognizable as such and do not confuse readers – even though the quality of the content is different than that of the main page.
(emw)