The changes signal Google's ongoing efforts to prioritize high-quality, human-generated content over machine-generated content and clickbait. The company acknowledges the challenges posed by AI-generated content and the constant attempts to manipulate search rankings. Despite these challenges, Google is committed to improving its search results, with measures showing a reduction in unhelpful content by up to 40%. Sites engaging in reputation abuse are given 60 days to rectify before ranking changes are implemented, while other changes are effective immediately.
Key takeaways:
- Google is making changes to its ranking systems to downrank content that exists only to summarize other content, and to combat tricks used to manipulate its ranking systems.
- Google is targeting three types of spammy behavior: content at scale, site reputation abuse, and expired domain abuse.
- Google is giving sites engaging in site reputation abuse 60 days to stop before it implements ranking changes, while the other changes are effective immediately.
- Google acknowledges it has a spam problem and is working to address it, but also recognizes the challenges posed by AI-generated content and the ongoing attempts to game its search results.