Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search [pdf]

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

A new study on search engine results, framed around whether Google is “getting worse,” finds that product-related queries across major engines are increasingly dominated by SEO’d affiliate pages and spam, often at the expense of more complex or genuinely expert content. Commenters largely agree that search quality — especially for shopping, tutorials, and “what to buy” queries — has degraded over the past decade, and they link this to Google’s ad-driven incentives, the rise of content farms, and the decline of the open web. Many report compensating by using tools like Kagi, DuckDuckGo, Reddit qualifiers, or LLMs, while some question the study’s reliance on Startpage as a proxy for Google and call for better benchmarks and anti-spam strategies.

Perceived decline in Google Search

  • Many participants report search feeling markedly worse in the last 5–10 years: more spam, shallow content, and commercial bias.
  • Common complaints:
    • Results dominated by SEO’d listicles, affiliate-review farms, and big sites (Amazon, YouTube, Medium, large media brands).
    • Paywalled or ad-heavy pages crowding out smaller blogs, forums, and niche sites.
    • Aggressive ad placement and shopping/”where to buy” bias, even for informational queries.
    • Removal/weakening of power-user tools (e.g., + operator, simple site exclusion) and increasingly “helpful” but opaque personalization.
  • Google Images and YouTube are also seen as degraded: AI-generated “slop,” recency bias, and clickbait recommendations.

Alternatives and User Workarounds

  • Several users have moved to paid search (especially Kagi), praising:
    • Higher-quality results, domain up/down-ranking, forum toggles, ad/affiliate de-emphasis.
    • But drawbacks: US-centric pricing, small index, still imperfect shopping/affiliate handling.
  • Others rely on DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yandex, or Perplexity, often using multiple engines depending on query type (local, technical, small blogs).
  • Widespread use of browser tools: uBlacklist, custom scripts, VPNs, containers, ad/tracker blocking.
  • Many now bookmark or locally archive good content, run personal wikis/RSS, or push URLs to archive.org.

SEO, Affiliate Links, and Spam

  • Strong consensus that affiliate marketing and SEO have filled results with “top 10” listicles and low-effort AI content.
  • Some argue affiliate links can coexist with high-quality reviews; others see them as fundamentally misaligned with user interest.
  • One commenter describes building a search engine that explicitly demotes sites with many ads, popups, affiliate links, trackers, and paywalls.

Study Findings & Methodology Debate

  • Several readers focus on the paper’s core claim: search engines are heavily polluted by affiliate spam, but overall longitudinal “worsening” of Google is modest/unclear.
  • Key result highlighted: inverse relationship between SEO “optimization” and perceived expertise.
  • Substantial criticism of using Startpage as a proxy for Google; skeptics call the title misleading and question the validity of the proxy.
  • A commenter identifying as the lead author explains Startpage was chosen for scrapeability and found empirically similar enough to Google for their purposes, but acknowledges limitations.

Changing Search Habits and the “Post‑Search” Web

  • Some users now route many questions to LLMs (ChatGPT, Bard, Phind, Perplexity) instead of search, especially for summaries, recipes, configuration how‑tos, and planning.
  • Others note that in places like China, people increasingly search within apps/platforms (social, Q&A, video) instead of the open web, suggesting a broader shift away from general web search.