Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Mounting frustration with Google Search centers on its perceived decline in result quality, as SEO‑optimized spam, affiliate “best of” lists, and irrelevant matches increasingly crowd out trustworthy content. Commenters describe workarounds and alternatives — from DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Brave and meta‑search setups to Reddit queries and LLM‑based tools like Perplexity — while noting that even these face the same underlying incentive problems once they scale. Many attribute Google’s trajectory to an ad‑driven business model and shifting focus toward AI products like Bard, arguing that as long as revenue, not relevance, is the primary metric, search quality and small independent sites will continue to suffer.

Perceived Decline in Google Search Quality

  • Many participants say Google results are increasingly dominated by SEO spam, affiliate “top 10 X” pages, and multiple ad slots before organic results.
  • Complaints include fuzzy matching that ignores user keywords, difficulty forcing exact matches, and a noticeable rise in very old results unless time filters are used.
  • Some argue Google effectively outsourced ranking to SEO professionals and is now “not really fighting” spam.

Indexing and Long-Tail Content

  • Several small bloggers report Google barely crawls or indexes new posts unless they manually request indexing; sitemaps often don’t help.
  • Others see regular Googlebot visits and fast indexing, suggesting inconsistent behavior.
  • Some note that Bing sends traffic to new content where Google does not.
  • Hypotheses include backlink scarcity, algorithmic quality judgments, and de-prioritization of personal blogs, Substack, and Medium; exact reasons are unclear.

Alternatives and Workarounds

  • Kagi, DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Yandex, SearXNG, and Bing (often via DDG) are frequently mentioned.
  • Kagi is praised by many as “how Google used to be,” especially with no ads and user controls, but some find its results too similar to Google to justify paying.
  • DuckDuckGo is seen as “okay” by some and unusable by others. Brave Search is described as decent and good at surfacing Reddit.
  • Meta-search setups (e.g., SearXNG) are used to combine engines and strip ads and personalization.

Domain Blocking and Personalization

  • There is strong demand for user-level domain blocking (e.g., for Pinterest, SEO farms), which Kagi supports and Google does not.
  • Explanations offered: prior abuse when Google fed blocks back into ranking, potential ad-revenue loss, low perceived user demand, and a desire for uniform result sets for large-scale A/B testing.
  • Browser extensions like uBlacklist are used as a partial workaround.

Product Reviews, Affiliate Links, and Reddit

  • Finding trustworthy product reviews is described as “next to impossible” on Google due to affiliate-heavy SEO content.
  • Some users filter by adding “reddit” or go directly to niche reviewers and known sites.
  • Others warn that Reddit itself is heavily used for astroturfing and covert marketing, though many still find it a better signal-to-noise ratio than Google’s first-page results.

LLMs, Bard, and the Future of Search

  • Some now use LLM-based tools (Bard, Bing Chat, Perplexity, ChatGPT) as a replacement or complement to search, especially to avoid SEO spam.
  • Opinions on Bard vs ChatGPT differ: some find Bard’s answers or UX better than free ChatGPT; others rate GPT‑4 higher.
  • There is skepticism about mixing LLM outputs directly into search results, as it can add uncertainty and obscure source websites.

Business Incentives and Monoculture Concerns

  • Several argue that as long as search is ad-funded, engines are structurally misaligned with user interests; spam and longer search journeys increase ad impressions.
  • Others note Google’s revenues and stock price remain strong, so leadership has little incentive to prioritize quality over monetization.
  • The dominance of a single engine is compared to an agricultural monoculture: once it’s compromised by SEO “blight,” the whole ecosystem suffers, and any new dominant engine will face the same arms race.