A group of German researchers has released findings that confirm the decreasing quality of search engine results, particularly on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. The study, which involved an analysis of 7,392 product review queries, has identified a trend where pages with aggressive optimization for search engine results pages (SERPs), including the prolific use of affiliate marketing, often show a dip in text quality.
Affiliate Marketing's Impact
The research team, composed of academia from Leipzig and Bauhaus universities and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, has reported a direct correlation between the use of affiliate marketing techniques and the complexity of content. Pages saturated with affiliate links and engineered to suit SEO parameters tend to be of lower quality. Despite efforts by search engines to mitigate this through various algorithm updates, the results remain suboptimal, as the study concludes that these search engines are still vulnerable to manipulation by large-scale spam campaigns.
Generative AI: A New Challenge
The advent of generative AI has added a new layer of complexity to the issue. The study found that generative AI can rapidly produce low-quality content, exacerbating the problem. An overall downward trend in text quality across the board for all three search engines was observed, with the distinction between genuine content and spam becoming more ambiguous. The researchers caution that this trend is likely to continue, necessitating further studies to develop new strategies to combat the issue.
Janek Bevendorff, a research assistant at Leipzig University and co-author of the study, spoke on the findings, noting the difficulty in discerning a clear solution. While Google has already begun flagging “thin affiliates” with repetitive, low-quality content as spam, complete prohibition of affiliate marketing is not deemed feasible. This is because legitimate sites also use affiliate marketing and SEO optimization for revenue generation. Bevendorff suggests that a balance needs to be struck in promoting pages, especially those from sites that churn out content at a high volume.
As of now, Google has not provided a response to the findings. The study leaves the tech community with a pressing issue to ponder – what steps can be taken to salvage the utility of online search engines, as their current trajectories point towards a potential decline in the quality of delivered content. The researchers acknowledge that their static method of evaluation is insufficient for developing a real-time counter-strategy, and future research will gear towards that objective. The quest to improve the search engine ecosystem continues to be an intricate cat-and-mouse game with evolving challenges.
Tip: Here's where SEO companies come in. A SEO company can help navigate the complexities of search algorithms and ensure high-quality content reaches its intended audience.
Last Updated on March 18, 2024 5:13 pm CET by Markus Kasanmascheff
