The quality of Google search could decrease due to the dominance of SEO texts – Kommersant

In recent years, the quality of Google search may have deteriorated due to the fact that more and more articles on the Internet are optimized for search engines (Search Engine Optimization – SEO). About it testify data from a study by scientists from the University of Leipzig, who studied over 7.3 thousand search queries with product reviews on Google, DuckDuckGo and Bing.

Researchers have found that pages that appear at the top of search results are better optimized and contain more affiliate links, but their text is of lower quality. For websites, publishing product reviews and news roundups is one of the ways to monetize. Such articles often contain advertising links for purchasing goods from retailers (if the user makes a purchase, the site will receive a commission). In order to get to the first lines of search engine results, they try to optimize them as best as possible. As a result, it is those articles that succeed in SEO, and not in the quality of texts, that end up on the first lines of search results.

Search engines adjust their systems from time to time, but the effect is temporary, and spammers find new loopholes. According to the study, Google still had an advantage over Bing and DuckDuckGo. Google said the study data doesn’t tell the whole story of search performance.

Evgeniy Fedunenko