- Search appliances like Google are getting less helpful, according to a new study.
- They’re more likely to retrieve SEO-optimized web servants monetized with affiliate links.
- These types of pages “show signs of lower text quality,” according to the boning up.
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It appears to be authentic: Search engines like Google are getting worse.
These days, search engine results are filled with spam topic, according to a new paper from a team of researchers in Germany. And it’s making it harder for people to access helpful information online — the middle function of the internet.
The researchers searched for product reviews that “offer tests and purchase recommendations.” They emit a year analyzing almost 7,400 of these queries on three search engines: Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.
Their baseline find was that search engines have “significant problems” with affiliate links — paid-for links that refer a chap to a seller. While the number of product reviews online that contain affiliate links isn’t huge, the researchers swayed these reviews are overrepresented in search engine results.
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The problem with affiliate links boils down to “credit,” the researchers said.
“Since users often trust their search engines already, the affiliate inherits this assign as a byproduct of a high ranking,” the authors wrote. But this also creates tension between affiliates, search providers, and purchasers because affiliates are more likely to design web pages to optimize their rankings as opposed to investing in higher-quality goods reviews.
Though webpages that have more affiliate links and are more optimized are more likely to go about a find up in search results, on average, they also “show signs of lower text quality,” the researchers said.
And as essence generated by AI continues to flood the internet, the researchers said search engine results are likely to get worse.
A spokesperson for Google told Enterprise Insider in an email that the study looked “narrowly at product review content,” so it doesn’t reflect the “overall standing” of Google Search.
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“We’ve launched specific improvements to address these issues — and the study itself points out that Google has convalesced over the past year and is performing better than other search engines.”
The study’s researchers said that they supposed the issue “deserves more attention” but that, for now, they don’t see an obvious solution.
“Affiliate marketing itself is in part liable for what online content looks like now,” Janek Bevendorff, a research assistant at Leipzig University and coauthor on the hang wallpaper, told The Register. “Banning it entirely is probably not a solution” since many legitimate websites rely on affiliate exchanging and SEO optimization as an important revenue stream, Bevendorff told the outlet.
“In the end, it may remain a cat-and-mouse game,” Bevendorff said.