The internet is a world of haves and have-nots. A tired, poor, huddled mass of content creators bang out media hoping ads will magically appear and completely obfuscate their prose. Because every plain-Jane ad gets them a penny and every annoying video and popup pays them marginally more. They are in a constant struggle for survival with the machines yearning to make digital media free.
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Sandwiched between them, Google. The self-appointed Earl of Arbitration.
You see there are bad people out there. People who don’t care about informing us. They only want ad money. They’ll use deceptive URLs like NYT1imes.com, c1t1bank.com, or ad1das.com They fill these made-for-advertising (MFA) sites with content copied from other places. Google’s ad machine will flood the place with ads.
Problematically for us, they will do things to make their stuff interesting to Google. Poor Google (the only time you’ve ever read that phrase) will put that yuck at or near the top of search results. We’ll see it, click on it, and go to these made-for-advertising sites.
We’ll complain that Google’s search isn’t so good. Left unchecked, this could ruin the internet for all of us.
The people who want lots of ads figure out how Google chooses “good” media. In fact, there’s an entire industry built up around this. Google doesn’t like to be gamed. So, every so often, Google changes their choosing criteria. They call this a “Core update.”
In the arms race of irrelevancy, the MFA folks have a new weapon. AI. It can copy stories and reword them in seconds. The sites look human faster than Google’s bots can figure out that they’re not. A core update has never had to deal with that.
Google did a core update at the beginning of March. They said it wants us to see more useful information and fewer results that feel made for search engines. Praise the Lord. They even have new ways to tackle spammy, low-quality content on search.
Curiously, in its note, Google doesn’t say “artificial,” or “intelligence,” or use the term “AI.” I’ll assume when they say, “Reduce unoriginal content,” and use the word, “unoriginal,” seven more times they mean derived by a machine from original human content. Because if they’re just talking about anything unoriginal, the only thing left on the Internet would be press releases and unCharles.
Google doesn’t tell people when they’ll do a core update. They don’t people what will change. Surprise is a key part of their strategy. Only stupidly benevolent people tell bad guys their strategy. Google is neither stupid nor benevolent.
The masses are caught in the crossfire. They write recipes or help people make good design choices or offer travelogues. They use good site templates. They get pages to load fast. They tag content just so. If everything goes right, Google will pay them a few cents to uglify their site and take a 30% commission. This is why the tired masses are poor.
This time, to combat AI, Google trained its detection systems on real content. The same real content AI uses to train itself. Google can’t tell AI content from the real thing. This core update is like chemotherapy for cancer in the 1970s. It didn’t just kill the bad cells; it killed all cells and hoped you could recover. This core update is obliterating real folks with real sites. And, they’re not recovering.
Leslie Harvey, a family travel and Disney blogger, showed traffic to sites she uses are down 20%, 30%, 60%, and 70+%. Perversely, she said sites she values have been pushed down from page two to pages three or four. One blogger said, “This is the nail in the coffin I needed to see to *officially* shut down my sad little site.” Leslie thinks a LOT (emphasis hers) of, “Hobbies, careers, and small businesses have been wiped out.”
There is a silver lining to all this. But you have really want to see it.
A few weeks later, after they wiped out the travel helper world, Google put out this note, “6 ways to travel smarter this summer using Google tools.” Yep. Google rolled out their own automated travel advisory service powered by their AI. You search, “Things to do in Philly,” and Google will create a plan for you. See the Liberty Bell at 10am spend three hours there. Take the bus to Independence Hall around 2:14pm. Grab lunch at 4:23pm. See? Everyone wins.
Hey man, oh leave me alone you know…
