Earlier this month, Google, the web’s monopoly owner, hack organizer, feudal ruler, announced a major change to its spam policy.
Since algorithmic search updates are often very boring, they don’t always make huge media waves. But these updates, which largely read as a response to the rise of mass-produced AI-driven silliness proliferating on the Internet, have been a big problem. And the dirtiest side of the SEO industry is being pressured.
“The manual action I got: They hit me with ‘pure spam’ and also used words like ‘auto-generated gibberish,’ which is pretty intense,” said Jacky Chou, a search engine optimization ( SEO) followed closely. boy, theminds in a YouTube video about updates titled “I GOT CLAPPED (Google March Spam Update).
“Um,” he continues, “I’ll wear this with pride, I think.”
In a follow-up video, he mocks people who follow Google’s guidelines.
“Okay guys, in light of recent events, I’ve decided to do everything the right way. I’m not going to spam the internet with AI content anymore because it’s not profitable and you’ll be applauded eventually – just kidding,” he declared Chou in a carry on in his “I GOT CLAPPED” video, this one titled “My Road to Recovery.”
“This is ridiculous,” he added.
Few people searching on Google make it past the first page of the platform’s results, let alone the first few links, so SEO specialists like Chou try every trick imaginable to get their sites there. Some work within the confines of “white hat” SEO or optimizing practices that don’t introduce useless spam into the Googleverse; others do the opposite, using shady tactics to boost their rankings.
Unsurprisingly, starting in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, many people in the latter group have eagerly begun using generative AI tools to publish large amounts of automated material. And while Google users have complained about deteriorating search quality for years, this proliferation of cheap AI content (think spammy celebrity lists, oddly written blog posts, and ” reviews” of products stacked with Amazon links) has pushed the quality of search results to new lows.
Chou has been posting a YouTube video almost every day for months now, sharing his SEO tips and tactics for earning clicks by playing with Google’s algorithm. Many of the practices he recommends, such as creating synthetic sites or mass-producing AI-generated commercial posts, certainly violate Google’s guidelines.
That said, we haven’t found Chou through his YouTube channel or any other social media. We found him after stumbling upon some of the automated spam bearing his name.
Take a website for a product called Pixelfy, which hosts an incredible amount of mass-produced product “guides” optimized for SEO success. Most, if not all, are published under an author named “Jack,” whose header is the same as the one on Chou’s personal website. None of this content has AI disclosures; each also includes a prominent disclaimer declaring that “this article was written and reviewed by a Pixelfy editor” and will often include text promising hapless readers that a team of writers spent “hours” testing different products.
In reality, however, the content is inconsistent and almost certainly produced at scale with AI. A post titled “Top 5 best flutes 2024,” for example, says it’s written by “passionate musicians and music educators.” But when you scroll through the post, most of the “tested” products listed are cheap champagne flutes from Amazon. Elsewhere , many headlines post, including extraordinary headlines such as “The 5 best birthday parties Pia%c2%b1ata 2024“— that was supposed to say “Piñata” — and “The 0 best AI tools for copywriting 2024” seems to be just the kind of “auto-generated junk” Chou was bragging about in his video. (We reached out to Pixelfy to ask about the posts, but have yet to hear back.)
Pixelfy’s posts are also strikingly similar to the AI-generated “blog” content Chou has produced on an e-commerce site he owns and operates called Far & Away. As with Pixelfy, many of Far & Away’s product review guides similarly claim that the website’s human staff team spent “hours” or “countless hours“researching and testing various consumer goods, sometimes even claiming that the products were tested at a designated time”test facility.” The vast majority of these link-centric affiliate blogs are identical in structure and tone to Pixelfy’s posts, and in a YouTube video posted in November 2023, Chou shows your followers exactly how an SEO content writing AI tool uses to create them. (According to Chou’s post-update YouTube videos, Far & Away’s blog has been “de-indexed and applauded” by Google. He says his other AI sites are still up and running.)
As brutal as it may be, however, black hat SEO influencers, especially those with large social media followings, are not throwing in the towel. Google and those trying to master its algorithm and circumvent its attempts at policing along the way have been locked in a cursed dance for years, and since this latest update was released, social media has been awash with statements of challenge against the search giant.
“Turns out you can still 100 [percent] Use AI content in your SEO… The fear of Google and influencers stuck too hard, AGAIN, people drank the kool aid and had nightmares of traffic tragedy!” reads a particularly holy post from X-formerly on Twitter of March 11. “The reality was, once again, ego is the enemy and emotional reactions will be the destruction of us all!”
We should add that while Google’s update has hit many places, it wasn’t a silver bullet that rid the web of all spam.
“We constantly develop new techniques and implement updates to our classification systems to protect against spam,” a Google spokesperson told us via email. “But spam also adapts and evolves, requiring constant attention from our teams, and we regularly update our policies to effectively address new trends.”
As for why the spam crackdown was necessary to begin with? The spokesperson told us that “when people come to Search, they’re looking for high-quality content that’s useful to people, providing unique information or value, not content that’s simply made to rank well in Search”.
“Our policies work to address abusive tactics that not only affect people seeking information,” they added, “but also harm site owners and content creators who create great, high-quality content on the open web.” .
When it comes to AI spam, Google is in an odd position. As a major player in Silicon Valley’s AI arms race, the tech giant is increasing the availability of the same generative AI tools that people are using to abuse its search platform. It’s even integrating AI into search results, and is also said to be working on ways to automate news.
On the one hand, Google’s upgrade and any subsequent SEO slump is just another skirmish in the long-term search wars. And with Google carefully towing the AI line, it’s still unclear how these updates will change. But this is a war that generative AI has accelerated, and at times it feels as if the usability of the web is at stake.
With that, we’ll leave you with this slam poem that Chou, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, published in X on Friday:
“Time like this
After having my cheeks clapped by Google
I’m glad I focused on profits first last year
Don’t worry Jimmy
I’m almost done
2024 is still the year of retirement”
Learn more about Google and AI: Google quietly pays journalists to generate articles with unpublished AI
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