Tech news rag The Verge has published a 700-word article filled with Google Gemini-generated content and a heavy dose of sarcasm that has been beating out the most in-depth, well-researched, and arguably most useful human-written content in the publications of the competitive consultation [best printer 2024].
Sound familiar? It should. We wrote about exactly this a little over a year ago in How The Verge Played Google with their “best printer 2023” article.
Why we care Google has been telling us a lot lately that we write for people, not Google. This article will likely infuriate many brands who invest time and resources in product research, hoping to rank at the top of Google search results. Others will point to this as proof that expertise, experience, authority and reliability don’t matter.
However, the article finally answers the question (“the best printer is still any random Brother laser printer on sale”), perhaps in the most ridiculous way possible.
the article The title of The Verge’s April 2 article gives you an idea of what to expect: Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, label printing, printer for school, printer for homework you are a printer we are all printers. Best SEO practices? Not here.
Google Gemini. Last year, The Verge used ChatGPT to generate half of its content. This year, that honor went to Google Gemini:
“This is what Google Gemini said when I asked about Brother laser printers, which is not worth reading but is by definition an incredible example of experience, expertise, authority and trust because Google is synthesizing the entire web for get that information right? Isn’t that the whole point of these LLMs, or are we just fooling ourselves?
How it ranks on Google. I am currently viewing the article in position 2 (Chrome, incognito) about a search for [best printer 2024]. I see it in position 1 (in SGE) when I’m logged in. Others have reported seeing it lower (position 4 or lower).
Time will tell if the content farm ecosystem will fake updates, as the Verge article says, to pull this article down.
Answer from Google. Google’s John Mueller was asked how articles like this rank so well on Google.
“People seem to really enjoy it,” Mueller published in X.
This is probably an accurate statement. We know from antitrust filings and Pandu Nayak’s testimony that user interactions (eg, clicks) play a big role in what gets classified and what doesn’t. And The Verge may be a tech rag, but it’s authoritative.
Little has changed in a year. The editor-in-chief of The Verge Nilay Patel told Search Engine Land a year ago:
“The web is about to be filled with AI-generated content that is explicitly designed to game the algorithms. Doing that is the least of Google’s problems. At least I’m honest,” Patel said.
It would have been more surprising for Patel if this article it wasn’t classification That was the point, and the problem, that Patel was making then, and it remains true in 2024.
“The architecture of the web is built to Google’s specifications,” Patel said. “Here you have the skeleton of every web page and you put a bunch of stuff on there to show that you’re smart.”
