A member of Reddit asked if Google searches had gotten worse, and thousands of others responded overwhelmingly that Google searches didn’t show what they were looking for. The SEO community on Twitter embraced the discussion and largely agreed.
Google search quality has dropped, according to users?
While some members of Reddit (known as Redditors) say Google Search was worse in the past and claim that Google is better now, those who defend Google Search are a minority.
It seems that most commenters on the Reddit thread claim that Google searches are worse, for a number of reasons.
Articles with poor user experience
A common theme on Reddit is that Google is showing content that has poor user experience.
one sentence page
An example of a poor UX for Google rankings is a listing page, which forces users to click through to read an article again and again.
a Redditor Comment:
“I’m not an SEO expert or anything, but the amount of fucking blog posts I get when looking for content is ridiculous. I think the absolute worst offenders are the ones doing what you’re legitimately interested in” Top 10 X Things “website, but instead of just listing them sequentially on the page, they use… slideshows…”
Every site in the SERP wants to sell you something
Another common complaint is that there is a sales skew in website rankings for informational queries. This leads to a situation where searching for information leads to a website that is advertising or selling a product.
a Redditor complain:
“Most of the results are just roadmaps, instructing you to buy something, not giving you information.
I searched for something the other day…something rather mundane, hoping to find intel about it.
All Google gave me was a bunch of Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and other big retail links. …I just want to know about it, I don’t want to buy it…I would use the shopping tag if I wanted to. “
Another Redditor agreed, writing:
“Agreed. If everything is shopping, what’s the point of having a shopping tab?”
Another member then commented that searching for information on dental fillings leads to low-quality listings of the best fillings to buy and other content that focuses on selling dental fillings rather than providing information about them.
Force scrolling to find pages of content
Another form of poor user experience that was complained about was websites with informational queries that forced users to scroll past paragraphs of content to get the answers they were looking for.
a Redditor explain:
“The worst thing is, for example, when I was looking for a release date, it was a 5 paragraph article.
“Do you want to know the date? We’ll tell you the release date.
Just keep scrolling through these ads to find out the launch date. “
…unrelated backstory
“The release date is coming. Everyone is excited about the release date”
more ads
“A lot of people are now wondering what the release date is. We don’t have a release date at the moment.”“
What the search community says about Google Search
When it comes to the SEO community, many agree that Google searches are worse.
Representative tweet:
Certainly worse. This result seems to be changing on mobile now, but I’m using it as a wtf example that a search doesn’t usually give the best top results 🤦🏻♀️ pic.twitter.com/GGCYM3FsSZ
— Rachel Pilcher | SaaS Copywriter (@MightyFineCopy_) April 20, 2022
Another believes that AI content creation ranks high in Google.
He tweeted:
I think AI-generated (or assisted) articles are doing more harm to the information ecosystem than we can imagine.
Google, in turn, may tweak the algorithm in unfortunate ways to try and cut down on junk… but I don’t think it’s working.
— Mike Haggard (@millehu) April 21, 2022
Big Brands and Clickbait Dominate Google?
Others argue that big brands and clickbait are dominating Google search results.
They tweeted:
My side is significantly worse. Almost exclusively Forbes, Hearst, Red, dominating SERPS with their authoritative portfolio.
Many times it doesn’t even match the search intent correctly, and certainly not an industry expert.
— Austin Tuwiner (@AustinTuwiner) April 20, 2022
EAT is a joke when clickbait sites outperform some of the most credible ones.
– Krishna B. Karki (@midnightstrngr) April 21, 2022
Why is Google Search Worse?
The Reddit and Twitter communities are divided over why Google Search is so bad.
Some have accused publishers of playing with Google in order to rank content that doesn’t answer informational queries or provides a poor user experience.
Others blamed Google’s search algorithm, which is what decides to rank low-quality content.
A good example of content and ranking issues can be seen in recipe search queries.
The recipe blogging community believes that Google only ranks long-form content. In response, recipe bloggers posted recipes that contained lengthy and sometimes irrelevant personal anecdotes, forcing site visitors to scroll paragraphs of irrelevant content to the bottom of the page to find the recipe they were looking for.
The discussion seems to eventually lead to this question:
Are the Google search results worse, or is the content being published now really bad?
Citation
Read the original Reddit discussion
Does anyone think Google search quality is degrading fast?
