Over the last two years, a series of updates to Google Search amount to a dramatic upheaval to the Internet’s most powerful tool, complete with an unprecedented AI feature. Will Google save the web, or destroy it?
If you’ve ever typed “air purifier reviews” into Google, you were probably looking for the kind of content you’ll find on HouseFresh.com. The site was started in 2020 by Gisele Navarro and her husband, based on a decade of experience writing about indoor air quality products. They filled their basement with purifiers, running rigorous science-based tests and writing articles to help consumers sort through marketing hype.
HouseFresh is an example of what has been a flourishing industry of independent publishers producing exactly the sort of original content Google says it wants to promote. And indeed, soon after the website’s launch, the tech giant started showing HouseFresh at the top of search results. The website grew into a thriving business with 15 full-time employees. Navarro had big plans for the future.
Then, in September 2023, Google made one in a series of major updates to the algorithm that runs its search engine.
“It decimated us,” Navarro says. “Suddenly the search terms that used to bring up HouseFresh were sending people to big lifestyle magazines that clearly don’t even test the products. The articles are full of information that I know is wrong.”
The second Google algorithm update came in March, and it was even more punishing. HouseFresh’s thousands of daily visitors dwindled to just hundreds. “We just got absolutely crushed,” Navarro says. Over the last few weeks, HouseFresh had to lay off most of its team. If nothing changes, she says, the website is doomed.
A spokesperson for Google tells the BBC that the company only launches changes to Search after rigorous testing confirms that the shift will be helpful for users, and that the company gives website owners help, resources and opportunities for feedback on their Search rankings.
Google stands firm in its position that the changes will be a benefit to the web, and changes to the Search algorithm are just the start.
Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stood in front of a crowd at the company’s annual developer conference and announced one of the most significant moves in the search engine’s history.
Going forward, Pichai said, Google Search would provide its own AI-generated answers to many of your questions, a feature called “AI Overviews” that’s already rolled out to users in the United States. “The result is a product that does the work for you,” Pichai said. “Google Search is generative AI at the scale of human curiosity.”
bbc
