Last week, the Chrome browser erased all my bookmarks. After poking around on Google Search for what seemed like forever—out of habit, but also because they’re the makers of Chrome—I couldn’t find any help.
Round two: Drained of patience, I did something that I’ve found myself doing more and more over the past year: I added “Reddit” at the end of my search query to get around all the SEO-optimized junk. Immediately, I found help. I clicked through a few of the threads and found quick answers without anyone offering me cookies or serving me ads featuring all the shoes I looked at earlier that morning.
Soon, my fears were confirmed: the bookmarks were gone and I had to make peace with that. None of Google’s top-ranking results—desperately vying to be “helpful” and offer lists of numbered steps—were going to break that news to me. But Reddit users kindly did. And they offered sage advice: always backup your bookmarks and never trust any browser to keep them safe.
Lesson learned. But one question remained: how did Google Search become so crappy?
How SEO spam made Google Search useless—and hurt its brand’s reputation
While SEO has been undeniably instrumental in building the web as we know it today—not to mention helping millions of people and businesses grow without the need for multi-million marketing budgets—we can all agree it’s gone way off the rails in the past couple of years.
Over the past decade, SEO steadily transformed Search—and the internet as we knew it back in the days of Web 1.0: useful, helpful, and nearly ad-free—into a gamified system where websites that played by the rules of word count, keyword optimization, and sub-header tagging, among other “best practices,” were picked as winners. Those who couldn’t win the SERP lottery could still pay their way into the top search results by buying ad placements.
Brands played a huge part in this transformation, handing out millions of dollars to SEO companies and experts to help them game the algorithm.This gave way to results pages filled with SEO bait that ranked highly, not because it was useful or relevant, but because it had been engineered to do so. And it created an information gap that people plugged with platforms like Reddit and, more recently, even TikTok.
Add excessive ads to the mix, and you get a Search experience that’s eroded to the point where people feel like they can’t find anything useful on Google anymore.
In his “What happened to Google Search?” video, tech vlogger Enrico Tartarotti summarizes how Reddit unwittingly became one of Google’s biggest competitors:
“As the traditional independent web dried up under the SEO and content machine, users found a home on Reddit. And, in the process, they unknowingly built the world’s largest repository of user-generated, high-quality and valuable information on any imaginable topic.”
Because Reddit made its content accessible to search engine crawlers, he adds, people learned they can easily access it through those portals. In fact, adding “Reddit” to Google search queries has become so common that Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, had to acknowledge that their users are appending names of forum sites like Reddit to their queries because Search is failing to provide the high-quality and relevant results they seek.
Turns out that what I thought was a very clever trick is what everyone’s been doing all along.
AI prompt example:
Audiences are hungry for straightforward, human-generated content
In response to declining user confidence in their product and the specter of lost market share, Google has introduced two major changes. The first and most recent one is the Perspectives feature, which incorporates user-generated content from platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok into Search results.
The second and more sweeping change was implemented in late 2022 and it affects Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Wherein content was previously ranked based on the “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust” (E-A-T) framework, Google has now added a fourth element: experience (E-E-A-T)—which is what we’re all looking for when we append Reddit to our searches.
So, what does this mean for the future of content?
It means that people are tired of low-grade, formulaic crap. The internet has been around for long enough that you can’t fool audiences with recycled fluff anymore. Any brand that puts the algorithm before its audience will be undermining its reputation—and now, ironically, its rankings.
To quote a Reddit user: “…I expect the answer to be put in the shortest and most straightforward form possible and by genuine creators not some engineered content trying to sell me something.” Here’s what that means:
- Authentic: Are you creating content optimized for value or are you creating content engineered to manipulate the algorithm? In the age of SEO-optimized and AI-generated crap, the voice behind the content matters as much as the content itself. People want to hear from other people, not a drone in a content mill and certainly not a bot. Don’t set your audience’s B.S. meters off with content made just for content’s sake.
- Straightforward: Does the breadth and depth of your content match readers’ needs and expectations? Not everything needs to be a deep dive with 10 subheadings and ultra-detailed explanations trying to match every possible answer a user might input on a search box. If you can provide an answer in 300 words, don’t stretch it for an extra 800 and turn it into the text equivalent of “Where’s Waldo?”.
- Human-first: Whether they’re seeking to become better leaders or optimize their supply chains, people want first-hand accounts from others who are knowledgeable in those topics—whether through life experience or professional expertise. If a chatbot can provide a better answer than you can, it’s time to rethink how you’re engaging with your audience and recalibrate your focus to where AI doesn’t stand a chance: nuanced, thought-provoking human perspectives that fuel connection and conversation.
Build an algorithm-proof content strategy with human-first content
No matter how many changes Google makes to its content guidelines or how much AI tools evolve, one thing is clear: nothing performs better than human-first content—and people will do whatever it takes to find it. As the screenshots and stories I’ve shared and the number of people currently appending “Reddit” to their searches show, there’s a huge gap in the market for high-quality, expert, and uncompromised information. And those brands that address that need with human voices will come out on top.
For more than thirteen years the MarketSmiths team has been helping companies across sectors stand out from the noise with high-value content that boosts sales and fosters engagement while strengthening their reputation. Contact us to learn how we can help your business keep up with a fast-changing and increasingly-demanding content landscape.
