If you’ve recently found yourself scrolling endlessly through search results wondering where all the quality content went, you’re not alone. The web feels more cluttered, less useful, and frustratingly packed with AI-generated fluff. What happened to the art of search engine optimization (SEO)?
In a word: AI. And it’s turned the whole game on its head.
AI: The Content Floodgate
The rise of AI content generation has opened the floodgates on the internet, pumping out articles, blogs, and pages faster than any human writer ever could. The sheer volume of AI-generated content has overwhelmed search algorithms, and it’s hit Google’s ranking system especially hard. What used to be carefully indexed, thoughtfully ranked content now feels like a never-ending stream of articles saying the same thing, over and over.
As AI generates an endless river of “informative” articles, Google’s algorithms are struggling to keep up. The once-stable methods for indexing quality content and filtering spam just can’t handle the scale of content that AI has unleashed. This has made SEO—a strategy that once provided a roadmap to good rankings—feel almost irrelevant.
The Ad Incentive: Why Would Google Change?
Here’s where it gets tricky. Google, the most popular search engine, makes a huge chunk of its revenue from ads. When search results become a mess, companies seeking visibility are forced to buy their way to the top. And as the quality of search declines, Google’s ads become more valuable. If companies want to bypass the AI-generated soup of content flooding the results page, they have to pay for the shortcut.
This means Google has less incentive to fix the mess. If it can let AI-driven content dilute organic search while pointing frustrated businesses toward paid placements, Google wins. They can blame poor results on “outside forces” (like AI) and rake in more cash from ads sold as the “solution.” Why invest in algorithm improvements if people are willing to pay to jump the line?
The “Enshittification” of Search
Let’s call it what it is: enshittification. The internet’s quality has degraded as sites chase ad revenue over user experience, and search engines are feeling it too. We’ve all seen it: once-useful sites loaded with pop-ups, hidden ads, and impossible-to-navigate pages. Now, even search results are feeling the squeeze.
Google and others are so popular that we keep using them even as the experience worsens. So, with AI muddying the waters, and search engines reaping ad revenue as frustrated users buy the “solution,” there’s no incentive to fix it.
The Long Road to Change
In theory, Google could refine its algorithms, sifting through AI content with machine learning techniques to prioritize quality over quantity. But that would take serious investment and innovation, and it could lead to a potential drop in ad revenue. So, for now, we’re likely looking at a slow crawl rather than a sprint toward improvement.
It’s a bleak picture, but it’s one we should talk about. Search is, after all, a cornerstone of the internet. Without meaningful, quality search results, the internet risks becoming an echo chamber of recycled content. We’re left hoping for an SEO revival—but in the meantime, we might have to get comfortable wading through the flood.
Even with the current SEO landscape, we still prioritize SEO best practices for every website we build—it’s a slower process, but worth it for organic reach. That said, we reluctantly recommend Google Ads for clients needing an immediate boost. Until search results improve, combining SEO with strategic ad placement is the most reliable way to secure visibility.