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You're Not Imagining It: Google Search Results Are Getting Worse, Study Finds

Google swears everything is fine. A new study—and many people's lived experience—says different.

According to the study, those efforts aren’t working, but “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam.” These changes often lead to a “temporary positive effect,” but the spammers just find new loopholes. Just last week, Gizmodo covered a bizarre situation that saw Google turning up what looked like a child’s homework assignment for a search about former president John F. Kennedy’s stance on the death penalty. In 2023, a Gizmodo investigation found the tech news outlet CNET deleted thousands of articles because its team felt that would aid in the site’s performance on Google Search.

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