Google is Concerned About Declining Internet Content Quality, Says Former Top Exec

Google’s approach to its flagship search engine product has changed quite a bit since its initial inception. While the search engine was initially meant to connect users with websites based on the keywords in their search queries, the modern SERP that Google provides is fairly different with all things having been considered and taken into account. It tends to provide answers to questions in in the SERP itself so that users don’t have to click on any links.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Google might be doing this in order to compensate for a perceived decline in content quality on the internet. Former leader of Google’s search team Marissa Mayer recently spoke out about this, claiming that her long time former employer has been worried about poor website quality for quite some time now.

There are now over a trillion web pages that are indexed by Google, and this makes the overall quality of content lower than might have been the case otherwise. Many SEO experts have tried to game the system because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving their web pages a boost in the SERP rankings, and that lead to web pages that are optimized for the algorithm but don’t provide adequate answers to any questions that users might have.

Google has attempted to fix this issue by tweaking its algorithm to prioritize keyword stuffing less and to put more stock into high quality web pages. In spite of the fact that this is the case, most of the search results that people get are often irrelevant, and they can confuse them more instead of providing answers.

Antitrust groups have criticized Google in the past for being too controlling of their users. Preventing them from navigating away from the SERP can give Google too much of an influence over them, and it can also provide the company with an unfair advantage that can make it difficult for other websites to remain competitive and receive traffic.

Read next: Google Launches An Array Of Exciting New Features To Its Maps, Search, And Shopping
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World