Welcome to today’s episode. Google’s March 2024 core update—its largest ever—promised to cut spam and AI-generated content by 40 percent. Instead, small publishers watched clicks evaporate overnight. As SEO expert Michael King warns, “Google measures user satisfaction through quantifiable metrics, while external observers rely on subjective experiences.”

Since then, Google’s AI Overviews have sat at the top of every results page, ingesting the top 100 links with Gemini and often hallucinating answers. BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu admits, “AI is driving more engagement than ever before on Google,” but many sites saw their traffic plunge by about 30 percent.

Now Google is testing AI Mode, a chat-based interface that strips away blue links and hides source attribution. Early tests show its “sites” rarely match the regular top results. Google’s goal is clear: zero-click searches that keep you on its own properties. As Ars Technica puts it, this “AI slop will continue until morale improves.”
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