0:07

A few months ago, journalists chasing Kevlar had

0:09

some friends over to his house and in

0:12

the middle of conversation he went to look

0:14

something up on the internet. On

0:16

a search engine. I searched on

0:18

Cocky which is not Google and they

0:21

saw my screen in the like what

0:23

the hell is that Like: Why what

0:25

are you doing Because. They.

0:28

Were just they had never seen the

0:30

site before essentially. What? Is cocky,

0:33

Cocky is a

0:35

Google competitor. It's

0:37

an alternative search engine and it costs

0:40

ten dollars a month to use and

0:42

I've been using it for three months

0:44

and I have essentially forgotten that I

0:46

use it because it just worked so

0:48

well it I don't even think about

0:50

it. In.

0:54

My opinion: Jason is one of

0:56

the best tech journalists working today.

0:58

He's a cofounder of the Independent

1:00

Tech Journalism site for Oh For

1:02

Media, and his experience trying to

1:04

get for force articles picked up

1:06

on Google is part of his

1:08

frustration with the search engine. They.

1:10

Are not really on google news

1:12

which. I. Previous jobs.

1:15

Was. A huge driver of traffic

1:17

for us. And we

1:20

started noticing that our articles

1:22

are being scraped by ai.

1:24

And. They were being republished on

1:27

these really? Like. Very Spare

1:29

Me Web sites like a I

1:31

versions of our articles with just

1:33

like. Tiny. Changes. And.

1:36

We were noticing that many of these

1:38

web sites were getting indexed by Google

1:40

News and her ranking above us on

1:42

google. And. So we

1:44

just started writing about how this was happening

1:47

in and. Sort. Of going down

1:49

this rabbit hole and realizing that

1:51

Google is not surfacing results that

1:54

I wanted to see just as

1:56

a user. in the story

1:58

that you wrote about this there's this sentence

2:00

that stuck out to me. You

2:03

say, I'll probably never switch

2:05

back to Google unless Kagi

2:07

becomes significantly worse or Google

2:10

reverses years of annoying interface

2:12

and search decisions that have

2:15

prioritized ads, sponsored results, spammy

2:17

affiliate content and AI generated

2:19

results. Do

2:22

you think it's fair to say that you

2:24

think Google sucks now? I

2:26

personally think that Google sucks now. I don't

2:29

like using it. And I think a lot of

2:31

other people feel that way because we've been writing

2:34

a lot of articles about how Google results

2:36

are worse or feel

2:39

like they're getting worse. It feels to me

2:41

like a frog getting boiled situation where I

2:43

just used Google without thinking

2:46

about it for many, many, many years. And

2:48

then I looked up one day and I was like, I'm

2:51

not finding any websites that I want to see. If

2:57

you've had a creeping sense that Google search

2:59

is getting worse, you're not alone.

3:02

Today on the show, we're going to

3:04

explain why I'm Lizzie O'Leary. And you're

3:06

listening to what next TBD a

3:08

show about technology, power and how the future

3:11

will be determined. Stick around. I'm

3:23

going to be upfront for the last year or

3:25

so. I've had this kind of in co-it

3:28

sensation that Google search is getting

3:30

worse, that my searches

3:32

were returning more ads or shopping links,

3:35

but not the actual information that I

3:37

wanted. But of course,

3:39

search is so individual. I didn't

3:41

know if it was just me. Jason says

3:44

that's what makes this such a thorny

3:46

issue. Despite the fact that I think

3:48

that Google sucks now, I think

3:50

it's like a really hard thing

3:52

to talk about because everyone's

3:54

Google results are very different.

3:57

And that's by design because Google know

4:00

so much about you. It is

4:02

targeting you with ads in a specific way

4:04

and it's tracking around the internet and through

4:06

all the Google products in a specific way.

4:08

But I do feel like people have a

4:11

creeping sense that the

4:14

results that they're getting are worse.

4:17

And I think that this is not

4:19

entirely Google's fault. I think

4:21

that this is a problem that the entire

4:24

internet is dealing with and a problem that

4:26

every social platform is also dealing with, which

4:28

is the rise of

4:30

AI-generated content is legitimately a

4:33

hard thing to combat because

4:35

it has made it really

4:37

easy for people to

4:40

just create huge amounts of

4:43

content that is artificially

4:45

generated and published on a WordPress blog

4:47

or published on a website or published

4:49

on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. And

4:52

Google is going to

4:54

index that content in some way and

4:57

then it needs to figure out how to rank it

5:00

in some way. This phenomenon

5:02

isn't just vibes, it's backed by

5:04

research. Earlier this year

5:06

a group of German researchers released

5:08

a year-long study titled, Is Google

5:11

Getting Worse? Their

5:13

conclusion was mostly yeah. They

5:16

analyzed 7,392

5:18

different search terms across

5:21

Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo over the

5:23

course of a year. And

5:26

what they found is quote, higher

5:29

ranked pages are on average

5:31

more optimized, more monetized with

5:33

affiliate marketing, and they show

5:35

signs of lower text quality.

5:37

We find that only a small portion

5:39

of product reviews on the web uses

5:41

affiliate marketing but the majority of all

5:43

search results do. So this is

5:46

like just like spammy stuff that wants you

5:48

to buy things? It is but

5:50

a lot of it is coming from what

5:52

people would probably consider to be

5:54

high-quality websites. Consider this

5:57

example from the site housefresh.com

6:00

which is an independent product review

6:02

site. It does actual product testing,

6:04

which adds validity to its reviews. But

6:07

Google doesn't seem to care about

6:09

that. As HouseFresh outlined in a

6:11

recent article called, appropriately, how

6:13

Google is killing independent sites like

6:16

ours. If you do something

6:18

like search, like best error

6:20

purifier, you will see that all of

6:22

the top results are from sites like

6:25

Forbes or Real Simple or

6:27

People or Rolling Stone, like

6:29

Rolling Stone is recommending error purifiers,

6:32

which is nominally a music

6:35

site. And I think that they do

6:37

fantastic journalism, but because

6:40

making money in journalism is very difficult

6:42

and there's only a few

6:44

ways to do it, many sites have started

6:46

adding a lot of affiliate links and what

6:48

these are just links that go to like

6:51

Amazon or places that you can buy

6:53

anything online. And every time someone buys

6:56

something through one of those links, they

6:58

get a few pennies

7:00

or sometimes more than that. And so

7:02

a lot of sites have started just

7:04

like spinning up teams that produce a

7:07

bunch of content about this sort of

7:09

thing. And the main argument

7:11

of this HouseFresh article is

7:13

that a lot of these

7:16

sites are not actually testing the products that

7:18

they are recommending, but because

7:20

these sites have been on the

7:22

internet for so long, they have

7:24

a lot of authority with Google.

7:26

And so they are ranking really

7:28

high when you search for it,

7:31

even if they're not

7:33

trying the error purifier, for example. You're

7:37

getting at this kind of chicken

7:39

and egg phenomenon though, things show

7:41

up high on Google or any

7:43

big ad revenue driven

7:45

search engine, because there's a

7:48

whole industry of people who know

7:50

how to make things and

7:53

up up high. They use search engine optimization to

7:55

make things pop up

7:58

in those results. And It

8:00

feels like a little circle

8:02

that we're going around in here. I've

8:05

spent 15 years professionally

8:07

writing articles for the

8:09

internet. At every place

8:11

that I've ever worked, SEO has

8:14

been important. Some

8:16

of this stuff aligns very well

8:18

with good journalism. It's like used

8:21

names of people in the

8:23

article and link to your

8:25

sources and things like this. But

8:27

then there's also a lot of other

8:29

things that humans may

8:32

not like, but Google's algorithm

8:34

does like, which is like

8:38

subtitles. If you

8:40

are looking for a recipe

8:43

to get ranked high on Google, you often

8:45

need the recipe to have a lot of

8:47

keywords and to have like be of a

8:49

certain length. And so this is why when

8:51

you go to a lot of recipe sites,

8:54

you will often read like a person's life

8:56

stories before they actually tell you the recipe.

8:59

And I don't

9:01

write recipes, I don't cook. This is like

9:04

a very controversial topic in the recipe world

9:06

because some people like that sort

9:08

of thing, but other people just want to

9:10

see the recipe. And the

9:13

reason that all of these sites

9:15

have really long stories before

9:17

they get into the recipe is because they're

9:19

doing search engine optimization and they're trying to

9:21

rank higher on Google. Is

9:23

it just Google or, you know, the

9:26

Bing and DuckDuckGo or whatever also

9:28

fall into this trap? Bing

9:30

and DuckDuckGo do both fall into

9:32

this trap. I think that we

9:36

focus on Google because we use

9:38

Google. Everyone uses Google and it's

9:40

like Bing has not

9:42

really taken much of the market. Like

9:44

if you actually look at the numbers, it's still

9:46

a couple percentage points of

9:48

all searches go through Bing. So

9:51

the vast majority of SEO

9:54

is targeted at Google's algorithms

9:56

and Google's web indexing and

9:59

ranking system. We

10:03

reached out to Google for comment,

10:05

and a spokesperson told us that

10:07

the German study looked narrowly at

10:09

product review content, and it doesn't

10:11

reflect the overall quality and healthfulness of

10:13

search for the billions of queries we

10:15

see every day. She added

10:17

that, "... numerous third

10:19

parties have found Google to be of

10:22

significantly higher quality than other search

10:24

engines, and our advanced spam-fighting systems

10:26

keep 99% of searches spam-free. When

10:30

we identify areas for improvement, we take

10:33

that work seriously." When

10:37

we come back on the show, how AI

10:39

makes all of this more complicated. Because

10:42

of course it does. Well,

10:52

let's talk about this AI bloat issue.

10:55

404, your organization reported that Google News

10:57

is boosting some

10:59

of this weird kind of AI-generated

11:01

content in its results. Tell me

11:04

about what you guys think. Yeah,

11:06

so I have a Google alert for

11:08

404 Media. So

11:11

anytime anyone mentions 404 Media,

11:13

I get an email and a link

11:15

to it. And soon

11:17

after we started publishing articles, I

11:20

kept getting Google alerts from weird

11:22

sites that I had never heard of that

11:24

were mentioning or

11:26

in some cases linking to us.

11:29

And so we did this

11:31

really difficult article about how

11:34

child sexual abuse material was

11:36

being included in this really

11:38

popular AI model

11:41

that underpins tons

11:44

of the AI tools that are used today. And

11:46

this is something that we actually spent over

11:49

a year on and talked to a

11:51

bunch of different researchers about how to

11:53

even report this because it's so difficult.

11:55

And one day after we

11:57

published it, there was an Article.

12:00

Oh called. They. Delete a database

12:02

to train a i Generative Images

12:04

to contain child sexual abuse material

12:06

which is not even remotely English.

12:09

ah on a site called Nation

12:11

World News which when I clicked

12:13

on it they had to stolen

12:15

our article for really run it

12:18

through some sort of ai. School.

12:21

And it had a million ads on it. And

12:24

it was ranking higher than us on

12:26

Google and it was indexed by Google

12:28

News and our article that we spent

12:30

all this time and resources doing was

12:32

not was not on Google News at

12:34

all. The what does that tell

12:36

you about what Google is prioritizing wet

12:38

weather consciously or not. Well. I

12:41

think it tells us that the

12:43

people who are spending of these

12:45

A I spam sites know a

12:47

lie and care a lot about

12:50

as Ceo and what Google is

12:52

looking for. And we are journalists

12:54

who are just trying to write

12:56

articles where humans writing articles for

12:59

other humans and v or not

13:01

optimizing every aspect of our article

13:03

so that an algorithm pick it

13:05

up. But the people who are

13:07

doing this with a I are

13:10

optimizing. Better than us and Google

13:12

is rewarding them for that. I

13:14

think that google is fighting a

13:16

very difficult battle here because. I

13:19

mean the business model of these Ai sites

13:21

is. Get. Listed get ranked

13:23

on Google trick people into clicking

13:25

the people leave, but there's shown

13:28

a bunch of ads before they

13:30

leave and they collect pennies and

13:32

hope that you know that he's

13:34

for what they're doing. In

13:38

response to our questions, the Google spokesperson.

13:40

Said Quote: We take the quality

13:42

of our results extremely seriously and

13:44

have clear policies against content created

13:46

for the primary purpose of ranking

13:48

well on news, and we remove

13:50

the sites that violate it. A.

13:55

Lot of these Ai sites are based outside

13:57

the U S where it's a lot cheaper.

14:00

The spin up a new website

14:02

and publish lots and lots and

14:04

lots of stuff using a I

14:06

models something that's basically impossible for

14:08

humans. Jason site is

14:11

run by humans. Four. Of

14:13

them. And. We publish.

14:15

Two or three articles a day

14:17

and were very productive Journalists like

14:19

were incredibly productive journalists. but we're

14:22

competing against a I generated sites

14:24

that are publishing articles like every

14:26

two to three minutes, twenty four

14:28

hours a day. My god, and

14:30

one person is running that probably.

14:32

Ah, and they're just doing it

14:34

all through a I because and

14:37

on actually researching reading the articles,

14:39

they're just generating them or ripping

14:41

them off, or doing a mix

14:43

of both. And so Google does

14:45

prioritize. You know, sites that publish. Of

14:48

Sin and if you're publishing few

14:50

hundred articles a day that are

14:52

a I generated damn Mm rank

14:55

higher than a human run site

14:57

that. Is. Only publishing one or

14:59

two or three articles a day. Listening.

15:02

To you say all of this it

15:04

seemed. So clear

15:07

that there is such a

15:09

strong argument against using Google

15:11

for search And yet. google.

15:14

Owns this wide swath

15:16

of. The market share for

15:18

search. Most. People

15:21

are still using it as their

15:23

default search engine. I don't know

15:25

if there is a way. To.

15:29

Untangle, That. We

15:32

already have so many Google products baked

15:34

into our lives. Which.

15:36

Makes me wonder. Is

15:38

there some breaking point in which consumers

15:40

would revolt? Or we'd trapped. I

15:44

think that we're trapped, despite the

15:46

fact that I'm using Kaji. It's

15:48

like party is actually. A

15:50

search engine that. Aggregates results

15:52

from a bunch of other search

15:55

engines and then ranks them. so

15:57

it's like reliance on google. as

15:59

well. Oh my. Also, it's hard to, even

16:02

when you're trying to escape. I've

16:04

tried to escape a bunch of other Google

16:06

products before because I've reported on Google for

16:08

a long time at At Look for Alternatives

16:11

for a long time. I switched from Google

16:13

Maps to Apple Maps a few years

16:15

ago and I was biking around New York

16:17

City using Apple Maps and it tried to

16:19

put me on the beach ui which the

16:22

highway. Oh yeah, that's the hands I was

16:24

like. cool. I'm switching back to Google

16:26

because Apple Maps tried to kill me. I

16:29

stopped using Chrome for a while and

16:31

I was using other browsers and then

16:33

I would run into a site that

16:35

would only work with Chrome that I

16:38

needed to years. and rather than like

16:40

run this complicated existence where I was

16:42

switching back and forth between browsers, I

16:44

just switch back to Chrome. I can't

16:46

really imagine leaving email or google docs

16:49

as like my entire digital ice sort

16:51

of intertwined with this company. and I

16:53

think that's the case for a lot

16:55

of people. I mean, I'm staring at

16:57

a Google doc of. Crap. You

17:00

know notes for this interview. That

17:02

was sent. To. My

17:04

email. I'm reading it on chrome. How.

17:07

Did we? Get. So dependent on

17:10

one company. Able is

17:12

similarly a frog getting boiled.

17:14

Situations where. The. Products works

17:16

so well together. it's like that

17:18

it's a vertically integrated. Now I'm

17:20

funny where you know if you

17:22

use Gml it's like why are

17:25

you have to email I might

17:27

as well download Chrome. Chrome has

17:29

Google built into it like it's

17:31

just easier for for people to

17:33

deal at the same time. There.

17:35

Is this gravitational pull

17:38

that Google has. That.

17:40

Is not fully organic. It's

17:42

like Google pays Apple billions

17:44

of dollars to make Google

17:47

the do default search engine

17:49

on I phones, for example.

17:51

And like a lot of the others

17:53

are attack monopolies that we've seen. A

17:56

lot of it is sort of like. Default

17:58

stuff that. Then on

18:00

devices that you by which the

18:02

Justice Department has some thoughts about.

18:05

The Justice Department has some thoughts

18:07

about and there are various antitrust

18:09

cases on going against. Many.

18:11

Tech giants at the moment and it's sort

18:13

of remains to be seen by will happen.

18:16

Ah I'm skeptical that will see any sort

18:18

of like. Real. Breaking apart

18:20

of these companies. But.

18:23

I also don't know what that looks like

18:25

at this point. Like. I think that

18:27

it's really difficult to break them up

18:29

because. They're. So intertwined. Like

18:31

all the products are so intertwined.

18:33

At this point. Google is

18:36

facing to big lawsuits from the

18:38

federal. Government one over it's search

18:40

engine. Which will continue in May

18:42

and another over it's and Practices

18:44

which goes to trial on September.

18:47

The. So let's go back to search

18:49

because. You keep talking

18:52

about the frog being fully boil

18:54

the water. And the thing I

18:56

can't stop thinking about. it's really

18:58

the fundamental business model thing. If

19:00

your business is based on advertising

19:02

and Google is the people and

19:04

companies are gonna do all sorts

19:06

of things to end up at

19:08

or near the top of search.

19:10

You're going to have a i'd

19:12

driven shum that wants a slice

19:14

of ad revenue at and so

19:16

it feels like. I

19:18

don't know. There is a pollution of

19:20

pure search right from the jump, right?

19:23

this is. This was never a. Empirically.

19:26

Satisfying experiment where you would absolutely

19:29

just get the best. Search. Results:

19:32

Yeah. I mean, as Ceo has

19:34

existed forever since Google existed and

19:36

there's been a couple really good

19:39

articles on the verge that have

19:41

blamed as your from essentially ruining

19:43

the internet is it was never

19:45

a pure experience. The reason that

19:47

I left Google and that I've

19:50

been using Kaji is simply because

19:52

it's not even that and that

19:54

much of a moral stance. Really,

19:56

it's that I tried this other

19:58

thing and I was oh wow,

20:00

I'm I'm actually finding web sites

20:03

that are interesting and that are

20:05

relevant to my search. Every time

20:07

I tried to leave Google. The.

20:09

Thing that I tried was

20:11

worse and in this case

20:13

corgi which specifically can down

20:15

ranks. The. Sites you're

20:18

describing it like analyzes how many

20:20

ads and how much of a

20:22

a site's content is. Odds and

20:25

it down ranks them and like

20:27

punishes tactics that are traditional search

20:30

engine engine optimization techniques and I

20:32

just realized after using it for

20:34

three months I looked up another

20:37

our haven't really like. Been.

20:39

Mad about my search results for a long

20:41

time? I I'm just like finding the stuff

20:43

that I want to find and there's not

20:45

a bunch of sponsor results at the top.

20:47

And there's not an Ai that's trying to

20:49

answer my question when I really just want

20:52

to find a link. To so here

20:54

we are the new no. Tail. End

20:56

of that conversation talking about how crappy

20:58

all this stuff feals and is. Is.

21:01

There any way to make a change. For.

21:03

Many years that are, other companies

21:05

that I work for were incredibly

21:08

reliant on Google and incredibly reliant

21:10

on social platforms to reach audiences.

21:13

And as sort of like the

21:15

entire in or has become a

21:17

big algorithm of our feed their

21:19

algorithmic, it's become a lot harder

21:21

to reach people through these platforms

21:23

and I think that when you

21:25

go back to things like direct

21:27

email to people who have signed

21:30

up for the email that is

21:32

like a humans human interaction, person

21:34

to person interaction and contexts and

21:36

things like that I think have

21:38

already started to replace a lot

21:40

of he social networks that we

21:42

used to use. Of time for

21:44

that. We still use overtime but

21:46

are increasingly polluted and I think

21:49

that's a solution is more of

21:51

oil A like human to human.

21:53

Hey check this out. Situation vs.

21:55

Scrolling through received that is. Content.

22:05

Eight And thank you for your reporting

22:07

and for coming on the shelf. Think.

22:12

Jason Kevlar is a cofounder of Four

22:14

O Four Media. He's also the co

22:16

host of the Four O Four Media

22:18

podcast that she should check out or

22:20

eight? That is it for. Our show

22:22

today, but next C B D is produced

22:24

by Mm Camel, Anna Phillips and Patrick Stewart.

22:27

A show is. Edited. By Page Osborne

22:29

believes among Comrie, his Vice President of

22:31

Audio for Sleep and Tbd is part

22:34

of the larger What Next family. Like

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we're doing here. The best way to

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keep us up high in your mental

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search engine is to become a slight

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last member. Just head on over to

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sleep.com/what next bus to sign up or

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it will be back on Sunday with

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another episode. And was yomiuri sexual

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a thing?