Google Entropy – Google Eats Google?

No, it really does feel like everyone is complaining about Google lately. Across blogs, forums, newsletters, old media, news sites, ChatBots, and threads, there’s a growing consensus that Google just isn’t what it used to be. Longtime users and SEOs alike are documenting their frustrations: too many ads, too little relevance, and an overwhelming sense that Google is optimizing for everything except users.

So Why Has Google Seriously Declined?

Lets look at the top reasons for user discontentment with Google:

1. Overstuffed Elements – Confuse Search Intent

SERPs are bloated with expandable accordions, carousels, and “People Also Ask” annoying spam that you have to skip over. These elements spike the page without adding meaningful value, often repeating the same surface-level content in different wrappers. It leaves decoding the SERPs for their responses up to the user – and that takes time and results in a perceived loss of quality. They leave users saying “just give me the damn link”!

Notice that some allege that searches are up but users are flat. That indicates that people are searching more to find the same thing they used to find in one search.

2. Click Jacking or Spamming-n-Jamming the Google Way

Search Inception – Clicks check-in but they don’t check out. Google has become its own biggest SERP spammer – linking back to its own products (Flights, Hotels, More Searches, YouTube, News, Shopping, AIO Links etc. etc.) instead of surfacing quality independent content. It’s less about search and more Google-branded rabbit hole click-trap.

This here – is the end of Google as we know it. Users are clearly getting fed-up with Google on this nonsense. It feels like they are messing with us just to mess with us. The Serps are starting to look like a diet-pills site. Extremely poor EEAT on Google these days.

Trying to look at a Google SERP these days, really is like try to solve a murder mystery.

3. AI Slop-A-Matic

Users have spoken – and they hate it. AI Overviews has introduced generic, error-prone summaries that often paraphrase better content found just below. They inject needless work on the user to skip them. The snippets just steal clicks from their sources and rarely actually answer the query. Word from the web is, We Hate Them.

4. Reddit Love Affair -WTF is that Really About?

To be blunt, Dear God Why? There is just so much here to unpack and so little we actually know. It started 25 years ago when Google treated UGC just like other content. They even bought a Usenet feed and surfaced posts there. Then came the black & white updates (Panda and Penguin) when Google decided they loathed forums and blog comments. Most of the top 10 forum sites lost 95% of their traffic. Our own WebmasterWorld went from a PR9 generating 150, 000 referrals a day from Google to 10k with the first update and 1,500 later on to today it is lucky to get 1k and most of those are site searches.

Then came the “News” boys: Australian, French, Canadian, and New York times with their hands out by News companies demanding they get paid for content.

In response to cries for “real” answers, Google leaned hard into Reddit. But Reddit is now gamed with affiliate spam, LLM-generated threads, and content dressed up as community insight. It’s hardly a solution.

While, we really don’t know why Google has leaned into Reddit quite so hard, but it is clear this is a one-off. Other community UGC sites have gotten very little in the way of Google bounce. Much of that increase can be attributed to Googles own linking back to ‘forums’ on the main menu – which sent more traffic to Serps where more forums are listed. We saw a minor 5% bounce at WMW when Google put Forums on the main menu (however, our listings/rankings did not increase).

That said, this all popped up while Google was getting accosted for cash by so many news outlets. Then NYT sued OpenAI (Funny no – there was no mention of Google in this obvious shakedown action).

5. Googles Biggest Failure : Abandoning Advanced Search

In almost ever other sector from business to consumer, programs have added dozens of features. Opera browser in 1998 had two dozen options (and most of those dealt with network settings). Today it has over 200.

Here are two screen shots of Google Advanced search: (can you tell which one is 21yrs old from the content?

[metaslider id=1707]

While operators like site: and filetype: still work, Google has done zero to support high-quality, targeted search options for researchers or professionals. In fact, Google has taken away more advanced search operators than they have added (were-oh-where did you go “Links:“).

Power users have been asking for 2+ decades: Where’s the advanced search interface with 5 gazillion Google’rific options? No! You are not alone in thinking that. Google bragged and bragged about their tech in early days. Hardly a story was written about Google and their new algo that didn’t boast incessantly of PageRank and their new advanced “consumer grade” revolutionary hardware that jammed extra servers into a standard rack. All that was wrapped up neatly with a pride-n-joy alma mater Stanford credibility bow on top. They even proudly linked to Stanford on the home page:

So where did all that go? Where are the filters for TLDs? Destination formats (death to pdfs!), domain filters, language filters, domain filters, size filters, age filters, links to back content, linkage charts, graphs, history…oh my!

The number of ways and depth that Google could provide users with advanced search operators and Serp control is stunning. Why haven’t they innovated here? Where are the 20% time programs? Where are the controls to filter Serps? Dear Google – Seriously, what is your problem here? No shit, I would really like to know why you didn’t innovate in advanced searching. Sigh – it is so frustrating to think about how much tech Google has and they can’t even be bothered to focus on their core product!? Seriously WTF over?

The only answer is Money Money Money! They just didn’t want to chase anything that messed with the family cash cow. Why let users dig around while they could be forcing them onto standard Serps where the only way out is through an Ad (where Google Gets Paid)? Or is it that the problem is too hard for Googlers?

6. Infinite Scroll – Spam City – Buried Organic Results

The addition of infinite scroll on mobile has pushed traditional organic results further down, hidden beneath ads, AI blocks, and sticky modules. Blue links are no longer the star of the show – they’re the afterthought. Some searches on mobile, you have to scroll two screens to get to actual search results. Spam city.

7. Google Spam – Ad Overload

Four or Five ads at the top of page – sometimes two -three more at the bottom, and even ads in maps or product modules. It’s no longer about connecting users with content – it’s about maximizing ad real estate. On mobile, some users have seen entire pages that are nothing but ads.

8. Confused Intent Matching

SERPs often blend and bury commercial, informational, and navigational results for the same query. That results in Serps that are trying be everything to everybody and succeed at nothing but making users dig for links that used to be obvious.

9. Stale, Unfresh Content

Eessh, many SERPs surface content that’s years old . Even when fresh content exists, it’s often buried in favor of legacy pages deemed “authoritative” by old signals.

10. AI Inconsistency

Google’s AI answers vary widely in quality. Sometimes they’re actually helpful. Sometimes they’re flat made-up. Sometimes they’re so vague they add nothing and just waste your time reading them. The complete lack of confidence in their reliability is a growing concern for power users and publishers alike. This is where there is long-term risk to Google. The trust factor is a major issue.

11. Originality Punished

Search favors sites that mirror big consensus. Even when newer or more insightful sources are available Google prefers…umm the Wikipedia answer to all else. Original voices struggle to rank unless they’re hosted on legacy domains. Smaller blogs and sites have little chance of competing with major blogs that drive much of the traffic on the web today. Just yesterday, we had a viral hit here that generated nearly 15,000 unique visitors early in the day. By afternoon, oldy-moldy competing blogs had republished it, and probably doubled that number in Google referrals alone by the end of the day (where we got about 50 Google referrals, they probably got 5000).

12. Broken TLD Diversity Filters

Despite promises over the years, many SERPs still show 3- 4 results from the same domain. Smaller publishers can’t compete when the top half of page one belongs to one site. Its just not worth it for creators to work on that any more.

13. Soft Censorship or Editorial Integrity?

Google’s quality filters are increasingly opaque. Entire topics vanished from results, and certain perspectives are now buried.

14. From Search Engine to Answer Engine

Google’s direction is clear: become an answer-delivery system, not a discovery tool. But that shift kills the joy of exploring ideas, finding new voices, or navigating diverse perspectives.

In order to fix Googles big problem with “answer engine”, we hear Google is bringing “Discovery” to the desktop. psss: we both know that will last about six months – Google will spam it with features, links, and ads – and it’s value will be nothing in a year.

15. Publisher Disengagement – Zero Click Search = Zero Referrals

Indexing delays, crawl budget limitations, and AI training disputes are driving all good publishers away. Many are now blocking bots, reducing output, or skipping Google entirely. I credit the rise of TikTok to publishers and creators looking for an outlets that Google has slammed the door on.

The Takeaway

The web hasn’t gotten worse – Google’s filter on it has. SEOs see it every day: formerly clean, navigable SERPs now look like programmatic sales decks. Real answers are buried. Original creators are penalized. And users have noticed.

All while Google has been so busy fighting govts around the world over antitrust issues, ad issues, privacy, ap store issues, news publishers, it got so busy, that it forgot to service it’s users.

It’s not just nostalgia. It’s measurable decline…and it is going to get much worse.

Select Stories That Talk of Google in Decline:

Google Search Is Dying – Dmitri Brereton argues that Google’s search results are increasingly dominated by low-quality content that makes it harder to find genuine information.
The Fall of Google Search – Ikius highlights the prevalence of AI-generated content and excessive advertisements as key factors degrading Google’s search experience.
Is Google Search in Decline? A New Era for SEO? – SurgeGraph discusses how changes in user behavior and Google algorithm updates are contributing to a decline in search result relevance.
I Ditched Google’s Broken Search Engine and Boosted My Productivity – The author shares personal experiences of switching from Google due to declining result quality and increased spam.
The Decline of Google Search: What’s Driving Users to Alternatives? – Phable analyzes factors like AI overreach and content farming that are pushing users toward other search platforms.
Study Shows Decline in Google Search Quality and Reveals Path Forward – Synthedia presents research indicating a drop in search result quality, emphasizing the need for algorithmic transparency.
Understanding the Decline of Google Search: Quality vs. Junk Content – All About AI explores how low-quality, AI-generated content is overshadowing valuable information in search results.
Are Google Search Results Getting Worse Due to SEO? (2025 Study) – SEO.ai examines how aggressive SEO tactics are leading to less relevant and more manipulative search outcomes.
Is Google Search In Decline? – Aidan McCarthy discusses the impact of algorithm changes and ad placements on the overall usefulness of Google Search.
Three’s a Trend: The Decline of Google Search Quality – Anil Dash reflects on the increasing presence of spam and low-quality content in search results, reminiscent of pre-Google search engines.
The Tragedy of Google Search – The Atlantic critiques Google’s bloated and overmonetized search interface, which hampers the discovery of authoritative information.
You’re Not Imagining It: Google Search Results Are Getting Worse – Gizmodo reports on studies showing that product searches are increasingly cluttered with low-quality, affiliate-driven content.
The Decline of Google Search: What’s the Future? – Tigaman discusses how AI limitations and ad dominance are eroding user trust in Google’s search results.
The Rise and Decline of Google Search – The Oklahoma Bar Association notes that while Google’s profitability has soared, the quality and reliability of its search results have diminished.
Why Google Search Is Losing Its Mojo – The New York Times explores user frustrations with irrelevant results and the increasing need to append “Reddit” to queries for better answers.

Stories about Google Paying for News

Brett Tabke

As the CEO and founder of Pubcon Inc., Brett Tabke has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of online marketing and search engine optimization. His journey in the computer industry has spanned over three decades and has made him a pioneering force behind digital evolution. Full Bio
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