In early April, the technology publication The Verge published an article «Best printer 2024…»which is still the first Google result for the query «best printer». In fact, this material, generated by the language model Google Gemini and SEO-optimized, is an experiment and an example of how technology can bypass people’s attempts to create quality content.
Even the low-resolution cover of the article contradicts everything we know about the appeal of images. But that doesn’t stop Google from ranking the article highly in search.
The article claims that the «best printer is any random Brother laser printer that is on sale». It is unlikely that anyone would agree with such a statement, perhaps not everyone has even heard of this brand.
Google often emphasizes that you should write for people, not search engines. However, materials like this show that thanks to generation and optimization, it is still possible to effectively bypass the hours of work and research of people who want to create interesting and useful material.
Even the headline «Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers» seems at first glance to be nothing more than an aggressively optimized selection of words. Not to mention the expressions «you are a printer and we are all printers».
This is not the first attempt by The Verge: similar material was published last year and was also successful. But then, half of the text was created by another AI model, ChatGPT.
Source: Search Engine Land