If you’ve been listening to Decoder or the Vergecast for a while, you know that I am obsessed with Google Search, the web, and how both of those things might change in the age of AI. But to really understand how something might change, you have to step back and understand what it is right now.

So today I’m talking with Verge platforms reporter Mia Sato about Google Search, the industries it’s created, and more importantly, how relentless search engine optimization, or SEO, has utterly changed the web in its image. Mia and I really dug into this to explain why search results are so terrible now, what Google is trying to do about it, and why this is such an important issue for the future of the internet.

Links:

How Google is killing independent sites like ours — HouseFresh
How Google perfected the web — The Verge
The people who ruined the internet — The Verge
A storefront for robots — The Verge
The end of the Googleverse — The Verge
The unsettling scourge of obituary spam — The Verge
What happens when Google Search doesn’t have the answers? — The Verge
The AI takeover of Google Search starts now — The Verge
AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born — The Verge
Google is starting to squash more spam and AI in search results — The Verge
Ethics Statement — The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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Why Google Search feels like it’s gotten worse