Since the dawn of SEO, Google has told us that if we produce high-quality content, the clicks will come. They’ve developed frameworks like EEAT and produced countless core updates, many aimed at rooting out low-quality content and beneficial sites that “get it right.”
So, why, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-six, do we still have so many dated, copycat, and generally low quality pages getting high profile positions in AI reviews and organic rankings?
Let’s zoom in a bit here to compare Google’s recent suggestions for search visibility and the facts of what we’re seeing in the wild.
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What Google Says About Search Visibility in 2026
Google’s business model relies on publishers creating new, high-quality content. This is even more true with AI responses in the mix, as they generate responses based entirely on what LLM learns from other websites. Thus Google provides a good product to its users.
Because of this, Google has consistently beaten the drum that in order to be found on your SERP, you need to focus on creating high-quality content designed for humans, not just AI or algorithms.
Here’s Google’s Danny Sullivan in one Recent discussions on this topic:
“And when it comes to all of our ranking systems, it’s about how we’re trying to reward content that we think is great for people, that was written for humans, not written for search algorithms, not written for LLMS, not written for LMNOs, PEOs, whatever you want to call it.”
What it means to create content that is “great for people” is a huge can of worms. But some of the terms that we Google employees and Google docs mention are:
Google sings the same refrain about referencing in its AI review and AI mode. In a podcast last year, Rick Fox, SVP of knowledge and information at Google, Asked to give guidance To publishers who wanted to be noticed by AI:
“The short answer is what you’ve built and the way to do well in Google’s AI experiments is very similar, I would say, to doing well in traditional search. And it really comes down to building a great site, building great content. The way we’ve built it. Build for users. Build what you want to read, what you want to access.”
It sounds simple. Serve your audience first and get found on Google. But as much as Google requires publishers to actually push good posts and guides, it doesn’t always benefit those who do.
⏸ A quick pause… if you want to see how to rank on search in 2026check out How To Do SEO The Right Way – Right!
Google still rewards low-quality sites and outdated content
Let’s be honest, it stings that iOS is driving away a lot of clicks that used to go to content publishers. It’s salt in the wound when the value that remains is given to a site that either actively or passively does not meet the quality standards that Google adheres to (especially when you do).
Ives are the Wild Wild West
To be fair, the episode kicking off this review felt a bit personal. I searched “What is the average cost of Google ads?” I look forward to seeing our Search Ads benchmark report. Our team, especially our Senior Content Specialist Susie Marino, works really hard on this report, and it:
- Based on unique data that you can’t find anywhere else
- Logically organized with all appropriate sub-headings etc.
- Contains quotes and insights from real PPC experts
Basically, it has all the ingredients to increase visibility, Google says.
Our benchmark reports are based on new and historical data that you won’t find anywhere else.
AI’s response to this term was full of statistics that looked like they were scraped straight from our report. What it didn’t include was a reference to our website. Instead, he linked to a blog post that used our data second-hand.
Why did this work? Probably. , this is because the referenced post played the geo game immediately after the long, natural language questions and very direct answers in H2s.
It is a complex reading experience for humans. But this is catnip for a system looking for the simplest way to predict a string of words to answer a question.
To be clear, I’m not hating on the player here (although a link or mention of where their data came from would be nice). This is a game that is frustrating. If Google’s AI was selecting content that was “unique and valuable,” had “clear sourcing,” and highlighted “evidence of expertise involved,” how could it be ranking those posts on those reports with real data?
I’m just noticing this trend. SEO expert Lily Ray recently noted that “paid-to-play” content in AI reviews is extremely successful, even as Google has worked to eliminate such content elsewhere.
Here’s another example that’s less about content quality and more about racy. Re-apply to content in relative. If you’re looking for studies that document human psychology, an eight-year-old paper might be fine because those projects cover a decade of research (and the human brain hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years).
But when you’re working in a dynamic field like online sales, where there’s a new cycle every year, stale data is mostly useless.
Take a look at the SERP for the query “What’s a good conversion rate on Etsy?”
The first and second AIO references are from social media posts. This is not surprising, because real-life experience provides an authentic answer to this question.
What follows is the third reference, which is the first blog post in the list. Don’t overshadow the content itself – the author collected external data and shared his experience of running multiple Etsy shops.
The problem is that it was published in 2021. Etsy is a very popular place to sell, and the results you get there will change dramatically as shopper behavior, the economy, and the online platform change. It’s hard to imagine that there aren’t more recent figures.
This post is also among the top results for organic links, which shows the problem isn’t just about AI. Which brings us to the next point.
💡 How are other businesses coping with all these changes? Find out what 300 businesses had to say in the Big Small Business Website Trends Report: The Future of SEO, GEO, and Traffic
Organic search results are still problematic
In all fairness to Google, they’ve had little time to set up their AI content recommendation system. But it also means that their algorithms, which have had decades of price updates, must be pretty awesome.
Still, take a look at some of the blog content on the website that got cited in Google Ads.
You’ll see pages full of AI-generated posts that simply rank businesses as the best option in many locations and many industries. It may not be what Google considers helpful, human-centered content.
What is really surprising is how quickly this website is gaining traffic and organic keyword rankings. Especially since the most trusted sites with years of authentic content suffer post-update fluctuations.
Note that this website has a domain rating of 30, and is beating dozens of well-established publishers for high-intent keywords.
Here is another example that is near and dear to my heart. This post showed up in the results for the term “content marketing trends 2026”.
The entire post was around 400. There were no expert quotes, no data, and no example screenshots to back up the claims. Still, it made it to the front page for a while. Fortunately, it’s gone now (fingers crossed it keeps climbing our content trends guide), but if attributes like lack of authority and repeated lack of insight are being filtered out, it never landed in the first place.
Heehong… I hear you.
What should publishers do?
Hopefully Google will adapt its AI review to refer to original, helpful content. But it still hasn’t fully figured out its organic ranking algorithm. For example, there is the latest core update Deeply punished Some of the most authentic news on the planet.
This can lead to many marketers and content creators succumbing to the hack tactics in our examples. It’s a short-term strategy that will ideally fail once Google figures out.
I believe the best strategy is to continue to mine new data, subject matter experts inside and outside mining for fresh wisdom, and organize it in a way that makes the most sense to those who will read it. After all, introducing a bad experience to more people seems like a very effective way to ruin your brand. Let’s just hope Google rewards those of us who do.