I think Google search hitched their wagon to Reddit (whether involuntary or not is up for debate) and now it’s coming around and biting them in the ass. The “hack” of sticking Reddit or using the tag “site:reddit.com” to the end of whatever your search query was has long been figured out by the masses and I can’t help but think the search algorithm has been trained to look there more often by default as a lazy way of doing SEO.

Now that Reddit is rotting from the inside, Google is really having to scramble to do something and fix their SEO spam issues and build trust in their results. What is already a not so great product at the moment in Google Search will soon turn into a bad one if they aren’t careful. I think they have coasted for so long as being the default since there was no one else that could challenge them. But with ChatGPT and other LLMs quickly improving, Google has a real danger of losing their biggest cash cow in Seach. Hell if they aren’t careful, they could even find their way to non-existence since so much of their revenue comes from serving ads and search listings.

They’re really at a turning point and need to be extremely careful in how they move from here. With their recent track record and what they’ve shown with things like the current Search debacle they’re in, Bard, how they’ve managed Android hardware and software the last decade, etc., I’m not so sure they can do it.