It must be admitted, the quality of Google is in free fall

The phenomenon is not new, but seems to continue to get worse: the Google search engine is less and less relevant despite its hegemonic position on the market.

We are not talking here about Google’s AI which suggests you add glue to your pizza or gasoline to your pasta, but about the simple Google search engine.

When the first result leaves you perplexed

Latest observation to date: a simple search for the British actor David Tennant, known for his roles in Doctor Who, Broadchurch, Good Omens or again DuckTales.

The first result? Neither an official site, nor a Wikipedia page, but a page from the “AstrumPeople” site. Have you never heard of it? It’s normal, this site has barely 100 subscribers on

This site simply seems to take the content of Wikipedia, pass it through a generative AI to reorganize certain information and generate an image of one to illustrate the biography of several celebrities.

The problem is not so much that this site exists, but that it can be found in the first result of Google. It does not provide any added value, only repeats the content of an established site (Wikipedia) and does not even include a real photo of the subject.

Google’s quality worries

This is not the first time that the relevance of the Google search engine has caused concern. In March 2024, The World published an article “ Are Google search results really getting worse and worse? » where the giant promised that an update of its algorithm would “ reduce the amount of unhelpful and low-quality content and increase the number of useful results”. Google constantly updates its algorithm, but it must be admitted that the giant does not seem to succeed in offering a quality engine where the first results do not cheat their way up.

In the English-speaking world, more and more users are resorting to tricks to force Google to become relevant again by adding “wiki” or “reddit” in keywords and bringing up human-to-human discussions that are more likely to resolve problems.

To these accusations, Google continually explains that it has improved the quality of its service year after year.

Google would have “shit up”

The explanation for this drop in perceived quality could be twofold. On the one hand, there is the continued exponential increase in the amount of data on the web, especially in the age of AI-generated pages and images.

On the other hand, there is the phenomenon “ merdification » (or enshittification in English). As explained by journalist Lucie Ronfaut in the program Internet Explorereuses, this is a phenomenon of quality degradation which affects digital platforms in a dominant position.

The phenomenon is quite simple to explain: a new efficient service born on the Internet and attracting many users, operating at a loss and without a precise economic model.

Then, once it reaches a significant size, the service uses this user base to convince companies to integrate advertisements and get involved on the platform.

Finally, after reaching the maximum size, the platform sees its quality degrade, but takes advantage of its position to generate income both through users and the companies present. The situation is worse if we are talking about a platform in a dominant position, with no credible alternative.

Many giants have been accused of “cracking” their services: Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Uber and even AirBnB.

To get out of it, an alternative generally has to emerge. Ironically, more and more users are turning to TikTok and ChatGPT for research. OpenAI recently unveiled ChatGPT Search.