Google’s Sullivan Collecting & Submitting Low Quality & Problematic Search Results

Over the past few months or so there has been a lot of complaints both from the SEO community and the general internet community about the quality of the Google search results. The SEO community has been very vocal on social and on this blog about the issues they see with Google search quality.

A year ago, Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, responded to some criticism from outside of the SEO industry. Now he is spending time responding to criticism from within the SEO industry.

Sullivan also has shared a screenshot of how he collects, documents and submits this feedback to the Google Search team. He posted an example on X and wrote, “Yes, I already passed that one on to the search team. Here’s a peek. And it’s being looked at.”

Here is that screenshot:

This response was to some of the examples Lily Ray posted, trust me, she has a heck of a lot more she is not sharing:

Most of these are spam.

Monthly search volume: 22,000 pic.twitter.com/181ak6p6ru

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) December 19, 2023

Here is some of the responses from Danny Sullivan from Google:

Our first result says exactly that; other top results all seem fine. Will pass on that if you scroll around to 40, the results could be better there. pic.twitter.com/MHmj42uyng

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 19, 2023

I was directly asked about this query and showing the top results for it. As for other things you’ve shared, I have passed along those where you’ve found unhelpful things high in the results. I’ll usually run the same query & if I’m not having to scroll a ways down, definitely…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 19, 2023

Yes, I already passed that one on to the search team. Here’s a peek. And it’s being looked at. pic.twitter.com/vJH3EisnXD

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) December 19, 2023

There are over a hundred comments here and over 1,200 here.

It seems a lot of the complaints started after the September 2023 helpful content update finished rolling out. But they seemed to have escalated a lot in the past few weeks.

So yea, Google is documenting some of the complaints.

Forum discussion at X.