Google promised a better search experience, but it only got worse

Can AI and algorithms always make our search experiences better?

By Markus Backman

July 1st, 2025

In August 2022, Google announced their Helpful Content Update, promising to put a stop on low quality, clickbait style creations, but nothing seem to have gone for the better since then, in fact, people report that Google search has just got even worse. What is going on?

We'll take a look at the following topics:

• Google’s “Helpful Content” update hasn’t delivered on its promise.

• Search results are now cluttered, ad-heavy, and less helpful.

• Has Google lost touch with how people actually want to search?

The problem with Google

Google has one task, which is to help people find answers to their questions. Nowadays, that seems like an impossible task from an users perspective.

Remember back in the days, prior to the AI revolution really, you we're most likely to find relevant results, where the outmost priority was the reader's experience itself. Now, you'll find more and more confusing results that are by all means less accurate, lack depth, and most and foremost a real human touch.

These are some of the problems with Google search now:

• Monetization: Of course, Google needs to make money, but things have been taken too far on the expense of the user. You'll see more and more commercial results that you really don't need to see. Now, they focus on pushing the content to you with strong algorithms, instead of offering it to you. Google has evolved from just a search engine to a wast ecosystem of many products, such as YouTube and more.

• AI generated results: You are not Googling stuff in the first place to find AI results, right? You are there, hoping to find high-quality content by original creators, just like with the old days of Google, right?

• Bloated interface with confusing results: Let's say you want to find out information about running shoes, but you are not about to buy ones, you hit search and get nothing but a bombardment of running shoes ads spread out everywhere. Google's search results page do not longer focus on what's important, but instead push non-relevant content to you.

People's search behavior has changed, and Google cannot adapt

I like to think that the generative AI revolution began in late 2022 when Open AI's ChatGPT rolled out. The thing with these AI-chatbots is that they've changed people's way of browsing and navigating the internet.

We've come to a point where we are expecting more natural language (imagine the way you ask for things in a discussion with another person, you keep the language natural, not how we used to Google with keywords) in our search journeys instead of thinking of exact keywords to search for stuff with.

While this works really good with ChatGPT, it really does not work with Google search. Yes, there'll most likely be a AI generated answer in top of the search page, but again, you are search Google in the first place to visit good websites and not to look at AI-generated answers.

I think this is an area where Google is failing. They are not an AI-chatbot, but essentially a classic web browser, and that's how people want Google to stay like the first place

So did AI really help make Google search better?

I don't think the problem is AI itself, it's just that Google is overusing AI and algorithms that no longer make the search experience better. On the other hand, I believe people don't essentially use Google for the AI functions, but they remember it as the classic web browser that caters for your search needs.

It remains to be seen, but personally I would enjoy Google more if they went back to something like, the 2015 formula, where you'd get actual human answers from another humans you really want to see, and not entire algorithm-based content that is pushed to your face.

What will happen with Google?

Google is a behemoth of an ecosystem and they are not going anywhere soon. But that does not mean its functionalities and user experience won't be as good as before.

For now, it could be that Google is testing the limits with how far can they go with the monetization without users abandoning them?

Another thing could be that with the rise of generative-AI and competition from other platforms, Google is hastily trying out new approaches to their search engine to adapt, and this could stir up Google search.