In the current context of the AI “slop” flooding every corner of the web, search engine sloptimization refers to the purposeful creation of AI-generated content to rank highly on Google, blanketing search results with this content to drive traffic to your website.

 

I would also include efforts to rank “genuine” content on Google by optimizing it for inclusion in AI-generated search summaries, as a form of sloptimization. By “genuine” I mean content generated by humans (maybe with the help of AI) and designed to appear in AI search summaries, which are now shown at the top of most Google search results often without any links to original sources.

 

Traditional SEO was often geared towards crafting content that served algorithms more than users, flooding the web with content no one really asked for in order to boost websites’ rankings in organic search results. This new phase of optimization makes the problem worse, further stripping content of its value and refashioning it as AI-ready slop to be scraped, reassembled, and delivered back to users, frequently without citation.

 

The question is, why would Google want you to make low-quality slop content?

 

Feeding the “enshittification” of platforms

 

Enshittification is the term coined by Cory Doctorow to explain how and why tech platforms feel so much worse to use now. They are made worse on purpose, he argues, because once a platform has saturated its market and captured all the available users, changes to the platform are made with the intent of maximizing profits at the expense of user experience.

 

Making Google the search experience worse by flooding your query results with error-prone AI-summaries, less relevant links, and poorly crafted content keeps you on Google longer, because it takes longer for you to find something useful. Google also creates barriers between you and the original sources of the information you’re looking for (also known as “websites”) through AI summaries, the “People Also Ask” section, rich snippets and other tactics designed to answer your query without you ever having to leave the search results page. It’s a win for Google, and a loss for everyone else.

 

How people are resisting AI in search

 

People are getting around AI search results in two main ways: by actively filtering them out on Google, and by changing their approach to searching for information on the web entirely.

 

Technical Workarounds to avoid AI search results

 

The first workaround is using the "Web" filter on Google. At the very top of the search results page there’s a filter menu tab called “More” which is a dropdown hiding an item labelled “Web” (shown below). Selecting “Web” tells Google to only display web links, effectively removing AI overviews from the results page. You can also set up a proxy to force web results for every search, but that’s a lot more complicated.

 

 

 

Adding the term -AI (e.g., "who owns Google -AI") to the end of a search query can also trick Google's algorithm into not generating an AI overview for that specific search.

 

Finally, you can install a browser extension to hide AI-generated content and related functions from search results. Or go all the way and install Slop Evader to only display content made before the rise of AI in 2022.

 

Changes in user behavior and SEO best practices

 

Rather than relying on Google AI summaries and rich snippets, people are going directly to trusted sources for information. This can mean searching for a brand by name, bypassing AI summaries or and clicking on a trusted website link, or even going directly to that website by typing it into a browser or through a bookmark.

 

This is good news for those who want to provide real value for their audiences and build a trusted, lasting brand. Rather than churn out algorithmically optimized "how-to" articles and clickbait content that AI can easily scrape because it’s familiar, it’s still best to create in-depth, expert-driven content based on unique perspectives, experience or information. This has always been the core of best-practice content marketing. It connects with people, and builds loyal followings. It also can still help a site get top ranking on Google’s organic search results, and generate relevant traffic, at least until even organic search becomes so bad that people stop using it altogether.