Google search updates will prioritize real reviews over clickbait

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

To tackle clickbait and improve the relevancy of search results, a series of updates to Search will be made. The ranking updates will be rolled out in the weeks ahead according to a post on the website.

People don't find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to get people to click on it. A series of improvements to Search will be rolled out next week for English users around the world. The update will make sure that unoriginal, low-quality content doesn't rank highly in Search, particularly for online-educational materials, entertainment, shopping, and tech-related content.

TheHelpful Content Update will be rolled out to English language users on August 22nd.

The second update will make it easier to find high-quality, original reviews. There have been many changes to product review rankings by the tech giant.

The updates might be helpful to anyone using the hack to get rid of websites that aren't helpful in the search results. When looking for hardware reviews, you can see this. If you start a search for "Sony WH" in the US, you will get two results with "Reddit" on the end in favor of the word "review" for the popular headphones. Given the recent search trends, it is hard not to make the link between the two.

A new feature in the Brave web browser gives a boost to Stack Exchange. It's possible to find them under its "Discussions" section without having to add anything to the end of the search. The announcement for this browser feature made allusion to the belief that the internet is dying and that more people are using the internet to find answers to questions.

After the company's new updates roll out, creators of Search Central will be given guidance to ensure they're "creating content that will be successful".