There is a Growing Spam Problem in Google AI Overviews

There’s a growing problem with spam in Google’s AI Overviews. A recent LinkedIn post showed that AI Overviews can be tricked easily. These AI answers sometimes repeat wrong information or copy content without checking facts. Spammers are using this to push low-quality content.

How people are misusing AI Overviews

• Wrong or made-up information: AI Overviews sometimes give answers that are not true. They even ignore correct details from Google Business Profiles or Knowledge Graph.
• Fake “best of” lists: Some people make list-style articles that wrongly say a person or company is the “best” in something. These lists are often from the same website, just made to look important.
• Copied content: AI Overviews often repeat content from other sites, which can hurt the reach of original, better-quality work.
• Low-quality writing: Spammy AI content is often poorly written and hurts the trust people have in search results.

What Google is doing

• AI Overviews are part of search: This feature is built into Google Search, and we can’t turn it off.
• Trying to fix the problem: Google knows about the spam and says they are working on changes to fix it.
• Focusing on trustworthy content: Google wants to show content that has real knowledge, experience, and trust. This kind of quality is often missing in AI-made posts.

How it affects SEO:

• SEO experts are worried: Many in the SEO world are concerned about low-quality content showing up in AI Overviews.
• Google is cracking down: Google is updating its systems to punish content that’s made just to trick search engines.
• Better focus on real user needs: Google is starting to put more value on content that matches what users really want to see.

What’s really happening:

Lily Ray, a top SEO expert, pointed out these problems in a LinkedIn post. That post even got quoted in an AI Overview, which shows the issue first-hand.
The tricks people are using:

• Repeating old or wrong content from the internet.
• Making false claims, like calling a business “the best,” and AI repeating it as true.
• Writing fake “top company” lists and tricking AI into quoting them.

As Lily said, “It’s that simple: just make a blog post ranking yourself as ‘the best,’ and AI might show it as fact.”

More issues are showing up too:

For example, AI Overviews have shown the wrong business phone numbers, even though the correct ones are listed on Google Business Profiles. At a recent meetup, Google didn’t seem to have a fix for this.

Why this matters:

Since Google started using AI-generated answers, they’ve said it’s still being tested. But many real examples show that these AI Overviews are not working well. They often promote spam, low-quality writing, and false info.

Bottom line:

As Lily Ray explained, this kind of spam should not work. The fact that it does shows that AI Overviews are flawed. It looks like Google is not checking facts properly. Instead, the system may just repeat anything found on spammy websites or old posts. This is surprising, especially since Google has always told website owners to focus on being trustworthy and showing real expertise.