Went to YouTube to find the George HW Bush baseball meme. The search term pops up but the result is nowhere to be seen. Eight videos of bush doing the first pitch and then snl sketches. Went to google, similarly no results. Went to duckduckgo and got it immediately.
Like shits unusable, if someone dislikes a video and has money they absolutely can get it taken off the search systems most people use.
what will happen?
From what I've heard (and this is hearsay), a massive overhaul of both SEO and SEM rankings from the ground up, integration of the search algorithm with SEM to improve search ad quality. Hammering of dropshipping and similar spammy e-commerce, and an attempt, probably futile, to put mid-size e-commerce sites front and center. Links will become less important relative to long-form content and interactive elements. Site age and update rate will continue to grow in importance.
Further integration of AI-driven natural language analysis to stop content mills. There have, apparently, been discussions about manually boosting high content sites as well but not sure about that.
Basically actually doing what they've been threatening to do for 10 years.
Social Media is also in trouble with major brands starting to bail entirely. Influencer advertising is in freefall in terms of profitability.