Google’s spam review versus AI-related sites: An SEO test

Remember when it was easy to rank match domains and topics in targeted search queries?

When paired with the right methods and conversion-optimized widgets, you can quietly earn tens of thousands of dollars in affiliate income per month with minimal maintenance.

You could have gone further by reviewing the articles on the corresponding signals and the new ones, for example.

Google’s stress-testing spam review

Prior to the test, I had spent several months measuring the interaction step beyond the long-standing website board in the YMYL category.

We’ve had success hiring subject matter experts (SMEs) to write useful, informative content that really informs readers.

Although the new content is targeted at keywords intended for sales, that was not the intention of the existing website. There were also thousands of pages of user-generated content (UGC) that promoted new content, and visitors would navigate from them to convert, too.

We had product trust, real research, expert information, and everything else you’d expect from a reputable publisher.

It was the perfect mix: pure legacy UGC with thousands of earned backlinks and commercial leverage that served a pre-existing need while adhering to industry best practices. It was a really useful experience.

Testing: Measuring AI without trust

If the first model was built on trust and earned authority, this one will remove those signals entirely.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn influencers are doing the same thing. Except they were using AI to generate thousands of pages by scraping and rewriting content, or systematically aggregating public data.

That’s when I searched through my couch cushions for a few dollars and bought three sites that were slightly similar to the following questions: “best welding schools,” “best plumbing schools,” and “best electrical schools.”

The goal? Be sure to check out a set of less-trusted, high-quality tactics that are often promoted online and see how long they last.

Then I used AI to optimize websites, took public data with a vibe-coded Python API call, and used ChatGPT to model all the subheadings and paragraph text you’d see standard across the web.

Within hours, with the help of Liquid Content, I published thousands of bottom-of-funnel pages on all three websites. I was able to inject public data, target highlights by program type and status, and include a directory with individual, templated pages for each school.

I even used aggressive internal linking processes that prioritized crawling over user intent.

The setup violated almost every long-term confidence signal – making it a useful test of how the system would react.

All three sites share common features:

• Zero product features.
• Programmatically generated AI content.
• Community data integration.
• Aggressive internal linking.
• No real research or proprietary signals.

Dig deeper: Revealing 4 AI tests on meaning and purchasing decisions

Confirmed: Data shows Google spam review activity

The websites worked briefly. Indexation was fast, pages appeared with long-tail queries, and impressions increased faster than expected.

In the first few months, all three websites were generating about 200 clicks per market.

But as you can see, they have been heavily organized during the first December spam review since they started. In fact, clicks dropped to 0.

I tried turnkey data updates and added a few performance boosting plugins, but they didn’t recover.

In isolation, I’m not sure that any one of these tactics caused more failure than the other. Together, these strategies produced the site’s only insecure value that was placed on its own. When that signal stopped being useful, nothing was left

The insight isn’t that the websites failed – it’s that Google put up with them long enough to learn from them.

Does affiliate content marketing still work?

Yes, affiliate content marketing still works as a monetization layer, but not as a growth engine.

There are many websites that provide useful user experience while adhering to best practices and generating affiliate income.

Relatedly, check out Google’s how-to documentation on creating useful, trustworthy, and human-first content, where you can learn more about checking whether your website is publishing “content created primarily for humans, not manipulating search engine rankings.”

• “If the ‘why’ is that you’re creating content to attract search engine traffic, that’s not in line with what our systems want to reward you for. If you’re using automation, including AI generation, to generate content for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings, that’s a violation of our spam policies.”

However, even if you follow best practices, the rise of AIO, better segmentation, and many other factors have made affiliate marketing less successful than ever.

Fortunately, there is more.

Dive deep: Inside Google’s secret search systems: 1,200 tests, AI agents, and organizations

Where is content headed in 2026?

The real takeaway is not that Google is cracking down on spam, or that affiliate content marketing has stopped working. That businesses are built on a single, repeatable, low-cost distribution channel is exposed when the channel changes.

The next age of content will continue to hurt businesses that treat search as a sole distribution channel.

Instead of focusing on easily reproducible topics, many industry experts are turning to direct research and measurements that spark real conversations in communities.

Content is no longer a series of pages meant to rank. Rather, it is a combination of discovery, discourse, and thought leadership that spans multiple channels.

Discovery, discourse, and thought leadership

Invention: It is a SaaS business in the financial technology space that provides businesses with advanced financial forecasting.

Instead of publishing landing pages targeting “best financial forecasting software” or “most affordable financial forecasting software” (the SaaS equivalent of low-end pages), consider doing a deep dive with industry leaders who have something valuable to add to the conversation.

Rely on their insights to identify the biggest gaps in the financial forecast for 2026 and confirm: Does my product really solve this? If it does, you may have found a perfect wedge in society.

If not, there is a road for you.

Use these problem and solution insights to improve landing pages with interactive tests paired with benchmarking reports from industry-leading organizations.

The “why” is that content exists to help organizations shape where they are and where they want to be.

While these tests or courses may not rank first on Google for high-volume search queries, you can instead leverage partner-owned channels, partner distribution, paid media, and more to get you in front of your ideal customers.

These insights serve as a starting point for learned communication in real conversations that can be easily replicated. By doing so on many different channels, you effectively improve your ability to be omnipresent.

If you do it right and provide real value, you’re not only giving back to society, but you may be unlocking growth that you’ve been missing for a long time.

Companies like Stripe and its “Developer Coefficient” and HubSpot and its “State of Marketing” do exactly this.

Dig deep: 3 GEO exams you should try this year

2026 content: Fewer pages, deeper moats

This model looks very different from measuring thousands of program pages. It also comes with tradeoffs:

• Slow feedback loops.
• Less implied ROI.
• There are few “quick winners.”
• More reliance on distribution and collaboration.

In 2026, content is about fewer pages, deeper insights, stronger ideas, and harder-to-replicate assets.

The spam update didn’t kill my Christmas niche websites, but it did show how limited the limit is for anything built without trust.

Search marketing isn’t about avoiding content penalties — it’s about creating content that can’t be easily copied with AI.