It looks like more people are talking about Google taking action against low-quality, self-promotional listicles, especially those created mainly for AI-related topics. Recently, there have been several examples shared online where websites using this approach have seen a drop in performance.

For example, Lily Ray mentioned that she has identified around 30 websites that follow this same pattern.

Gagan Ghorta recently shared that some large companies using AI tools to scale content—often resulting in lower-quality content—have seen a drop in Google search results.

In his example, he specifically pointed out Webflow, which has been quite vocal about its focus on AEO.

this direction. From my experience, it seems mixed—some are heavily adopting this approach, while others are more cautious.

We first saw discussion around this when Barry Schwartz covered it on February 4th, 2026. Around that time, Lily Ray and Glenn Gabe also reported noticeable drops in organic visibility for sites using similar tactics.

Personally, I don’t think it’s limited to just listicles. I’ve also seen cases where low-quality, AI-heavy content beyond listicles has been affected. This raises a broader question: how do we balance visibility in AI tools with performance in traditional Google search?

At the same time, as Lily pointed out, some of these tactics can produce quick short-term gains, but they seem to eventually lose effectiveness in Google’s search results.

Definitely give Lily’s original post covering the topic a read.

What are you seeing?

Forum discussion out there in the ether.