The top 10 results were getting pretty bad even pre-LLM. I remember tons of poorly written articles near the top, just gaming the system with SEO. Everyone was paying some guy on Fiverr $5 an article to churn out hundreds of articles with little regard for accuracy.

We built our own ways to filter these because *we* went to the website and gathered a lot of information on it.

Now, the model slips it in without any verification and casually builds on top of it.

Crucially, by visiting those websites you gathered a bunch of context clues which told you “this source is trash; I shouldn’t trust it and should look somewhere else”. When you ask an LLM, every source is treated as equally valid. You may have gotten an answer from the utmost professional on the subject or an obvious (to you) scam, they are presented the same.

Even if you are in the minority who asks for sources and truly verifies them, they are often made up (don’t exist) or don’t say what the LLM said they said.