This is the best summary I could come up with:

These days, search engine results are filled with spam content, according to a new paper from a team of researchers in Germany.

And it's making it harder for people to access helpful information online — the core function of the internet.

Though webpages that have more affiliate links and are more optimized are more likely to come up in search results, on average, they also "show signs of lower text quality," the researchers said.

And as content generated by AI continues to flood the internet, the researchers said search engine results are likely to get worse.

"Affiliate marketing itself is in part responsible for what online content looks like now," Janek Bevendorff, a research assistant at Leipzig University and coauthor on the paper, told The Register.

"Banning it entirely is probably not a solution" since many legitimate websites rely on affiliate marketing and SEO optimization as an important revenue stream, Bevendorff told the outlet.

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