The information highway is being reduced by the pursuit of the algorithm - David Behrens

You must have noticed the extent to which people – many of whom should know better – fill it with the most inane drivel imaginable in pursuit of what the industry terms “eyeballs” and therefore revenue. The fact that the owners of those eyeballs can only roll them in disbelief seems beside the point.

This is not a new phenomenon: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world­ wide web, delivered a scathing end-of-term report on its 30th anniversary, complaining that perverse financial incentives had sacrificed literacy on the altar of clickbait.

But just lately, this has mushroomed out of all proportion, with publishers large and small pushing out screeds of recycled waffle which they hope will be recirculated by search engines on the basis that its subject matter is “trending”.

Thus, a simple question demanding a short answer – “Will Eurovision be held in Yorkshire next year?” – generates reams of turgid material that you have to plough through before discovering that no-one knows yet. Why not just say so in the first place?

The reason is that brevity is no longer its own reward. Writing for the web, in contrast to almost every other discipline, is all about taking as long as possible to get to the point. The more you scroll, the more junk can be placed in your way. Even if you don’t click, you can be claimed as a viewer.

The stories are typically broken down into sections with headings that are search terms in themselves. What is Eurovision? Where is Leeds? Has the UK hosted the contest before? No-one is that stupid.

The commercial arm of the BBC is one – but by no means the only one – of the offenders. Two months ago, for instance, Radio Times ran a web story suggesting it had the release date of Daniel Craig’s new film, whereas it actually contained every possible detail about Mr Craig except the date, which had been not announced. So its publication was as disingenuous as one of those internet ads claiming that “people in Pudsey are amazed at this new miracle hearing aid”.

And while that particular piece of flimflam may be harmless in itself, it is one example among millions of the contempt in which audiences are held. Those pop-up boxes at the gateway to every site claiming to “value your privacy” really mean what they say – the publisher is literally placing a value on your personal information so he can collect it and then sell it.

The root issue is that so much of the web is being written not for people but for search algorithms – the bits of computer code that determine what is in demand at any given moment. The stories which most closely match the algorithm go to the top of the search rankings, even if they contain nothing more useful than Daniel Craig’s inside leg measurement.

It was only a matter of time before someone other than Sir Tim got wise to this, and on Tuesday Google finally leapt into action, announcing it was changing its algorithm to de-prioritise websites that published “unsatisfying content” in favour of those that were genuinely helpful.

That will be a body blow to publishers who have built click farms to fuel and feed the imagined demand for literary litter – but they will soon find another loophole to exploit. Many of these outfits are not publishers at all in the traditional sense but marketing firms that have been set up to mechanically churn out algorithm fodder dressed up to look like authoritative sources.

The mystery is why Google didn’t act sooner. This is, after all, a company that knows almost as much about us as we know ourselves, to the point of predicting what we’re going to type before we’ve told our fingers.

The truth is that it didn’t do anything because it hadn’t been a threat to its profitability. It acted only when the volume of clickbait became so great as to undermine its own usefulness.

Its new policy is a step in the right direction – but it will do nothing to curb the more insidious online problems of outraged and polarised debate, and misleading content placed there to incite crime and hatred. Those, alas, are continuing conundrums to which there really is no short answer.