The Self Serving Listicle Problem in Google SERPs

     People have recently been talking about self-serving listicles (e.g. writing a list of "The Top SEO Consultants in North Hampshire, UK" on my own website listing myself as Number 1 🙃 ) being a "spammy" tactic that has appeared to be working for Generative Engine Optimisation (improving visibility for some "best X" type-prompts in LLMs like Chat GPT). Lily Ray has noticed that some sites doing this AT SCALE are seeing a visibility decline on Google.

   At the same time, 5/7 of the first page of "blue link" Google results (I notice there is no AI Overview displayed for this phrase unlike for many similar searches nor any Knowledge Graph - it may be that AI Overviews are replacing Knowledge Graph lists in Google search ) for the search "best branding agencies" (avg. monthly search volume on Google in the UK = 390) from a check in my browser are self-serving listicles. 

     I note that one US branding agency has created a separate (classifiable by GOOG as "pure spam"?) "self-promotional listicle website" to self promote with listicles with which is ranking on the first page for "best branding agencies" in the UK with ONLY 30 (mostly) paid links (according to Ahrefs data).