[input_sh]

> surely you'd have to trick Google into visiting the /search? url in order to get it indexed

That's trivially easy. Imagine a spammer creating some random page which links to your website with that made up query parameter. Once Google indexes their page and sees the link to your page, Google's search console complains to you as the victim that this page doesn't exist. You as in the victim have no insight into where Google even found that non-existent path.

> Since these are very low quality results surely one of Google's 10000 engineers can tweak this away.

You're assuming there's still people at Google who are tasked with improving actual search results and not just the AI overview at the top. I have my doubts Google still has such people.

[Neil44]

I messed around with our website trying url encoded hyperlinks etc but it was all escaped pretty well. I bet there's a lot of tricks out there for those with time on their hands. Why anyone would bother creating content when Google AI summary is effectively going to steal it to intercept your click is beyond me. So the whole issue will solve it's self when google has nothing to index except endless regurgitated slop and everyone finally logs off and goes outside.