When you Google “Golden Corral menu prices,” the first source cited in Google’s AI overview is the website golden-corral.us.
The site is loaded with information about Golden Corral, including prices, a nutrition calculator, and even a nifty “AI buffet plate builder” tool.
But it has no official connection to the buffet chain.
“Golden-corral.us is an independent resource and is not affiliated with Golden Corral,” reads the fine print at the bottom of the site. “This website is for informational purposes only.”
It is one of dozens, if not hundreds, of bogus restaurant websites populating the internet. There are similar sites for McDonald’s, Chipotle, Olive Garden, Cracker Barrel, Denny’s, Applebee’s, and more.
Indeed, search for any big chain, and you are likely to find a shadow site lurking nearby, usually several entries below the real thing on Google.
And while some of them could be fan pages created in good faith, most are likely clickbait used to sell ads.
“It's possible to make hundreds of dollars a month on revenue from people clicking on ads on a web page,” said Robert Wahl, a computer science professor at Concordia University in Wisconsin. “In a lot of cases, it's a few small organizations that figure out that this works, that this can generate some revenue, and then they just replicate that process for different restaurants.”
Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to create a professional-looking website these days, he added.
Most of these sites are not ill-intentioned, per se, though some of them can contain malware that can harm the user’s computer. A shadow site for Olive Garden, for instance, was flagged in an email for being potentially malicious.
But the bigger issue for restaurant brands is that the actual information on the sites can’t be trusted and could mislead or confuse unsuspecting consumers, especially in cases where they are being treated as legitimate sources by Google.
“[Restaurants] certainly don't want anybody getting misinformation from a website that's not theirs,” Wahl said.
Restaurant Business reached out to several restaurant brands about these false sites.
Denny’s said it is aware of them and that it does keep an eye on them. In an email, VP of Brand Strategy and Communications Meredith Thornton said the sites are just part of life in the AI era.
“We're entering an environment where every brand effectively has unofficial digital shadows, websites, aggregators, AI-generated summaries, and third-party platforms that can replicate information at a scale we haven't seen before,” she wrote.
As AI makes it easier to create content, trust and authenticity become even more valuable, she added. “Brands will need to invest as much in helping consumers identify authoritative information as they do in publishing it.”
Applebee’s parent Dine Brands similarly says it keeps a lookout for digital impersonators and routinely takes action against them. It noted that it can’t vouch of the accuracy of the information on the third-party sites.
The biggest victims of these so-called made-for advertising (MFA) websites may be advertisers themselves, which often have no way to prevent some of their digital ad spending from flowing to these low-quality websites.
According to a 2023 report by the Association of National Advertisers, 23% of automated digital advertising is wasted on MFA sites, or about $20 billion a year.
There seems to be no clear tally of how many MFA websites exist on the web, but they do generate a significant amount of traffic. According to the Association of National Advertisers, they accounted for 1 in 5 online impressions as of 2023, and the availability of AI tools will likely only make them more pervasive.
“I wouldn't expect this to go away,” Wahl said. “It's going to be out there as another potential problem of the internet being open and free.”
Attempts to contact the owners of some of the false restaurant websites were unsuccessful.
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