With Artificial Intelligence seemingly becoming integrated into almost all digital products and services, it can be difficult to determine when they are appropriate to use for business matters like marketing. However, based on recent reports coming from Google, it seems as though the search engine we know and love is moving away from AI generated content. This begs the question, could using artificially generated content hinder your digital marketing efforts? Let’s find out.
Why AI-Generated Content Often Fails to Rank
Search engine optimization, the process of making your website rank higher in search results, is the heart of digital marketing. Its main goal is to increase website visibility and traffic, which in turn increases ranking within search engines. However, recent reports are claiming that websites which contain primarily AI generated content will be marked as low quality by Google. This results in being ranked lower in searches since Google wants to present the highest quality results to its users. Using AI to make text bodies and images for your site may seem like a good approach to filling up empty space, but AI generated content often lacks originality, expertise, and trustworthiness. A majority of AI generated content is derivative, making it often un-original and therefore lacking quality. As Google places value on original and high-quality content, AI generated content will usually hurt your Search ranking.
Recent Changes to the Ranking System
Google has always prioritized quality and efficiency in its practices over anything else. In an effort to maintain this level of integrity, Google is coming down on AI generated content. With this, Google has made some changes to their policies on what they consider to be spam and filler content.
AI Considered Spam
According to recent reports, Google has expanded their rules and definitions of spam and generative content. In short, this means that when the majority of a website’s content is low-quality and derivative like the kind artificial intelligence often produces, they will be given the lowest rating. Google themselves have even stated explicitly that “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate Google’s spam policy on scaled content abuse.” This update to Google’s spam policy shows that for the time being, AI generated content has the potential to greatly hinder your websites visibility and rankings.
Filler Content
Yet, how does one know what Google considers to be low-quality content? Well, according to Google, “If you’re using generative AI content on your website, make sure your work meets the standards of the Search Essentials and our spam policies.” These documents explain in detail what Google does and doesn’t want to show its users when it comes to content. This is primarily what they now consider to be filler content, which is writing that looks impressive, until it is actually read and its lack of credibility becomes apparent. AI generated content, due to its derivative nature, is often flagged as filler content. This lowers a site’s authority score from Google, and results in lower rankings on queries.
How Does Google Detect AI Content?
Before the rise of AI, Google primarily used Search Engine Evaluators who were individuals hired to read and rate websites for their content’s quality. These raters were often hired through third parties, but trained and tested by a set of standards put forth by Google. In the present, Google uses bots called “crawlers”, which crawl websites and evaluate the content found on them. The goal of this process is to make sure users are given the highest quality results relative to their queries. This process has a lot of depth and as previously mentioned by Google’s CEO, they have many processes in place to determine website quality and the presence of artificially generated content.
Using AI Content
AI generated content is often used as a work around for those unwilling or without the ability to write their own content. Copying content directly from a chatbot like ChatGPT with no revisions will almost always result in your website being flagged as artificially generated. This doesn’t mean AI content can’t be used at all, but rather must be used responsibly. Using AI chatbots for brainstorming is an effective way to create content at a faster pace. Making sure the sources and data presented by the chatbot are accurate is also key to not being flagged as low-quality.
However, at this point in time, nothing seems to be able to replace human-made original content when it comes to quality ratings by Google’s detection software. That is why it is always advisable to utilize a quality digital marketing service, like the kind we produce here at Rise, for your content creating needs. If you need help creating SEO-optimized content for your website, contact Rise Marketing Group today for a free consultation.
