It’s Official: Google Is Happy With AI Content

Excerpt

Full speed ahead!

Published Date

Feb 17, 2023

Hide in Main Feed

Featured Image

Author

Mack Grenfell

Since starting Byword, I’ve been asked countless times about the dangers of posting AI content onto a site. Will it be detected? Will Google penalise me? Will it tank the rest of my content?

I’ve argued previously that not only has Google done very little to stem the rise of AI content, but also that they have no incentive to fight back against it. Since the publication of that article however, Google have officially come out and confirmed my stance there, that whether an article is written by AI is irrelevant to its rankings.

Here’s Google’s blog post if you want to read it for your yourself. In the rest of this article, I’m going to focus on some key points that they raise, and what that means for (AI-powered) SEO going forward.

What exactly have Google said?

The single most telling line in Google’s update is:

Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.

This line confirms what I’ve written previously on the topic; Google is a user-focused company that cares far more about delivering high quality user experience than anything else. It’s irrelevant to them how any given article was produced - all that matters is that it contributes to a good experience for the user.

Google’s stance here is highly unlikely to change. I say this as the main competitive threat to Google Search is the potential for rivals (Bing) to deliver a better user experience by surfacing AI-generated snippets. Insofar as Google doesn’t want to lose market share to competitors, on the grounds of being outcompeted on user experience, I can’t see Google deviating from the stance in the quote above.

Historical context

One of the more interesting parts of Google’s blog post is the way in which they frame the recent proliferation of AI tools in context of a broader historical trend towards automation. They write:

Automation has long been used to generate helpful content, such as sports scores, weather forecasts, and transcripts. AI has the ability to power new levels of expression and creativity, and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web.

By writing this, Google are confirming several points:

They do genuinely believe that automation (which AI falls under) has the power to improve user experience, doubling-down on the other quote I referenced above.

They’ve been pro-automation historically; they’re not just suddenly coming out and embracing it in the face of competitive threats from Bing.

Both of these points go to show that Google is firmly in favour of the use of AI to generate helpful content, and that this is unlikely to change going forwards.

Some exceptions

Certain parts of Google’s post reference appropriate use of artificial intelligence; signalling that there are some cases where Google is likely to take issue with the use of AI.

Specifically, these are cases where AI is used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings. Google’s choice to use the word manipulate here is notably vague, and arguably could encompass the whole of SEO.

Realistically though, I think it’s fair to understand Google as taking aim at incredibly low-grade AI content, the sort that anyone would pick up on as machine generated. This sort of content is typically produced at extreme scales, using cheaper AI models to balance out costs. I referenced one such site in my last blog post.

The fact that I’ve not seen any hits applied to sites using Byword’s content gives at least one data point; that Byword’s content isn’t seen as intending to manipulate search rankings.

What does this mean going forward?

I’m hoping that Google’s message here starts to calm the debate that’s currently raging over the risks of hosting AI content. To quote Google, AI content is just content. It’s not held to any special standards, nor is it likely to pose any risk to your site. The only possible risks are those incurred by using low-grade, spam-first AI generators. As long as you steer clear of these, there’s no reason to avoid AI content tools.

While there will always be some topics on which AI can’t compete with a human, there are plenty of topics where the two sit on a level footing. The huge economic differences between the two production methods though, it’s likely that AI-generated content will quickly come to dominate a majority of results pages.