Since October’s spam update and helpful content update, many SEOs say AI-generated content is being targeted by Google. As I said before, the answer is no. Google’s Danny Sullivan has repeatedly said that it matters whether the content is useful, not whether it was written by a human or a machine. But in general, Danny said content by people for people is what makes content generally useful.
Danny said twitter “We’re not saying AI content is bad. I’m here. “If someone wakes up his 100 humans and has them create content just for ranking purposes, or spinners or his AI, it’s the same problem…” type of case.
Danny continued, adding that in general, “some AI content is unlikely to feel like it was written by a human without some level of human review.” He said it’s important that content is written “*by people* for people in our posts about improvements like helpful content systems.” If you’re trying to figure out how AI fits into whether or not it succeeds at Google, you’re focusing too much on tools rather than content: The content you’re creating must be helpful, trustworthy, and people-friendly. “That’s what we’re looking for,” he explained.
These tweets are below, but click to view the entire thread.
I’m not saying AI content is bad. We’ve made it pretty clear that content written primarily for search engines, not humans, is the problem. If someone fires up his 100 humans and has them create content just for ranking, or fire spinners or AI, you’ll have the same problem…
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 7, 2022
So SEOs trying to understand how AI fits into their success or failure at Google are too focused on tools, not content. Is the content you’re creating helpful, trustworthy, and people-first? That’s what we’re looking for: https://t.co/rIKwa9fs7R
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 7, 2022
No, Google isn’t specifically looking for AI content. As we’ve covered before, sites that do very poorly with machine-generated content are also being hit. Google is great at understanding if your content is spam or low quality and if your content is helpful, and your ranking should reflect that. Google isn’t perfect. I’m sure you can all share examples of AI-generated content working well, but just a few months ago Google said machine-generated content wasn’t good enough yet. As you may remember, over the past few years, Google has said that once machine-generated or AI-generated content is of high quality, Google may allow it within the Search Webmaster Guidelines.
forum discussion at twitter.
Update: One more tidbit of information. I joked about this and Danny gave a nice, quotable response.
If you’re asking yourself how to make your content more human, you’re missing the point of creating content for people.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 8, 2022