The Verge today announced a piece called Inside CNET’s AI-Powered SEO Money Machine. It covers much of what Google searches reported on his reaction to BankRate last week, with more brands using AI to create their content. It also details how the company replaces low-cost humans with machines to generate low-quality content designed to rank higher in search.
Google’s Algorithm. All of this reminds me of the days of the Google Panda update, when Google built content farms and content discovery algorithms designed to generate search traffic. Currently aimed at discounting content written specifically for search rankings (rather than for users) with informative content updates – this strategy deployed by the Red Ventures website will eventually It seems set to fail – i.e. what they say they do when Google’s algorithm does.
Red Ventures goal. According to The Verge:
“Red Ventures’ business model is straightforward: publish content designed to rank well in Google searches for ‘intentional’ queries, and monetize that traffic with profitable affiliate links. increase. ”
This is especially against Google’s latest and most beneficial content update algorithm. This algorithm is intended to downgrade sites with content that was originally created for search engines (i.e. content created to rank in search and not be useful to users).
This article explains how these sites are trying to rank higher in the credit card space, turning that traffic into clicks and affiliate income. “Red Ventures has found a large niche in credit cards and other financial products,” the article explains.
This goes beyond just CNET. Red Ventures also owns The Points Guy, Bankrate and CreditCards.com, “all of which monetize through credit card affiliate fees,” they add.
“The CNET AI article at the center of the controversy is a clear example of this strategy: ‘Can I buy gift cards with my credit card?’ and ‘What is Zelle and how does it work?’ ?” Clearly designed to rank high in searches for these topics. Like CNET, Bankrate and CreditCards.com also publish AI-generated articles about credit cards with ads to open the cards. ”
Sound familiar?
content farm. Replace humans with AI to build content farms: content aimed at ranking in search, generating traffic, clicking on ads, earning affiliate revenue, and other publishing goals.
The article continues:
“Looking at it with irony, it makes perfect sense for Red Ventures to bring in AI, flooding Google’s search algorithm with content, trying to rank higher in a variety of valuable searches, and visiting We collect fees when people click to apply for a credit card or mortgage.AI lowers the cost of content creation and increases profit per click.The private equity firms that can resist this temptation are: None in the world.”
Wasn’t Google already working on such an effort with Panda, along with the collapse of the content farm? yet.
wordsmithThe tool used to generate this content is Wordsmith, which has been around for over a year and is used by other companies as well.
“A former CNET employee says Red Ventures was using automated technology in its content long before the AI byline came out in November. A tool called Wordsmith — used in a mortgage article. It’s been dubbed the “Mot Gotron” internally because it’s been used — but it’s been in use for at least a year and a half, they say.
Not new. Yes, for a year and a half this has been going on. But it has lasted longer.
It’s common in financial earnings news analysis, sports score news stories, and anything else that can be templatized to some degree. Machines can pull out the metrics and use the revised data to write sensible articles.
It’s cheap and serves its purpose. But is this the type of content Google wants to rank?
This is Glenn Gabe’s tweet showing how it worked many years ago.
Enough to rank. So with the layoffs of these publishers, they’ve increasingly figured out ways to have machines create content that ranks in search. writing.
“But a robot article on CNET doesn’t have to be ‘good’. Many people will open the article and click on the profitable affiliate his marketing link contained in it because they need to rank high in Google search. ”
it can’t last. I mean, you can’t keep working in the long run, which doesn’t last, right?
If Google has a say, it wants content written in a way designed to help users. If The Verge is accurate in stating that the intent of this AI-generated content is simply to rank higher in search, Google’s new helpful content his update should address that. I have. We may not be able to deal with it today, but we will have to deal with it in the future.
why you care. It’s tempting to find a low-cost way to generate endless amounts of content that ranks highly in Google searches. I mean, who doesn’t want to make a lot of money quickly for very little cost? But how long will that effort last? Is this a long term strategy? Looking back at these efforts, would you say that this is why Google rolled out helpful content updates?
Only time will tell, but it’s going to be very interesting to see this all run in the same way it’s done over the years with Panda, Penguin and other Google search algorithm updates .
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About the author
Barry Schwartz is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns his RustyBrick, his New York-based web consulting firm. He also runs the Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on highly advanced He SEM topics.You can follow Barry Twitter is here.
