More From Google On AI Content - It's About If The Content Is Helpful

Nov 8, 2022 - 7:21 am 1 by

Minion Typing

Since the October Spam update and the helpful content update, many SEOs are saying AI-generated content is being targeted by Google. The answer, as I said previously, is not really. Danny Sullivan from Google said again, it is not about if a human or a machine wrote it but rather if the content is helpful. But in general, Danny said content by the people for the people is what makes the content generally helpful.

Danny said on Twitter "We haven't said AI content is bad. We've said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue." Danny added, "If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank, or fires up a spinner, or a AI, same issue..." That specific type of case we covered here.

Then Danny went on to add that generally it is "unlikely some AI content is going to feel written by people without some degree of human review." He said it is important for the content to be written "*by people* for people in our post about improvements like the helpful content system." "So if you're an SEO trying to figure out how AI fits in with being successful or not on Google, you're too focused on the tool not the content. Is the content you're producing helpful, reliable and people-first in nature? That's what we're looking for," he explained.

Here are those tweets, but click through to see the full thread:

So no, Google is not specifically looking for AI content. Like we covered earlier some sites just doing a really poor job of machine generated content are also being hit. Google is just better at understanding when content is spammy or low quality, when content is helpful or not, and then the rankings should represent that. Google is not perfect and I am sure you all can share examples of AI generated content doing well but hey, just a few months ago Google said machine generated content is not good enough yet. As you may remember, for the past several years, Google has been saying that when machine generated or AI generated content becomes high quality, it might be something that Google allows within its search webmaster guidelines.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: One more tidbit, I joked about this and Danny had a nice quotable response:

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: February 14, 2025

Feb 14, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Super Bowl Volatility, Reddit Blames Google, Search Is Faster & Reviews Bug Fix

Feb 14, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Merchant Listing New Membership Loyalty Pricing Property

Feb 14, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Article Links To Product Snippet Overlays

Feb 14, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Dropped Minimum Required Budget For Local Service Ads

Feb 14, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads New Performance Max Search Themes Indicator

Feb 14, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: More Spend On PPC Than SEO, Twitter Poll