Google’s Recent Measures Against AI-Generated Content and the Importance of Human Writers for SEO

The End of AI-Generated Content

Let’s start from the outcome of things. In a recent blog post last Tuesday (March 5th 2024) Google has decided to remove all AI-Generated content which was written in order to manipulate certain SEO strategies. This is in order to maintain the quality of online content and reduce the so-called “garbage” content which is generated in a manipulative way to inflate the rankings of the search algorithms. Google sees that as an artificial approach which hinders quality organic rankings. By removing AI-generated content, Google’s true aim is to ensure that users and readers are given authentic and reliable information, created by real humans.¹

How Was AI Used to Write Content For SEO?

It’s important to first address the fact that not every business owner has been purposefully trying to manipulate Google through AI, however the ones who had such thoughts in mind were essentially the ones who caused Google to take action. By manipulating Google through AI content which either focused on clickbaits, spam, chatbots and ranking alterations – Business owners were trying to manipulatively increase the ranking of their own business, however now we see that the opposite is true. It’s evident that content written by real humans is valued more, especially when it comes to SEO, as Google is able to somewhat accurately distinguish between AI and real human writing capabilities.

AI Clickbait & Spam

Google has always been battling clickbaits and spam, which is a never-ending battle, however with AI entering the picture, it has become a true hassle. Innocent unsuspecting users kept getting clickbaited, while spammy and clickbaity content was becoming too much of a  hindrance to Google’s guidelines. Some companies have utilized this spam & clickbait tactic for their SEO strategies: AI-generated content has been used to create sensationalized and misleading headlines, which directly led to a decline in the quality of search results. The lack of trust from the users has kept on increasing over time, and what we see now is Google’s battle against this, in order to restore Google’s search efficacy.²

Unreliable AI VS Reliable SEO

It’s evident that Google now considers AI-generated content as unreliable and not relevant information which only spams users with a massive amount of random articles. On the other hand, this has now truly given the stage to reliable information which is written directly by real humans, as most of the time AI-generated content fails to meet the criteria of writing like a real live person. What Google is trying to do right now is actually crucial for all users across the world, as taking measures against AI-generated content will improve the overall search experience for its users, and provide a more reliable source of information.³

IceWeb for example, uses the finest talent and has assembled a team of experts who are able to write top notch quality content, while also optimizing it through a world leading technology in order to make sure their content ranks at the very top of Google.

Additional Sources of SEO Abuse Through AI

There have been two additional strategies to abuse AI which directly affect SEO:
The first one, as most people have noticed by now, is to spam a website (Even a famous one) with various advertisements, discounts, and irrelevant nonsense that should not appear on it. The second one is to actually purchase an old and/or neglected website with high domain ranking, use AI to fill it with generated sporadic content and take over the rankings.⁴

These two approaches to manipulate the ranking of websites have been swarming the internet one after another and creating not only a major problem for Google, but also hurting the trust of their active users, as it has become difficult to avoid falling prey to misleading content, links or anything that was not related to the user’s initial interest.

Google’s Measures

We decided to examine what happened to all those websites which were quite literally created with AI, and the outcome is shocking. They’re gone. Gone from Google libraries and have been deindexed entirely. It’s impossible to find them even if one tries to search for their specific website’s name. They are nowhere to be found on Google.

Based on the data of an argentinian SEO expert, we can see examples of 10 websites which have been completely deindexed by Google. All examples include the website’s previous traffic and keyword count. The top website went from 4 million traffic and 900 thousand keywords to zero.⁵

It’s important to keep in mind that these websites which got penalized by Google, heavily relied on AI and were abusing it in order to rank on Google in order to generate revenue, which is what led to their ultimate demise.

SEO & Content Writing

After the latest course of events, writing your own content and avoiding spam and clickbaits is the way to go. When trying to publish content for your business it’s now advised to either do it yourself or hire an SEO agency to do it for your business, as casual and/or professional in-house writers will not have the proper skill set and understanding of Google’s ranking factors. By hiring an agency such as IceWeb to write and create content for the business, it both guarantees that a real and professional human being will create the content, while also keeping track and focusing on the ranking of the most competitive keywords. 

Bonus: Elections & AI Chatbot Ban

As a bonus, the elections have been a hot topic lately, and AI controversies appeared in that sphere as well. While one may have thought that AI had nothing to do with politics or had a way to intervene, that has not been the case.

Many people, it seems, turn to AI to ask questions about the elections and learn as much as they can, however it was discovered that the answers which a certain chatbot has been generating may have been not only highly biased, but absolutely unacceptable.

To battle this phenomenon, Google has issued a restriction to AI chatbot Gemini from answering any questions about the global elections set to happen this year. As a result, when the AI was asked about the upcoming elections between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Gemini responded with “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.”⁶

By issuing a ban on the AI chatbot, Google essentially prevented the meddling of third parties which were trying to shape the thoughts and decisions of its users. Third party tools should always stay neutral, and when bias is discovered, it may lead to dangerous outcomes for our society, regardless of which side the tool takes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Google has issued penalties to websites which have abused AI-generating content and tools, and has removed these websites from Google’s libraries. If a business does not wish to get de-indexed and suffer from such a harsh penalty, it’s advised to have a human writer create the content. Either with an in-house SEO team’s guidance or through a SEO agency such as IceWeb, which not only has world leading exclusive technologies at its disposal, but also the finest writers whose skills are unparalleled.