Google is de-indexing companies over artificial intelligence. Do you have a fail-safe plan?

[Ronnie Bryan]

To learn more about the future of AI and what actions Google has taken and is planning on taking, read the blog post from originality.ai

Can Google Detect and Does it Penalize AI Content

Get insights into Google's measures against AI-generated content and steps to ensure your website remains unaffected. Explore how Google's latest update has penalized AI content, leading to the deindexing of 1446 sites.

originality.ai

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MarxMelencio]

Ronnie Bryan,

When it comes to Google's SERP algos — I for one tend to trust what they themselves publicly announce and consistently publish.
Meanwhile, I tend to suspect groups that clearly have a commercial vested interest in contradicting what Google's saying.

More so if that group publishes a poorly executed research study that doesn't factor in what the algo designers themselves say they're consistently implementing over the years.
For instance, A group with a clear commercial interest in having more content publishers believe they should check their AI-generated content for "human" or "AI" percentages shouldn't design nor publish a research study that focuses solely on AI-generatedness as an end-all-be-all correlation metric for de-indexing.
That's because the same group should've focused more on spamminess as a metric with more weight then analyzing results to scientifically find out if any measurable correlation exists between AI-generatedness and de-indexing.
Especially if the algo designers themselves stated that spamminess, helpfulness, timeliness and relevant value for readers have always been their ranking metrics.

Supplementlal Info
Here's what Google publicly announced last year (Feb 8, 2023), which they have NEVER recanted as of today:

QUOTE:

At Google, we've long believed in the power of AI to transform the ability to deliver helpful information.
In this post, we'll share more about how AI-generated content fits into our long-standing approach to show helpful content to people on Search.

Rewarding high-quality content, however it is produced
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.

For example, about 10 years ago, there were understandable concerns about a rise in mass-produced yet human-generated content.
No one would have thought it reasonable for us to declare a ban on all human-generated content in response.
Instead, it made more sense to improve our systems to reward quality content, as we did.

Focusing on rewarding quality content has been core to Google since we began.
It continues today, including through our ranking systems designed to surface reliable information and our helpful content system.
The helpful content system was introduced last year to better ensure those searching get content created primarily for people, rather than for search ranking purposes.

How automation can create helpful content
When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years.
Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.

Google has many years of experience dealing with automation being used in an attempt to game search results.
Our spam-fighting efforts— including our SpamBrain system — will continue, however spam is produced.

This said, it's important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam.
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.
This is in line with how we've always thought about empowering people with new technologies.
We'll continue taking this responsible approach, while also maintaining a high bar for information quality and the overall helpfulness of content on Search.

Our advice for creators considering AI-generation
As explained, however content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T.

Creators can learn more about the concept of E-E-A-T on our Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page.
In addition, we've updated that page with some guidance about thinking in terms of Who, How, and Why in relation to how content is produced.

Evaluating your content in this way, whether you're using AI-generated content or not, will help you stay on course with what our systems seek to reward.

Posted by Danny Sullivan and Chris Nelson, on behalf of the Google Search Quality team

/QUOTE

source = Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content | Google Search Central Blog | Google for Developers

Just my 0.02 USD, for what it's worth.

 

[MarxMelencio]

Additional Data
• Here's a report with qualitative data that was published by SEMRush on Jan 31 this ear ...

QUOTE:

• The study analyzed over 2,600 businesses globally providing critical insights into the current state and future trends of AI in content marketing.
• 67% of businesses already use AI for content marketing and SEO, and 78% are satisfied with the results.

Key Takeaways
** 65% of businesses generate better SEO results thanks to AI.
** 67% also see an improvement in content quality when using AI.
** 68% get a higher content marketing ROI due to AI.
** 37% of companies that don’t use AI don’t understand how it works.
** 93% review their AI-generated content before publishing it.
** The majority of consumers tend to prefer AI-generated copy.

• In other words, businesses using AI tools report higher effectiveness in their content marketing efforts and better results in attracting organic traffic.

/QUOTE

source = New Report Reveals the Top AI Content and SEO Trends for 2024

 

[buildpath]

Mack at Byword also analyzed dover 5,000 sites from Byword's user base and found that most saw a small increase in traffic, even after the March 2024 spam update. The sites that lost traffic were overwhelmingly found to be doing domain reputation abuse, meaning they had a strong domain and were trying to get traffic for content outside of their niches. THe average loss was around 6% for those sites.

An excerpt from his email is below:

The Surprising Finding​ Here's where things get interesting. When we initially ran the content type analysis, we had a "Not Applicable" category for sites where the LLM couldn't determine a clear content focus. These sites, which covered a broad range of topics, performed significantly worse than all other categories. They saw a 26.4% drop in traffic between February and March, significantly underperforming all other categories.​

This finding aligns with the advice I've given since launching Byword: focus your content on specific niches. The temptation to cover every loosely related topic is strong with AI writing tools, but it's a risky strategy. The few Byword sites we've seen hit by previous updates were guilty of this. Re-running the numbers without these unfocused sites, we found that overall traffic was actually up 6.2% month-on-month. The remaining 82% of Byword sites had a fairly positive month, despite the post-update panic on social media. Key Takeaways​ So, what can we learn from this? Don't believe the hype. Selection bias means you're more likely to see horror stories than success stories after an update. The March update was pretty uneventful. A 1.5% drop or 6.2% rise (depending on how you slice it) is nothing to write home about. Focus your content on specific niches. Trying to cover every topic under the sun is a recipe for disaster, even with AI tools. The March update has caused plenty of panicked headlines, but our data tells a much less dramatic story. Keep creating focused, high-quality content, and don't let the headlines distract you from your long-term strategy.​

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MarxMelencio]

@buildpath,

Thanks for sharing this.
• Hmmm ... Google never really liked thin content.
** But I can understand how some may think "thinness" is all about volume. And topic coverage.
** After all, remnants of the article-directory-submission-strategy-of-the-2000s still haunt us. To this day.

But yeah. I think this circles back to Google's E-A-T metrics for their SERP algo.
• And I think they're investing heavily in continuing to take more mature steps towards that direction.
** I mean, imagine the value of robust search products.
** More so if it can rank content based on the user's search intent journey in tandem with the publisher's expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

 

[buildpath]

@buildpath,

Thanks for sharing this.
• Hmmm ... Google never really liked thin content.
** But I can understand how some may think "thinness" is all about volume. And topic coverage.
** After all, remnants of the article-directory-submission-strategy-of-the-2000s still haunt us. To this day.

But yeah. I think this circles back to Google's E-A-T metrics for their SERP algo.
• And I think they're investing heavily in continuing to take more mature steps towards that direction.
** I mean, imagine the value of robust search products.
** More so if it can rank content based on the user's search intent journey in tandem with the publisher's expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

Maybe that's Google's stated goal but Forbes, OutlookIndia, USNews, JPost, and 8 year old dead reddit threads dominating serps doesn't really jive with that.

Anyway the search interface as we know it will be gone soon enough (search and get listings to check through)

 

[MarxMelencio]

@buildpath,

[SNIP]Maybe that's Google's stated goal but Forbes, OutlookIndia, USNews, JPost, and 8 year old dead reddit threads dominating serps doesn't really jive with that.[/SNIP]

But I think it does. No search product is better, in my opinion.
• It just isn't bug-free, though. Especially since it's in constant development.
** They ought to do that. With thousands of groups simultaneously trying different tactics, persistently, to game their SERP algo.

I mean, if I were Google, I'd pay attention to building search products enhanced to make use of bleeding edge tech.
• With the race to AGI and all. And with Google being a top seed in this.
** And even without that in the mix, they're commercially invested in taking care of their search products.

[SNIP]Anyway the search interface as we know it will be gone soon enough (search and get listings to check through)[/SNIP]

I think it'll change. It's bound to.
• But it won't vanish. It isn't easy, and it isn't quick, to get rid of a 25-year old global habit of now up to 8.5 billion searches a day.
** Neither would a 25-year old billion $$$ corporation allow themselves to not take a lead role in those changes.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.