Is AI-Generated Content Hurting Your Website’s Rankings?

If there has been one major focus in the past 2 years that has revolutionized digital marketing, it’s the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although it’s still in its infancy stage, AI is quickly becoming an essential tool for creating content such as articles, social media posts, blog posts, and more. While this new technology is convenient, it’s raised concerns about its potential impact on website rankings and search engine performance.

At Metapixel we’ve been experimenting with AI to craft content more efficiently and effectively, and studying how it performs on search engines. What we have found is that while AI-generated content can be a powerful tool for content creation, it can negatively impact your website’s rankings if not used properly. In this article, we will explore the question: Can the use of AI-generated content hurt your rankings?

The Adoption Of AI-Generated Content

About two years ago, the world was introduced to arguably the most well-known AI tool that’s available today, Chat-GPT. Although it’s not the first of its kind, it quickly became the most famous and widely used AI language model for various tasks. Since then we have seen several AI-powered content generation tools come out into the market offering different niches from video creation/editing, to creating images based on prompts,  to generating SEO-optimized written content. This rapid adoption of AI tools stems from the idea that AI tools can increase efficiency, reduce costs, and it’s the ability to generate large volumes of content quickly. 

These AI models, such as GPT-4, Claude, Jasper, and others, can create articles, blogs, and even entire websites in just a matter of seconds allowing businesses to streamline content production processes, creating more content in less time. According to an article written by Siege Media, “81.5% of B2B and 87.7% of B2C businesses plan to use AI content generation tools to assist their content marketing efforts in 2024”. While this substantial demand for AI tools cannot be ignored, as with any new technology, it does not come without its pitfalls and potential challenges. 

Search engines, such as Google, continuously update their algorithms to evaluate what they determine to be quality content. In August 2024, Google even launched a new core update to Google Search with the sole focus to provide more results that were helpful, and less generic content that was purely made to perform well on search. This shift has raised concerns and questions, especially in the digital marketing community, on whether or not search engines look down upon utilizing AI-generated content and even penalize websites for doing so. 

While this relationship between AI-generated content and search engines is complex and multifaceted, search engines have a strong stance when it comes to utilizing AI tools to generate content. Google, the world’s largest search engine, continues to emphasize the quality and the authenticity of the content that is produced is the most important factor when it comes to rankings. That said, this raises the question of whether AI can produce high quality,helpful content that meets the standards of search engines such as Google. 

Understanding Google’s Stance on AI-Generated Content

Google seems to have a clear and consistent stance on AI-generated content with the overall message that whether it’s AI or human-generated, content quality and user value are the most important factors in website rankings. According to an article by Search Engine Journal, “Google prioritizes high-quality content, regardless of whether humans or machines generated it”. When it comes to Google, they use what is known as E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), for evaluating content. These guidelines emphasize the importance of proving expertise, and credibility within the content while providing accurate information. For example, when providing results for the search query “ADHD treatment” Google wants to do its best to ensure that the results are from sources that have the experience and expertise to speak on the subject. A professional psychologist would be able to do so. An AI content generator tool can  certainly generate content quickly, however, its capability to provide all aspects of E-E-A-T can fall short and even provide false information.

Moreover, the search engine has cautioned against using AI to manipulate search rankings or create content specifically for search engine rankings rather than for the end users. These practices are considered to be a violation of Google’s policies and can result in penalties or significantly decrease website rankings. 

The Risk Factors of Utilizing AI-generated Content for SEO

AI tools can offer countless benefits but they also introduce several potential risks that could negatively impact your website’s search engine rankings. Understanding these risks is an essential part of developing a successful content strategy that utilizes AI technology without risking SEO performance. Here are some risk factors you should consider with the utilization of AI content. 

Lack Of Originality: One of the first and primary concerns about utilizing AI tools is their ability to produce fresh and original content. By nature, these AI models are designed to take from pre-existing data, meaning that they produce content that resembles or even mimics content that already exists throughout the internet. Without significant editing, AI content can be a carbon copy or a near-carbon copy of already existing content that already exists. Not only does this have the potential to negatively impact your rankings but also increases the likelihood of plagiarism. Search engines not only favor original content but require original content to rank well on their site. While you might be able to rank AI content for low volume, low competition keywords, you will struggle for search queries with more competition. Google is looking for originality, high-value content, and while AI can get content some of the way there, content with a human touch will outperform. A real human writer is able to add real life experience and opinions to make content truly original.

Limited Scope and Expertise: We know that AI can offer large amounts of content for various topics, but also can lack in-depth knowledge and expertise that a true human expert in that field can offer. Depending on the topic, AI is limited to the information it is given and therefore may provide limited or broad information. Looking back on Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, expertise and authority are among the crucial aspects that they look for while evaluating content. 

 Lacking Up-to-Date Information: With the vast amount of information on the internet, this can pose both a benefit and a downfall when it comes to AI producing perfectly accurate information. This is true for most topics, but particularly true for topics such as recent news, medical topics, etc. As new information comes to light, such as in current court cases or recently published medical studies, some AI models may not have all the most up-to-date information on the most recent findings. A good example of this is when using GPT-4. If you ask it, “when was your knowledgebase last updated?”, it will give you an answer from sometime in the past. In our case, it’s showing that its latest knowledgebase update was from September 2023, an entire year ago. Having inaccurate information on your website will have a significant negative impact on website rankings as credibility is one of the most essential factors when it comes to website rankings. If the information is severely outdated, Google might even choose to not even index your content too.  

Over-optimization and Keyword Stuffing: There are some AI content generation tools specifically designed to optimize content for specific keywords. However, If you have experience with search engine optimization, you will know that keyword stuffing and obvious optimization tactics can hurt website rankings. While these AI tools may get better over time, if not carefully monitored and regulated, these models may use these uninformed tactics, ultimately hurting your search engine optimization efforts.

Concerns Over Ethics and Transparency: With the growing popularity of AI and its utilization to create content, search engines, and its users become increasingly concerned about the ethical practices that can come along with it. Not disclosing or denying the use of AI, can hurt website rankings if the content was AI generated. For example, this article, in its early stages, was generated by AI. However, we utilized AI as the “structure” for the article and then we added our knowledge, expertise, experience, and more importantly, the human element that AI can’t provide. 

To avoid these potential pitfalls, a mixed and balanced approach is the key to SEO success.

Finding The Right Balance Between Human and Machine 

Going back to the question, Is AI-generated content hurting your website’s rankings? There is not a simple yes or no answer, rather the answer depends solely on how you utilize AI. If you copy and paste word-for-word the content that the AI model provides, your chances of SEO success may be slim. On the other hand, not using AI at all can have its own challenges such as significantly slowing down the content creation process. 

The most effective content creation strategy is to have a mixed and balanced approach between utilizing AI to create the “structure” of your content while ensuring you go back and adding your voice, your expertise, your credibility, and your unique human element to the content. Rather than using AI as a replacement for producing content, use it for what it was meant to be, a tool. 

The human element is important for a variety of reasons including, adding depth, ensuring accuracy, maintaining brand voice, and creating content with creativity and emotional intelligence that connects with your audience. At the end of the day, if your goal is to create content that brings organic traffic to your website you will need to be creating that’s better than the competition. While AI-generated content can help shape the content, using it without any sort of human touch will result in content that doesn’t rank well.  

Best Practices for Utilizing AI Tools To Generate Content

Use AI as a tool, not a replacement: Use AI for tasks like research, outlines, and first drafts, but never forget the human element you can bring to the table.

Prioritize quality over quantity: You should never produce content, to simply produce content. Have a reason for producing content preferably on a topic that you are an expert in or at least on a topic you are willing to significantly research. AI can be a tool for research and structure but remember to add your human knowledge, expertise, and tone. 

Maintain a strong editorial process: As mentioned, utilize AI as a tool, not a replacement. Let AI help guide you and streamline your content creation process, but always go back, edit, and put your voice in the content. Additionally, editing ensures that the information given is accurate and relevant while aligning it with your brand’s voice. 

Focus on user experience: Put simply, write for your audience, not for search engines. This may sound contradictory, but writing for the sole purpose of ranking well, can actually be harmful to your website rankings. Instead, produce content that the end user will care about and resonate with. Make sure your content is not only accurate but also content that the audience will want to read or watch whether it is for informational purposes or that simply provides entertainment value. 

Be transparent: At Metapixel, we utilize AI for content creation all of the time. However, we understand that an over-reliance on AI can not only hurt your website rankings but potentially hurt your credibility as well. If you use AI in your content creation, just be open about it. It is no secret that many people and companies utilize AI, at least in part, to create content. If you correctly utilized AI, you can be proud of your content and be able to create it in a much more efficient way. 

Continuously measure and optimize: This mixed approach may take some time to perfect and may take some “trial and error”. Always look at how your content is resonating with audiences and how it is ranking. If you see that your content isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped, switch it up. Whether it is using less AI or addressing what you suspect may be the underlying issues. Keep practicing and you will find the right mix between AI and adding your own voice in your content. 

By adopting this balanced approach, you can utilize the power of AI to improve your content strategy without compromising your SEO performance. Remember, the goal is not to simply produce more content, but to create better, more valuable content that serves both your audience and your SEO objectives.

At Metapixel, we offer SEO services that utilize the same strategy as outlined in this article. We understand the power of AI but also use our knowledge and expertise to craft content that ranks well but always keeping the end user at top of mind. If you are in need of SEO services or have questions about content creation and how it relates to SEO, let us know. We would be happy to help! 

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