In the past, the only way to generate content for your website was to write it from scratch (or ‘take inspiration’ from someone else’s content). Now, with generative AI, you could theoretically publish hundreds of generic articles in a single afternoon, without any human involvement. But how well does this content perform in Google Search?
How well does 100% AI-generated content perform in Google Search?
A recent 16-month experiment conducted by Search Engine Land and SE Ranking investigated how well content written solely by AI would perform in Google Search. As part of the experiment, the team published 20 brand-new websites, each focusing on a unique industry. Each site was populated with 100 purely AI-generated articles that received no human editing *shudders*. The experiment revealed that AI-generated content:
- Ranked highly for the first three months of the experiment, with 28% of sites appearing in the top 100 Google Search results and 80% of sites ranking for at least 100 SEO keywords each.
- Quickly disappeared from Google Search after three months, with only 3% of sites remaining in the top 100 Google results—a 25% decrease from the first month.
In short, the experiment found AI-generated content performed well in the short term, but in the long term, the results just didn’t last.
Why doesn’t 100% AI-generated content perform well in the long run?
As we recently explored, Google Search is prioritising content that demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Essentially, Google prioritises content that’s most helpful to people and uses these aspects to assess quality and trust. Without human insight, the AI-generated content lacked:
- Unique insights: Google prioritises content that adds something new to the conversation, and can easily tell when you’ve reworded another source.
- Authority: Articles perform best with backlinks to previous content on your site or links to external expertise. Without these, the new websites were unable to compete with established, trusted sites.
How to generate better content
AI is a powerful and useful tool when you know how to use it. However, relying on it to generate content or ideas can lead to lower Google Search performance in the long run (not to mention losing trust with your audience, harming your brand, and running into potential legal or moral issues).
When it comes to generating AI content, the most important rule to remember is to be involved in the process. Here are some simple ways to use AI to help strengthen your content and stand out in Google:
- Fact-check your content against reliable sources: Don’t just take AI’s word for it; check everything is accurate and know where the information came from.
- Add unique insights: You’re the expert in your field. Add your insights and backlinks to your previous content.
- Understand your audience: You know your audience best, not AI. To ensure quality and consistency, edit your content to suit your brand’s tone of voice and provide the information your audience would find most helpful (and won’t get anywhere else).
- Ask an experienced writer to help: We often get presented with AI-generated content or ideas from new clients, and it’s our job to transform that content into something that’s unique, valuable, and represents your brand.
By keeping a human in the loop when creating AI-generated content, everyone wins.
