Google’s AI Content Guideline: What You Need To Know
Google has always been a strong advocate of quality & helpful content. With the era of AI-generated content rolling in, the search engine giant has modified its existing guidelines. So, let’s look at how it impacts SEO & how creators & business owners can create helpful content using AI.
Google Search on AI Content
Google understands that generative AI is going to have an important role to play in SEO. Therefore, it’s looking to incorporate AI-generated content into its long-standing principle of creating helpful content. In its official blog post, Google has advised creators who wish to use AI-generated text to follow Google’s new E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) qualities. Ultimately, the focus is on creating trustworthy people-first content that can help the intended target audience.
Content Parameters – Who, How, and Why
According to Google’s new helpful content parameters, creators must answer three essential questions when using artificially-generated content. They are:
‘Who’ is the author of the content?
While Google welcomes AI content, it also discourages the use of completely AI-generated articles. That’s why Google asks creators to clearly state the origin of their content.
Creators show that the content is a trustworthy article created by an industry expert by clearly stating the author & source information. This way, it will be better aligned with E-E-A-T.
‘How’ was the content created?
If your article has AI-generated sections, the readers should be aware of that information. In addition to disclosing the information, creators should also explain why they used AI to create the content.
‘Why’ is the content necessary?
This third & most important question will ensure that creators don’t abuse AI to generate ‘spammy’ content that’s not useful to customers. Any content that doesn’t help users violates Google’s spam policies as it is solely created to attract search engine visits.
What’s considered ‘Spammy’ Content
Google rewards original, helpful & trustworthy content that adds value to users. To help creators use content from AI wisely, Google has outlined the following example cases:
- Content blocks that contain search keywords but have no apparent meaning.
- AI-translated text that isn’t curated or reviewed by humans.
- Content blocks that don’t add to the quality or reader’s experience.
- Uncurated text with automated synonymizing, paraphrasing, or obfuscation
- Content scraped from search results & website feeds.
- Content created by combining multiple sources but not adding any significant value.
Google’s latest guideline modifications & the creation of Bard (its new AI search assistant) show us that it doesn’t discourage content from generative AI & actually encourages authors to use it properly. So, let’s learn & adapt!