Can AI generated content really get you penalised?

Are you caught in the middle of a conflict between artificial intelligence (AI) content generation and Google’s ominous statements about penalising websites with AI-generated content?

Virtually every aspect of the internet is being invaded by artificial intelligence, which helps people create content more quickly and effectively while also improving their writing skills.

Although AI tools are increasingly a necessity, their expansion raises concerns about whether or not writers should use them.

Additionally, a little bit of conversation can also raise issues such as “Can Google really penalise AI content?” and get them trending online. There are many various viewpoints on why Google would act in such a manner and what the overall situation is.

Here we’ll talk about whether Google truly does penalise AI based content generation in an effort to put an end to the loop of worries and to these questions. Let’s get started!

Is AI generated content bad for SEO as per Google

Google will continue to warn that AI generated blog posts do not adhere to webmaster guidelines, but it is unlikely to give a specific explanation given the stringent standards. Furthermore, given that Google themselves uses AI, wouldn’t it be weird for them to prohibit auto generated content in favour of enhancing user experience?

An AI model called “Switch Transformer,” created by Google Brain researchers, scales up to 1.6T parameters.

We can draw the conclusion that Google theoretically has the ability to find AI generated content quickly if they so choose by contrasting this to the GPT-3 model, which contains 175 billion parameters.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t be aware of the flaws in AI based content production tools or that we shouldn’t take these warnings seriously. Depending on how you approach AI content generation for your website, Google may punish AI generated content that you publish.

 

So, does Google actually know how to detect AI-generated content?

It’s a question that can only be best-answered with all the other conditions tagged along that plays a crucial role here. Google doesn’t require complex AI technologies to determine whether or not content is valuable to people.

Google keeps track of additional statistics to determine whether an item is valuable, including bounce rates and time spent on page (among many more). Hence, though Google theoretically has the ability to track AI generated content, will Google do so, is a much more apt question.

And since now we know how they have a different way of doing things at Google, therefore instead of penalising your site what will probably happen is your site will likely fall in the SERPS after a few weeks if you plan on hiring an AI writer to produce thousands of AI generated blog posts for you without reading any of them. But that doesn’t mean they won’t penalise your site in the future.

 

How can Google’s Webmaster Guidelines penalise your auto-generated content?

The documentation on advanced SEO found in Google’s webmaster guidelines, states that any AI generated content which contains:

1. SEO methods include keyword manipulation, which involves creating content mechanically that the reader won’t comprehend but that still contains search terms.
2. Text that has been automatically translated using translation techniques, without human review or editing.
3. Programmatically AI based content is created using automated techniques like Markov chains.
4. Shuffling approaches, which produce content by using automated technology for synonymization or obfuscation (content spinning).
5. Combining material by extracting text from several web pages, search results, or Atom/RSS feeds.
6. Not adding enough value – when content from different web pages is integrated or sewn together without adding any new value (cobbling).

will be against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines can get you a manual penalty. Now you must be thinking ‘What’s a manual penalty, hadn’t we just discussed how Google treats AI generated content.’ Well yes, apart from the fall in the SERP, Google has got a term for it and that is Manual Penalty.

There are numerous reasons to impose manual penalties, including but not limited to:

1. Thin Content
2. Cloaking
3. Hidden links or text
4. Subtitle Redirects
5. Collecting content
6. Keyword overuse
7. Inorganic links to your website
8. Paying links

If you are subject to a manual penalty, Google Search Console will record it.

Is the risk worth it for AI content?

The lengthy response is… it depends.

However, if you’re a total novice, using AI content generation tools to generate your material might be more detrimental than helpful.

Why?

Because if you don’t use the tool correctly, you can produce low-quality, unintelligible text that could cause Google to penalise you. Additionally, your website’s traffic and engagement are likely to suffer if your AI-generated content doesn’t captivate the reader or offer value.

On the other side, you might discover that AI based content creation can be a really valuable addition to your website if you’re able to use it in a way that provides value for the reader. Using an AI tool to generate content could help you save time and be more productive if you are an experienced member of the SEO community.