Google might have stumbled in its Bard announcement, but it made up some goodwill (for me, at least) with another early-February release – its new search guidelines on AI-generated content.
NB: This is an article from Search Engine Land
Google seems to support what many good SEOs have argued for some time: It doesn’t matter what you use to create content as long as you’re producing something valuable for people – and not gaming the search engine.
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With Google’s perspective out there for all to see, where do SEOs go from here? I’ll examine the topic from a few angles:
- The marriage of Google and AI.
- The caveats to consider when using AI for content.
- Skills SEOs need to develop right now.
The marriage of Google and AI
Google and Microsoft Bing are using AI-powered content to deliver search results, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
Even Google’s guidelines say they’ve been using AI in some form for a long time. (And paid search marketers know how much AI and machine learning have changed the PPC game.)
I’m guessing these companies knew that people would use AI for content production when it became widely available – a watershed moment marked by ChatGPT‘s release.
It’s not feasible to tell people not to use it. Instead, both search engines are racing to establish themselves as responsible curators of AI content.
Staying focused on creating value with content has always been important for me. Now it’s clear: Google has the same standard.
After all, humans can write spammy content just as readily as AI. It’s like saying a calculator is bad for math results because you didn’t figure out the answer yourself.
And we’ve been through the “spam vs. quality” argument before, notably with links.
As it stands, Google is still focused on helpful content, regardless of the technology used to produce it.
Google and AI content: The caveats
If you use AI as part of your toolset to provide valuable content, Google won’t ding you.
The problem is that it’s enticing to use these tools the wrong way. Google is not giving you the green light to have ChatGPT write for you and call it a day.
Like any tool, ChatGPT and its competitors are just that – tools that require humans to leverage them.
Otherwise, it will take and regurgitate what you feed it, delivering no value beyond aggregation. You’re giving users nothing new.
