With AI created content on everyone"s mind this week, some people might be wondering if articles created with AI chatbots would get banned, or at least tagged as written by AI, in results from Google Search. In a new blog post on Wednesday, the Google Search team stated that AI-created articles would not automatically be banned in its search results.
It"s a known fact that every few months, Google changes its search algorithm to show more accurate and well written content in its results (at least in theory). These changes can either improve or degrade a web site"s ranking in search, resulting in traffic boosts on the one end, or big traffic declines if the algorithm does not go in the website"s favor.
Some people might believe that AI-generated content must be of lower quality than content made by a human, but this might not be the case. In the blog post"s FAQ on AI content in Search, Google states:
Poor quality content isn"t a new challenge for Google Search to deal with. We"ve been tackling poor quality content created both by humans and automation for years. We have existing systems to determine the helpfulness of content. Other systems work to elevate original news reporting. Our systems continue to be regularly improved.
Google says content creators should make sure that their articles include what the company calls E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) so they have a better chance to rank higher in search results. That goes for AI-created articles as well as ones written completely by a human. If AI-assisted tools are used to make better articles, then Google Search should have no problems in terms of ranking its quality. The FAQ states:
Using AI doesn"t give content any special gains. It"s just content. If it is useful, helpful, original, and satisfies aspects of E-E-A-T, it might do well in Search. If it doesn"t, it might not.
Having said that, the FAQ also states that website publishers probably should not list an AI in the author byline of an article. Instead, it recommends using a disclosure note which states that AI tools helped with writing an article.