Does AI Content Rank in Google?: Explanation & Reasons!

The rapid development of AI has created a breakthrough alternative for reducing the time required to create content marketing. AI-generated content is inexpensive and increases the efficiency of creating content for social media, blog posts, or other social channels. However, the quality of content created by AI and by humans differs. Undoubtedly, AI-driven content articles are faster, yet they are most likely of lower quality than human-created content because they sound robotic, repetitive, and generic, along with a lack of originality. So, does AI content rank in Google? This article discusses how the Google search engine detects AI-generated content and how they assess the AI content for potential ranking on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). 

What is AI automated content, and how does it work? 

AI-driven content is basically a type of content created by AI models, whether it is digital text, audio, or visual. The results content can be created using the algorithm trained by humans to mimic the characteristics and elements of the trained datasets. With this intelligence, machines can compete with human creation as well as make the content creation process run more effectively than before. 

So, how does AI technology generate content? To generate content, AI utilizes machine learning algorithms, including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs). AI will analyze the large dataset and use semantic thinking to make content based on the details of the prompt. Hence, the more details of the prompt, the better the AI produces content. 

Why do people use AI automated content instead of creating content from scratch?

The implementation of generative AI has been expanding rapidly over the past several years. This is because of the rising demand for multimodal AI to create content for numerous marketing channels, including social media, websites, and email marketing. These are the benefits and the reasons behind the need to use AI-generated content instead of solely depending on humans for creating content marketing. 

1. Improving productivity and efficiency 

The most important benefit of AI content generation is to improve productivity. By using generative AI, the marketing or SEO team can create all types of content writing faster than before. AI platforms will help the team with ideation, research, and create drafts in minutes. Thus, the marketing team can generate content articles and video scripts. On the other hand, the implementation of generative AI can help the writer to overcome writer’s block. Then, you can edit or modify the recommendation draft or ideation from the AI before writing content. Some of the AI tools, such as Jasper AI, ChatGPT, or Copy.ai, help facilitate the content creation process, especially content writing for blog posts. 

2. Maintaining consistency for producing content marketing 

The consistency of publishing content is strikingly essential for content marketing. AI writing platforms can mimic the brand voice to make all of the content marketing consistent for the target audience. This is helpful for generalizing content in order to stay productive under the strict timeline. However, the AI writing tools must be trained first to make them understand the business’s brand voice. 

3. Budget constrained for small companies

The invention of generative AI is a breakthrough for small companies. The reasons behind it because small companies tend to have small budget than large-scale companies. Using AI-generated content can reduce the budget to expand the marketing team. Instead of recruiting new team members, they can use the limited human resources to produce more content. 

4. Better data analysis for marketing strategy

By using machine learning, AI obviously has the capacity to show accurate data analysis for marketing purposes. This performance data from content that has been created will give useful insights. With this data, the marketing team can evaluate how good the content is and create similar content to attract traffic. AI tools also help the blog posts to be able to have a high ranking on Google. Some of the AI tools you can use for enhancing SEO include Surfer SEO, MarketMuse, Frase, Clearscope, and others. 

What is Google’s consideration for AI Automated Content? 

In order to answer the question, does AI content rank in Google? The answer must be provided by Google itself. According to Google, it only considers the quality of content regardless of whether they are made by humans or an AI machine. As long as the content has a high quality and is helpful for the users, then Google will reward the content with a higher ranking on its platform. 

Google also mentions that the criteria for high-quality content ranking on its platform are based on E-E-A-T. The E-E-A-T criteria from Google stand for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Google also said that quality content is the foremost recommendation over the last 10 years. In this decade, Google has not been concerned about the flood of content made by humans, and there is no reason to ban the content from humans. Thus, it is applied in AI-generated content as well. 

What are the Criteria of High Quality AI Content According to Google? 

When someone asks, does AI content rank in Google? The answer is obviously yes. However, Google has its own criteria to assess whether it is useful or spam content from AI. On its blog, Google demonstrates the guidance to create helpful content using generative AI or automation. It said that automation has been used for generating high-quality and helpful content for years. The examples of useful automation are soccer sports scores, transcriptions, and others. With the help of AI, Google has the capability to expand and help people produce useful content for users. 

So, what is the criteria that make AI content not rank on Google? It mentions that some people deliberately use automation or AI content to manipulate the search results with spam. Google has a SpamBrain system that can automatically recognize spam content on its platform. Since its launch in 2018, SpamBrain has enhanced its performance from time to time to guarantee users only find useful information on Google SERPs. 

In 2021, Google said that the main consideration to protect users is to remove spam, scams, and other online harassment. It also mentions that updated algorithms have improved the reduction of 40% of scams on its platform. Not only spam, but Google is also working on diminishing the low-quality content and attempts at manipulated ranking. This becomes the main issue for Google because low-quality content and manipulation of rankings will degrade the user experience. 

What are the E-E-A-T guidelines from Google? 

As mentioned, E-E-A-T is a pillar guideline for search quality evaluators to check how good the content is on Google. This is the short explanation of E-E-A-T for creating SEO content on Google. 

• Experience (E): This is one of the criteria to assess the quality of content by understanding whether the creator has a specific experience related to a certain topic. For example, the real experience, using products directly, or visiting a certain location.  
• Expertise (E): This is also a consideration from Google to evaluate how the creator has skills for a particular topic. If the creator is known to have expertise on the topic, it is more likely to have a high ranking on Google. 
• Authoritativeness (A): This is a standard to know whether the website is known for providing reliable sources and has a great reputation. If the website has more backlinks and is claimed as a reputable source. 
• Trustworthiness (T): This is one of the crucial elements to evaluate content based on its accuracy, transparency, and safety from all potential risks, harm, or spam for the users. 

The E-E-A-T is the go-to recommendation from Google, but the first thing to consider to create SEO content is always prioritising readers or users first. If the content is reliable and beneficial for the audience, it can improve the ranking on Google. 

Study about How AI Automated Content Ranks on Google

For a better understanding and to answer the question, does AI content rank on Google? We will provide a study or analysis from several sources related to how AI content ranks in Google. These are the sources from Semrush and Search Engine Land about how AI content performs on Google. 

1. Semrush 

Semrush has researched how well human content compares to AI-generated content to rank on Google. The methodology of the Semrush research analyzed 200,000 keywords and 42,000 blog posts that rank in the top 10 Google SERPs. Then, the content is checked using an AI detector. The results show that human content pages dominate the top 10 Google rankings with 87%. The figures indicate whether the content was fully created by humans or mixed, but mostly has human intervention for editing or production. Meanwhile, mixed content is 64%, which is mostly human-led and only acquired assistance from AI. For entirely content from AI, on the other hand, is only 9% ranks on the first page of Google SERPs. 

2. Bogdan Babiak on Search Engine Land

The other study related to the question, ” Does AI content rank in Google?, is from Bogdan Babiak from SE Ranking in his articles on Search Engine Land. The methodology of this research is to create different niche content entirely using AI and publish it to the website. This study aims to determine how well the performance of AI-generated content is on Google SERPs. 

The results are unexpected because in the first month, purely AI-generated content can be indexed on Google quickly, with about 71% indexed. The website can even generate 122,000 impressions and 244 clicks with various topics from researched keywords. In 3 months, the impression and click rates grow rapidly to more than 526,000 and 782 clicks. After the unexpected growth, the SEO performance dropped significantly, and merely 3% of the page in the top 100. After 16 months, the page shows stagnation with low visibility.

This study demonstrates that AI-generated content only performs in the beginning. It started slowing down due to a lack of authority, trust, and unique insights to compete with other SEO articles. 

Conclusion 

From the clarification above, to answer your question about does AI content rank in Google? The answer is surely yes, but it has some exclusions. Two studies explain that AI-automated content has a lower chance of being able to rank higher on Google SERPs. The top 10 Google SERPs dominate with the content from humans or human-led content. Furthermore, purely AI-generated content only performs well at the beginning, but they are not good for the long-term website due to a lack of authority and unique attractiveness. Thus, Google deems the website with all purely AI-generated content is not eligible for the top rank on its platform. It is still possible to use AI for creating SEO content, but AI tools only work as an assistant rather than a creator. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Does AI Content Rank in Google?

1. Is it possible for AI-generated content to rank on Google SERPs? 

Yes, it is possible because Google does not restrict the AI-generated content on its platform, and it is not against Google’s guidelines. However, Google assesses higher quality content and original content to be rewarded with a higher ranking on its SERP. 

2. What types of content attract more viewers? 

The content writing for blog posts that can attract viewers depends on the keyword volume and topic. However, the SEO or marketing team must understand how hard the content is compared to the articles from competitors. The less hard keyword must be preferred for executing articles for SEO content. 

3. Can AI produce high-quality content for marketing? 

Not precisely. This is because the AI-generated content is more likely to recycle other articles published on the Internet. AI-driven content tends to lack originality, repetitive and unnatural language, or be robotic. Thus, it still needs human touch, including checking the data and paraphrasing to ensure originality. 

4. Will AI replace humans for writing content marketing? 

No, because even though AI can create content writing, it cannot produce high-quality content without human touch. The best performance of content writing is to combine the developed content from AI with editing from a human to make it original and less sound repetitive and robotic. The mixed content is also more considerable than fully AI-generated content in Google ranking. 

5. What are Google’s considerations for using AI-generated content? 

On its blog, Google highlights the high-quality and useful content to rank higher on its platform. So, as long as the SEO content aligns with E-E-A-T and does not try to manipulate search engines, such as keyword stuffing or containing scam or spam, the content can rank on Google.