Can AI Content Affect Your Google rankings?
Ahrefs’ recent study has gotten many in the SEO field talking again. It showed that AI-generated content doesn’t hurt Google rankings when utilized in moderation. In fact, the data shows that a lot of high-ranking pages had content that was made by AI, which goes against the long-held belief that this kind of content could get you in trouble or make your site less visible.
The study looked at 600,000 sites, 100,000 random keywords, and the top 20 URLs for each keyword that ranked highest. What did it find? An amazing 86.5% of the top-ranking pages have some AI-generated content.
The keyword, though, is “some.”
AI material by itself isn’t bad, but how much and how well it’s used seem to be really important. Some websites that rely heavily on AI techniques to create most or all of their content have seen their rankings drop a lot over time.
The Data: AI vs. Human vs. Mixed Content
The study looked at the kind of material on the pages that were looked at:
4.6% were called “pure AI”
13.5% as pure human
81.9% of the content was written by both AI and people.
Even in the mixed group, the use was very different:
13.8% used AI very little (1–10% of the content)
40% used AI moderately (11–40%).
20.3% used AI a lot (41–70%)
7.8% used AI most of the time (71–99%)
These stats make it seem like a balanced approach that combines human innovation with AI efficiency would be the best way to go for content strategy in the future.
Here is Pie chart given by ahrefs:
What should SEO’s and publishers take away from this?
Google has said in the past that the quality and usefulness of the content are more important than the usage of AI. This study backs up that point of view. AI-generated content doesn’t automatically break Google’s rules, but content farms or AI articles that are made in large quantities and are not very useful could still be hurt by algorithm tweaks.
AI isn’t a threat, but relying too much on it is. The best sites use a mix of AI and human inspection to make sure that the content stays useful, original, and helpful for readers.
Using AI as a tool instead of a crutch might be the best way to stay ahead as SEO changes.