Why Google will penalize your AI content

The topic of AI seems to have entered every aspect of our lives, being the subject of watercooler conversations (or perhaps more accurately, Microsoft Teams calls), social media posts, and news articles. The topic’s prevalence is unsurprising as it impacts our lives—and futures—in myriad ways.

Everything from personalized slot game recommendations at an online casino, like the ones found at casinos.com, to the “For You” page of TikTok and the results page of a Google search uses AI.

It’s also become a popular and wildly lucrative technology; generative AI tools are projected to contribute over $7 trillion annually to the global economy.

The recent development of generative AI has brought about more extensive discussions about the possibilities, good and bad, of AI use. For content creators who want to streamline their workflows and use search algorithms, particularly Google’s algorithm, to their benefit, one question is frequently asked: will Google penalize my content if AI is used to create it? The answer to this may surprise you.

What Is AI Content?

Before answering the question, let’s explore what qualifies as AI content. AI content is any content that is created through a generative AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Dall-E, and others. AI tools like these can produce content in many forms, from design plans, images, videos, and voice-overs to emails, blog posts, social media posts, and ad campaigns.

The use of generative AI tools has the potential to vastly reduce workloads for anyone who needs to produce content, like marketers, making it an enticing tool to add to their content creation toolbox.

What’s Google’s Stance on AI Content?

Google has its own generative AI tool, Gemini, so an outright ban on AI-generated content from its result pages conflicts with Google’s overall business interests. It has even addressed the question of penalizing AI content by stating that the search engine focuses on “rewarding high-quality content, however it is produced.”

While Google has no problem with using AI to produce content, it assesses AI-created content just as it does human-generated content. It prioritizes the helpfulness or usefulness of content for its users, focusing on four key qualities: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what it calls “EEAT.”

If you are using AI to create content, you need to be able to use it well, prioritizing these types of qualities or risk being penalized by the Google search algorithm—just like human-written content.

How Can AI Content Get You Penalized?

If Google is fine with publishing AI content, how can its use in your content plan end up penalizing you? Unfortunately, there are a few pitfalls to be aware of when using generative AI tools. Here, we’ll explore in greater detail how AI tools like ChatGPT or even Google’s Gemini may undermine your SEO efforts.

Misinformation

While AI has a vast amount of data to source from, the content it produces is not always accurate, especially when discussing recent events or industry changes. Not catching instances of misinformation from an AI-generated passage of text undercuts three out of the four key qualities Google assesses, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This, in turn, knocks down your SERP ranking. When producing content with AI, be sure to fact-check the details it provides before publishing.

Poor Quality Content

If you don’t carefully edit and review what AI tools produce, the content often has a few telltale signs that stand out for the wrong reasons, such as written passages that sound unnatural or robotic. For Google, an essential component of shaping an enjoyable experience for its searchers is providing high-quality results that people will enjoy engaging with. Simply publishing what an AI tool produces isn’t going to meet this essential quality, which will negatively impact how Google ranks your content.

Part of addressing the quality of content produced can start with how creators prompt the AI tool. A quality prompt can vastly change what an AI tool produces. However, creators should pour through the generated content with a fine-toothed comb, even if they think they’ve mastered the art of prompting AI tools. If you use AI to create content, be sure to review it before publishing to ensure the quality is high.

Not Disclosing Your Use of AI

If you use AI to produce content, you should disclose it clearly to your audience. Google highly recommends this, and it may even help the overall performance of your content since it adds to its trustworthiness. Disclosing AI use is also within the terms of use of most AI generator tools.

Google is highly skilled at identifying AI written text, and failing to prominently disclose its use in content production can lead to your content being penalized by the search engine—and not just by reducing your ranking. It may even remove your content from the search results entirely if it deems it to be spam or harmful, though this also applies to your human-generated content.

Google does not penalize creators outright for using AI to produce content. However, it does emphasize its users’ experience by prioritizing high-quality, helpful content. When using AI to produce content, thoroughly review everything it produces before making it public.

AI content might reduce your workload, but if you don’t ensure that it’s reviewed, fact-checked, or high-quality, it could end up undoing all the work you’ve done to improve your SEO efforts.

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