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Can Google Detect AI-Generated Content?
- Daniel Law
While AI is transforming digital marketing and SEO, companies are increasingly looking into tools that can harness the power of AI to create new articles, blogs, and web copy.
This raises a much bigger question of whether Google can detect AI-generated content. What happens if it can? As an SEO professional or content marketer, it is very important to know how Google approaches AI content detection to optimise your site properly and minimise risks.
This blog discusses how Google identifies AI-generated content, its potential dangers, and how to effectively add AI-generated content without damaging your SEO.
Unveiling Google’s Sophisticated Detection Systems for AI Content
According to Originality. ai’s latest report, the amount of AI content appearing in Google Search Results continues to increase steadily.
The platform found a steady increase in the existence of AI content. Before the public release of GPT-2, AI was identified in only 2.3% of their sampled websites.
Within five years, three Open AI GPT models emerged, increasing the percentage to nearly three times to 10.2% in March 2024.
Source: Originality.ai
Google uses advanced technology, powered by its vast information database, to better understand all the content published online. At the centre of this is BERT, a powerful tool that enables Google to interpret the meaning of words based on their context. This empowers Google’s content detection algorithms to recognise writing styles and patterns often seen in AI-generated text.
Google’s AI detection systems are becoming more efficient. In the past few years, they have greatly improved their detection of AI-generated content. This means that the more complex the algorithms Google develops, the closer they are to identifying what is not human-originated.
NOTE: Google BERT and Google BARD are two powerful tools from Google. They have different applications and functions in Natural Language Processing (NLP). BERT focuses more on understanding the meaning of words and sentences, while BARD focuses on engaging in natural language conversations with users.
How Google Discerns Language Patterns
Like every machine-learning model, BERT reads wide texts to pick up linguistic patterns. This means:
- Contextual Understanding: BERT discerns whether content appears human-like or follows patterns typical of AI-generated text by examining the relationships between words in a sentence.
- Behavioural signals: The search engine would consider what is the click-through and time on the page. This advanced analysis will help Google track AI-generated content and evaluate its value in the light of the user experience.
That said, knowing the SEO best practices for AI Content is very important if you want to rank on the first page of search engines like Google.
Understanding Detection Accuracy Trends
According to recent statistics, the accuracy of AI-generated content has increased profoundly over the last few years. Simply put, Google constantly improved its algorithms to ensure its standing in the digital landscape.
Google’s BARD, for instance, reached as high as 94% accuracy. This means that the more complex the algorithms Google develops, the closer they are to identifying what human-generated content needs to be human-originated.
Source: ARXIV
These advancements position Google as a leader in the ongoing battle against low-quality content, ensuring users receive the best possible information.
Google AI Content Guidelines
Google emphasises the principles of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT). These factors are the backbone of Google’s content quality guidelines, directly influencing how content is evaluated and ranked in search results. That’s why it’s important to understand how SEO risks of AI-generated content interact with these principles to maintain strong search visibility in search engines.
Source: Moz
- Experience: Google favours experience content from people with firsthand experiences or any link with the subject. 73% of companies that offer above-average customer experience perform better financially
- Expertise: Human-written articles achieve 45.41 more impressions and 60% more clicks frequently than AI-generated.
- Authoritativeness: Google always considers an author’s credibility before ranking them. Research shows that information presented by credible authorities or institutions increases user trust.
- Trustworthiness: These features include proper citation and user reviews. Research has found that users are drawn to content with references from trustworthy sources.
The Pitfalls of AI Content in Meeting E-E-A-T Standards
Most AI-generated content must meet Google’s E-E-A-T criteria, especially in areas requiring personal experience or nuanced understanding. This gap could severely impact auto-generated content’s performance in search rankings since Google’s algorithms increasingly favour more nuanced and experienced-based content.
Case Study: The Downfall of an AI-Dependent Website
Over the last decade, a Norwegian energy trading firm has implemented AI to improve productivity and competitiveness. Although AI offers general benefits, it also brings many big challenges.
The Challenge
This study established several critical issues through interviews with AI managers, traders, and developers.
Nature of Work
AI bots challenged the workflow, causing confusion and frustration as their expertise seemed ignored.
Conflicts and Effects
As a result, misaligned expectations grew between traders and AI developers, as the developers needed to understand the traders’ practical needs.
Responsibility
As AI makes more decisions, it raises the question of who will be accountable for AI errors, complicating the dynamics of their roles.
The Result
The company faced unexpected problems that directly affected its overall efficiency. While AI initially raised their productivity, tension and ethical concerns soon showed up, highlighting the need for balance. This case reminds us of the dangers of overreliance on AI and forgetting humans’ roles and responsibilities.
The study also demonstrates the importance of understanding both the positive and negative impacts that AI can have on an industry. To marketers and writers, Google’s E-E-A-T standards mean authority in the digital world. Focusing on quality, expertise, and human touch in AI-generated content brings organisations the benefits of AI while keeping SEO risks at bay.
Understanding Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines
By indirectly influencing how human-generated content is rated towards detecting AI-generated content, Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines raise human-created content through content-quality focus, intent fulfilment, and user satisfaction over AI-generated content.
The Core Components of Content Quality
Human Nuance Gap
AI-generated content has all the lack of nuance that Google’s quality-seeking loins would have us hope to escape. Here are a few areas where AI drops the ball:
- Relatable Content: More emotional or relatable content has been proven to heighten user engagement by up to 60%. Although AI-generated text is grammatically correct, it often needs more emotional depth and relatability.
- Contextual Understanding: Human writers can grasp the small details of situations, which help explain each topic well. Users want content that connects to their lives, which AI cannot fully process.
- Expert Opinion: Google favours content that contains unique perspectives or represents expertise. AI cannot provide insight based on lived experience, making it less effective when creating authoritative content that users can trust.
The Hidden Dangers of Over-Reliance on AI Content for SEO
Although AI content certainly provides undeniable efficiencies, overreliance on it becomes a daunting risk for SEO. Marketers must be aware of these dangers to maintain their competitive edge without compromising on high-quality content.
The Threat of Algorithmic Penalties
One of the biggest problems with using AI-generated content is the possible algorithm penalties and its low-quality output. The content usually doesn’t offer real value to readers, which can push your ranking to the bottom on search engine page results.
For instance, according to Ahrefs, Clickup’s organic traffic has reportedly fallen by some 50% in the past two months, from 1.9 million in early February to as few as 900,000 in May this year due to Google changing its algorithm.
Source: X
AI-generated content often leads to:
- Lack of visibility: Thin or ill-structured content published on websites will rank lower. According to one report, websites relying on AI have suffered an algorithmic penalty and lost as much as 40% of organic traffic over six months.
- Loss of Trust: Relations between previously penalised companies and users will always differ. Once your brand is associated with poor-quality content, it is quite challenging to regain lost ground.
The Problem of Shallow Content
AI generates content quickly based on its LLM, mostly leaving the articles shallow and needing to address complex user queries. This may potentially result in:
- Thin Content Issues: Google recommends that content be deep rather than shallow. This content includes articles generated by AI and containing little more than surface information. Studies indicate that 85% of users abandon sites with too little information, worsening traffic and engagement issues.
- Failure to Meet User Intent: AI-generated content seldom meets user intent at any given time. Users found AI-generated answers too vague or needed to be more detailed.
It’s important to note that while AI prompts can be used to create very in-depth articles, a human touch is still required to optimise and ensure the content meets Google’s EEAT standards.
The Impact of Google’s Spam Algorithms
It’s not a secret that Google’s Core algorithm prefers high-quality, relevant content. Here are the ways to flag poor AI-generated content that may be penalised in Google Search:
- Content Quality: Websites that produce a tonne of low-quality AI-generated content were deranked in search results. It speaks to the balance between automation and human oversight.
- Content Quality: Thin content must be more in-depth and serve user search intent.
- Natural Language Processing: Algorithms measure coherence, so unnatural-sounding texts are devalued.
- User Engagement: High bounce rates and short dwell times signal low value.
- Duplicated Content: Similar AI-written content and existing content may be flagged.
- E-A-T Principles: Low Expert or Authoritativeness Content could be devalued.
- Spam Signals: Keyword stuffing or misleading titles will be penalised.
Analysing Google’s Roadmap for AI Detection and Future Trends
Google is continually improving its algorithms to detect AI-generated content more accurately.
Notable updates, such as the 2023 “Helpful Content Update,” focus on user quality and intent. In identifying content that lacks depth or authenticity, Google is investing further in machine learning technologies as a roadmap to achieve more nuanced evaluations of content quality.
Future Algorithm Trends
The next few years will witness fundamental changes like search algorithm updates and AI content.
Google is expected to embed a deeper contextual understanding of content through LLMs, which better understand not just keywords but also the intent and flow of content. This is an effort to recognise more AI-generated materials masquerading as human literature without offering genuine insight or expertise.
Increased Detection Rates
Potential predictive analytics indicate that detection rates against AI-generated content may increase dramatically.
According to research, Google’s new deep ML technology is 99% accurate. As AI tools increase content creation, Google’s updates will likely focus on perfecting these mechanisms.
Data-Driven Forecast: Projecting AI Detection Rate Increases
Predictive models indicate that AI detection rates will skyrocket dramatically in the near term since Google will keep tweaking its algorithms. The latest analyses suggest that this will soar as high as nearly 26% by 2025, incorporating more advanced machine learning techniques.
History has reflected every major algorithm that has improved the detection of poor quality, and the 2023 updates already reflect a huge increase in detection rates.
As AI content detection SEO advances in content generation tools, Google will further revamp detection capabilities to achieve greater distinction between quality human-generated content and AI-generated content.
Google’s Stance on AI Content
Google maintains and continues to take a stance on AI-generated content, focusing on its quality and relevance. Its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are directed at content that answers users’ needs.
Google claimed that AI can be helpful for content generation, but never at the cost of human judgement or inspiration. The Google 2023 upgrade algorithm was developed to refrain from low-quality AI-generated content while remaining intact with the core concept of content integrity.
The Value of Prioritising Quality and User Experience in AI Content
Focusing on quality and user experience in AI-generated content is essential for several reasons. First, users are likelier to engage with informative, well-structured, easy-to-understand content.
According to Forbes, 71% of consumers prefer content with real insights and actionable information, highlighting the importance of value-driven content.
A study by Moz found that pages with higher user engagement metrics, such as longer dwell times and lower bounce rates, tend to rank better on Google. Therefore, prioritising quality enhances user satisfaction and boosts SEO performance.
So, Can Google Actually Detect AI-Generated Content?
Yes, Google can detect AI-written content, and its algorithms are increasingly sophisticated. They take into account a vast number of factors, including writing style, coherence, and contextual accuracy.
Knowing where Google stands on AI content and why quality and experience matter will ensure that your content reflects real experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, enhancing your site’s credibility.
Embracing AI in SEO Responsibly
AI-generated content presents potential risks but even more interesting opportunities for SEO.
In other words, while it does significantly help streaming content production efforts, the risks of search engine penalties for low-quality or non-compliant materials cannot be taken lightly. Thriving in the SEO landscape will involve creating innovative strategies prioritising quality and authenticity.
Written by
Daniel Law
Daniel Law is the SEO Director at Red Search, a specialist SEO agency based in Sydney, Australia. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Daniel has a wealth of knowledge and expertise in search engine optimisation (SEO). He is passionate about helping businesses achieve success through effective and sustainable SEO strategies and is dedicated to staying up to date on the latest industry trends and best practices.