Navigating the AI Landscape: Google's Latest Updates and What They Mean for Content Creation

As a digital marketing professional, artificial intelligence (AI) offers numerous ways to streamline your workflow. From brainstorming content ideas and refining copy to helping with daunting corporate emails, tools like ChatGPT can significantly lighten your workload. However, if you’re posting AI-generated content in order to boost your website’s SEO, you may want to reconsider that strategy — or at the very least, stay informed about the most recent guidelines.

Times Are Changing

Back in August 2022, Google began rolling out a series of changes “to make it easier for people to find helpful content made by, and for, people.” This came as part of a larger effort (which also addressed product reviews) to prioritize content that Google found to be authentic and valuable to users. In other words, content that was primarily created to rank well in search results would be pushed to the bottom of Google; high-quality content, intended to help or inform users, would ascend to the top of Google’s results pages.

Fast forward to March 2024, Google is launching another extensive, complex core update, specifically tailored to address these concerns. In their own words: “We’re making algorithmic enhancements to our core ranking systems to ensure we surface the most helpful information on the web and reduce unoriginal content in search results.”

Defining “Unoriginal Content”

Before getting into the weeds, let’s start here: purely AI-generated content cannot meet Google’s quality standards (source).

If you’ve never explored Google Search documentation, it offers a wealth of information for content creators aiming to align with the search engine's preferences. In a nutshell, Google prioritizes content that demonstrates qualities of what they call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. This includes penalizing clickbait headlines ("Here's the One Weird Trick Doctors Don't Want You to Know") and content that falsely promises answers to unanswerable questions ("When You Can Expect George R.R. Martin's Next Novel”).

When it comes to AI-generated content, issues tend to arise when it comes to that second “E” — experience. Google emphasizes that articles should have human authors and that websites should have background information about their authors. However, Google doesn't explicitly condemn the use of AI or suggest that AI-generated content will plummet in rankings. In fact, leveraging AI to make your content more helpful and more informative may even bolster search performance. After all, Google is currently promoting their own AI model (Gemini), so they wouldn’t want to discredit the potential benefits of AI-generated content altogether.

As long as content isn't predominantly AI-generated and continues to serve users effectively, Google generally approves. The key point is this: Google's ranking systems aim to promote original, high-quality content, however it is produced.

Our Approach

When it comes to crafting engaging and informative content for our audience, that’s our wheelhouse. A publisher of over 30 trade magazines across the agriculture, industrial, and construction industries, Catalyst Communications Network’s editorial team has over 58 years of creating content characterized by expertise, credibility and reliability.
Coupled with our digital marketing proficiency and commitment to maintaining state-of-the-art websites for each of our publications, Catalyst is well-positioned to climb the search rankings and generate high organic search traffic. For inquiries about partnership opportunities or advertising on our platforms, please contact us at info@catcomnet.com.

Jameson Weiss (Digital Marketing Specialist)