How AI affects your website (whether you use it or not)
It’s no secret that many people are turning to AI to scale their website and businesses. From generating entire products to creating branded social media accounts with ease, AI has become a strong tool in the modern digital age. But how does that affect you, you may ask? Well, Google does not outright condemn AI usage, but Google has noted that publishing any content online that is not unique or of high quality may result in less views.
How Google rates content
In their Terms of Service, Google states that content, regardless of its origin, should be “helpful, reliable, and people-first.” However, when it comes to AI, or Large Language Models, the information is not unique and has already been created as the LLM had to have already taken the information from a source in the first place. So while Google uses AI and does not condemn the usage of AI by other websites, if you’re using it to create low quality content on your website, you are likely to see less results in search. In addition, Google takes the identity of your website and business very seriously. If a website A uses AI to create content, and that content happens to be similar to content on an already existing website B, website A might be suspended for misrepresentation because under Google’s Terms of Service, that content was not unique and is copying another website or business.
Lastly, Google states that any media that is created as “SEO-first”, or content that is not created for humans but rather to just increase search results, does not align with their Terms of Service and should not be considered. Google has further stated that they have been removing low quality content from the search results for years and therefore removing low quality AI content from the search results has not
To AI or not to AI
So you have a choice: you can publish content using AI that may or may not be reliable, unique, and trustworthy, or you can create the content in-house to ensure that genuine connections are being made. I can guarantee that anything that is posted on this website will be free of AI because I want to create a healthy community of individuals looking to inspire others and their community. While AI certainly has a place in today’s modern tech world, generative AI used for content purposes can lead to Google account suspensions, lower rank results, and loss of trust from your community.
Sources:
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
