Over the last few days or so, Bankrate has been gaining a lot of attention in the SEO space. They are using AI to write a lot of content and not hide it. With that, Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, responded to the SEO community about Google’s stance on such AI-generated content.

Tony Hill posted the example on Twitter that was viewed almost 80 thousand times and retweeted close to a hundred times. He said, “http://BankRate.com, one of the largest finance sites on the web has now started using AI to write some of its content. A big moment in web publishing and SEO.”

He shared this screenshot where you can see Bankrate saying, “this article was generated using automated technology and thoroughly edited and fact-checked by an editor on our editorial staff.”:

Danny Sullivan replied on Twitter referencing the previous comments they said about using AI to write content. He said, “As said before when asked about AI, content created primarily for search engine rankings, however it is done, is against our guidance. If content is helpful & created for people first, that’s not an issue.”

Danny added that the “key to being successful with our helpful content system — and if it’s not helpful content, the system catches that.” Then he references the Google spam policies where he said, “Our spam policies also address spammy automatically-generated content, where we will take action if content is “generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience.”

Finally, he goes to the new EEAT guidelines and writes, “For anyone who uses *any method* to generate a lot content primarily for search rankings, our core systems look at many signals to reward content clearly demonstrating E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).”

Here are all of these tweets:

As said before when asked about AI, content created primarily for search engine rankings, however it is done, is against our guidance. If content is helpful & created for people first, that’s not an issue.https://t.co/3rs3Yrrrk1https://t.co/TlFEbdXGAphttps://t.co/Yl9XWr5CAN pic.twitter.com/gFTE2C2wq1

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 12, 2023

Our spam policies also address spammy automatically-generated content, where we will take action if content is “generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience” https://t.co/Yl9XWr6aql pic.twitter.com/oBQXXvvma1

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 12, 2023

For anyone who uses *any method* to generate a lot content primarily for search rankings, our core systems look at many signals to reward content clearly demonstrating E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). https://t.co/NaRQqb1SQx pic.twitter.com/JDWjQguaTR

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) January 12, 2023

Again, Google wants content by the people, for the people but you can use AI for ideas and help you along the way.

I did ask Google on Mastodon if they may want to think about a new tag to identify such content for them, I doubt it but hey, we have nofollow.

Glenn Gabe called what Bankrate is doing a bold move:

Super BOLD. Must be nice to have high levels of E-E-A-T to take the risk! With tools like Content at Scale, we’ll see the web flooded with more of the same content. Logic tells me at that point signals related to site & author reputation and UX may need to be dialed up

— Tony Hill (@tonythill) January 10, 2023

People have been using machines to help write content partially or fully for at least 20 years now but now the machines are very good at writing the content – that is the difference. In fact, John Mueller said on Mastodon last night, “spammers have been doing that for 10-20 years now. Some are friendly and nice people, creativity smart and creative, but the results are often hair-raising.”

And by the way, SISTRIX dug into these AI written content pieces and said it is ranking well on Google – for now…

Forum discussion at Twitter.