SEARCHENGINES
Google Guidelines On AI Written Content With Bankrate AI Content Writer Gains Attention

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
โ 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
โ 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
โ 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
โ 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.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Cotton Candy Machine

Here is a cotton candy machine that was at the Google office for a YouTube Live event a few months back. I don’t think this machine lives there, I suspect Google rented it for the event, but I am not sure.
We did see some Googlers eating cotton candy a year ago… Just saying…
This was posted on Instagram.
This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers.
SEARCHENGINES
SEOs Trust YMYL Content Less If It Is AI-Generated

Lily Ray ran a Twitter poll asking SEOs if they trust content in the YMYL, your money or your life, category more, less or the same if it was written by AI. The vast majority of responses said they trust AI-generated content less than human-generated content.
Lily asked, “If a site offering Your Money, Your Life information/advice (health, finance, etc) indicates that the content was partially written using AI, does this make you trust the content:”
About 74% of the over 1,000 votes said AI-generated content would be trusted less, 22% said there is no difference – they would trust it the same and 4% said it would be trusted more.
Here is the poll with the “See answers” option:
I know itโs hard not to be biased as an SEO professional, but try anyway. ๐
If a site offering Your Money, Your Life information/advice (health, finance, etc) indicates that the content was partially written using AI, does this make you trust the content:
โ Lily Ray ๐ (@lilyraynyc) January 15, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Ads Now Supports Account-Level Negative Keywords

We knew it was coming, Google Ads now supports negative keywords for brand safety at the account level. Google has just added account-level negative keywords to Google Ads and the PPC community is happy about it.
I spotted this first via Melissa Mackey on Twitter who credits @NilsRooijmanSEA with the find on LinkedIn. Melissa wrote, “Account-level negative keywords are here! This is big.”
The Google help document on negative keywords has a new section that reads, “Account-level negative keywords.”
When you create your account-level list of negative keywords, it will automatically apply to all search and shopping inventory in relevant campaign types. This allows you to create a single, global, account-level list that applies negative keywords across all relevant inventory in your account.
You can create a single, account-level list of negative keywords in your Google Ads account settings. In your โAccount Settings,โ youโll find the โNegative keywordsโ section. When you click on this section, you can begin creating your negative keywords list.
You can create your list by defining which search terms are considered negative for your brand. You can then enter this all at once in the โNegative keywordsโ section of your โAccount Settingsโ in your Google Ads account. You can also specify whether you want to exclude these based on broad, exact, or phrase match. A limit of 1,000 negative keywords can be excluded for each account. Learn more about account-level negative keywords.
Here is a screenshot of this setting, where Nils Rooijmans explained, “Google is rolling out this feature in most of my accounts right now.”
11 months ago, Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison said, Ginny Marvin responded to this saying “There are no current plans for a keyword tab in PMax. There are, however, plans to support negative keywords for brand safety at the account level.”
And now we got them.
Yay!!! pic.twitter.com/9uzIERjaY9
โ dan richardson (@njsdanrich) January 26, 2023
Bit more history:
Ginny mentioned the beta would start 6 months ago fwiw. Longish cycle from planning -> beta -> release https://t.co/eeUnFPjspr
It was spotted on Google’s roadmaps for Q4, seems to have been delayed a touch
โ Mike Ryan (@mikeryanretail) January 27, 2023
And some reaction on this:
The people asked for Performance Max negative keywords. We got account-level instead.
We typically want to exclude keywords from SOME campaigns, not ALL (for branded queries).
โ ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฐ๐๐ (@MenachemAni) January 27, 2023
Donโt get me wrong, there is definitely utility in account-level negative keywords.
Just not what we were hoping for as it relates to PMX.
โ ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฐ๐๐ (@MenachemAni) January 27, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter and LinkedIn.
Update: The Google Ads Liaison has now posted about this on Twitter:
1/3 Some have noticed Account level negative keywords are starting to roll out globally. From Account Settings, you can add keywords to exclude traffic from all Search and Shopping campaigns, and the Search and Shopping portion of PMax for brand safety: https://t.co/B0VBApPVCm
โ AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 27, 2023
3/3 And a reminder of existing brand suitability controls include inventory types, digital content labels, placement exclusions and negative keywords at the campaign level.
โ AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 27, 2023
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