Google ranks quality content on freshness and relevance
Since artificial intelligence (AI) generated content started getting prominence, a debate has been raging about whether AI-generated content is ranked better than human-written content by significant search engines like Google.
The history of AI-generated content started from the 1950s when computer scientists and researchers started exploring the creation of intelligent machines that could imitate human behavior. The usage of AI content started in the 1990s and 2000s with limited scope.
Rapid technological advancements in machine learning and natural language processing have dramatically increased the capabilities of AI content creation systems in the past few years.
The quality of AI-generated content has evolved and improved, and many businesses from industries like media and entertainment, marketing and advertising, and e-commerce have started using AI content extensively. It is produced quickly at a broader scale and can be personalized, cost-effective, and consistent.
However, severe concerns about using AI-generated content without human touch still need to be addressed. The AI content can be low quality, fact-finding, biased and discriminatory, responsible (authorless), job losses, copyright, or other related legal issues.
According to a recent report from Online Search Engine Journal, Google recently responded to allegations of ranking AI-generated duplicate content above original, human-written content by saying
“content is ranked based on quality, recency, or relevancy, regardless of production method.”
How does Google rank Content?
The Google search algorithm uses particular ranking factors to determine what content should appear first in search results. For the best results for Search Engine Optimization, SEO experts need to consider that the usual content ranking factors used by Google, irrespective of production, whether AI-generated or Human written, are:
Freshness: The freshness of news content, when sorted by date, can outrank AI content. Recency is the prime factor on which Google can rank the content. They will consider the content as new or updated with further information.
Domain Date & Backlinks: Google can also consider the date indexing date of your website page and the amount and rate of updates made on the website by adding new pages or content. The freshness of backlinks can improve your scores.
Relevancy: Relevancy becomes a critical factor in search results when search results are not sorted by date. Websites that republish news articles from journalists may outrank the original publishing site because they have relevant contextual information surrounding the article.
Crawler Access: One way to check if Google can access content on a particular domain is by using the “site:domain.com” keyword search. However, the real challenge is getting Google to display a specific page from your website as the top result for a particular keyword query.
Reward for high-quality content
Google released guidance on AI-generated content in February 2023, emphasizing the reward of high-quality content, no matter how it was produced. In June 2023, disclosures for AI-generated content and EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines shared the same notion. Also, Google SearchLiason has said that author bylines are for users, not a ranking factor for Google Search.
With Google constantly updating its algorithm and introducing new generative AI features to search, website owners must keep track of their site’s visibility in search results and consistently optimize their website content for social media, search engines, and other traffic sources.
