How AI-Generated Content Aligns With Google's Latest 'Helpful Content' Guidelines

Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Google’s latest ‘Helpful Content’ update has brought notable changes to the treatment of artificial intelligence-generated content. 

What Happened: In Google’s September 2023 ‘Helpful Content’ update, the tech giant has subtly shifted its stance on AI-generated content. Previously, the guidelines prioritized human-created content, but the recent update omitted this requirement.

Instead, the focus is now squarely on ensuring content is “helpful” to users, regardless of its origin.

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AI Content Gets A Green Light: One of the most significant changes is removing the explicit preference for human-generated content. 

The prior guidelines stated that Google’s ‘Helpful Content’ system aimed to ensure users see “original, helpful content written by people, for people.” The updated guidelines state, “original, helpful content created for people.”

While this doesn’t guarantee AI content will consistently rank higher, it does indicate that Google is becoming more receptive to its inclusion.

Concerns For Sites Hosting Third-Party Content:  Website owners who host third-party content, whether on the main site or subdomains, should be warned that such content may be factored into site-wide signals, including content helpfulness. 

If the third-party content doesn’t align with the site’s purpose or lacks close supervision, Google recommends blocking it from the index.

Guidance For Content Creators: Google has discouraged the practice of artificially updating page dates to appear fresh and debunked the myth that adding excessive new content or removing old content can impact rankings.

Recovery After A ‘Helpful Content’ Hit: If a site experiences a dip in traffic following a ‘Helpful Content’ update, Google now guides recovery. The company said that to identify and rectify unhelpful content, one should do a self-assessment process using questions provided by the tech giant.

Why It’s Important: Previously, Paul Graham, the co-founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, expressed concerns over the role of generative AI in degrading the quality of web content. “I’m looking up a topic online (how hot a pizza oven should be), and I’ve noticed I’m looking at the dates of the articles to try to find stuff that isn’t AI-generated SEO-bait.”

The rapid rise of generative AI tools, exemplified by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has sparked some major concerns, including authorship ambiguity due to the lack of AI content labeling regulations and quality, as AI can confidently present inaccurate information. 

Photo by JRdes on Shutterstock

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