ChatGPT: Why Google's Position Has Changed on AI Content

While ChatGPT is a one of the most innovative tools in a long time for sales and marketing professionals, you will need to put extra focus on quality (over quantity)—especially for marketers that are focused on content creation and SEO.

Quality is Key

Quality will always win over quantity. It is not enough to just have a large amount of content, it also needs to be engaging, informative and valuable to the audience. Poorly written, low-quality content can and will hurt a company's reputation and credibility, leading to a loss of trust from potential customers. On the other hand, content that is well-researched, thought-provoking, and tailored to the target audience can drive engagement and help establish you as a thought leader. Organizations who prioritize quality over quantity in their content creation efforts will not only stand out from the competition, but will also build a loyal following that will keep coming back for more. So, rather than focusing on churning out as much content as possible, focus on creating high-quality pieces that your audience will love.

Companies and or people who try to pump out high volumes of content leveraging ChatGPT, who are not paying attention to the quality of their content, will lose and lose fast.

Google's Position

Google has AI tools that can and will detect AI generated contact, and up until recently “Automatically generated content” was on their things to avoid list in their guidelines.  In April of 2022, they expanded that definition to include “Automatically generated content intended to manipulate search engines”.

Today, Google’s policy states the following: “Spammy automatically generated (or "auto-generated") content is content that's been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it's been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.”

Further, Danny Sullivan, who is Google's @searchliaison, replied to a tweet about SEO and AI Content saying, “We haven't said AI content is bad. We've said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That's what we're focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank, or fires up a spinner, or a AI, same issue...”

You can see the full thread here.

A Major Shift is Taking Place

This is a monumental shift in my opinion.  It’s acknowledgement of the rise of ChatGPT, and moreover AI in general.  Google, rightly so, is shifting their policy with the times, which is good news for sales and marketing teams who will be looking to find new efficiencies with smaller teams.  I talk more about how AI can and will help with resources (or lack thereof) here specifically and include 5 frameworks for sales and marketing professionals who are getting started with ChatGPT.

What does this all mean?  It means that your content still needs a human touch to give it a heartbeat.  Simply plugging content generated by an AI model into a blog or website and publishing it without adding any personal touch or unique perspective will not work. Audiences are becoming more and more savvy and can easily spot generic, impersonal content. To succeed in the content creation game, companies and individuals need to bring their own voice, perspectives, and insights to the table. This means taking the time to understand their target audience, researching the topic, and incorporating their own experiences and perspectives into the content.

Just look at tools like this: AI Content Detection. You can cut and paste content into this tool and it will tell you if it is AI generated via a “Human-Generated Content” score.  It’s not perfect (I pasted in a graf that I wrote myself and it gave me a score of 77%—maybe I just write like a robot. lol), but just like all other AI tools, it will evolve overtime.

While ChatGPT is one of the most innovative tools we’ve seen in a long time for sales and marketing professionals, it will never replace humans because we are also training AI to detect AI generated content.