What Does Google Think of AI Content and 6 Best Practices for Using AI Content

As someone who works as a content specialist in a content-driven marketing agency, I am constantly having conversations about AI content with my fellow marketers or prospective clients. Most of these conversations veer around the same topics – “Should AI be used in the content creation process?” “What is the relationship between AI Content and SEO? Does AI content impact rankings?” “What does Google say about AI content?” etc.

Since my team and I are constantly answering these questions, I thought it best to write an article that puts everything in one place.

Hopefully, this should answer all your questions about AI content and SEO. If not, you are always free to reach me.

Key Takeaways

• Start with ideas, not prompts: Define your unique angle first; don’t let AI dictate the story.
• Add real-world proof: Case studies, results, and first-hand insights boost trust and E-E-A-T.
• Maintain brand voice: Use AI drafts, but edit for consistency in tone, style, and flow.
• Fix links: Internal/external links must add value; avoid keyword-stuffed auto-linking.
• Fact-check everything: AI hallucinates; outdated stats or errors hurt credibility.
• Use AI as support, not a replacement: Let it speed up drafts, but keep humans in charge of quality.

What is AI Content, and How is it Generated?

AI content – or AI-generated content – is text, audio, or visual content created by artificial intelligence models through pattern predictions, not with human knowledge or judgment. Based on a given prompt, AI compares trillions of data points and predicts what the next few words, pixels, or sounds should be. It does not create any original content. Instead, it remixes, recreates, and reproduces data from the patterns it has been trained on.

AI content creation tools use machine learning algorithms that are trained on massive sets of data to understand the various nuances that come with language, for example, tone, style, voice, grammar, and syntax. And because AI is trained on data created by humans, it ends up thinking and writing almost like humans.

This makes AI content very similar to human-written content, but with limitations. Since the goal of Large Language Models (which is at the heart of the whole AI ecosystem) is coherence, not factual correctness, it often produces sentences that are factually inaccurate. In short, AI can hallucinate, make errors, and repeat information.

AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are now being used to create blogs, articles, website content, social media content, email content, ad copy, etc.

LLMs are like smart parrots who repeat patterns they have been trained on, but do not really know anything. They are just based on mathematical models that produce content, without understanding what they are writing. They have no real-life knowledge or experience.

The Rise of AI in Content Creation

AI entered the content game with the launch of GPT-3 in 2020. It was the first model that could write full paragraphs from a single prompt. The results were far from perfect, but they showed potential, especially for tasks like drafting ideas or repurposing copy.

Things moved faster after that. GPT-4, released later in 2023, brought a better understanding of prompts, cleaner structure, and outputs that needed less editing. For many teams, this became the changeover point; they started taking AI seriously, and not just an experiment.

By 2024, GPT‑4o added speed, lowered costs, and introduced support for images and audio. Suddenly, marketers had a tool they could trust. AI allowed them a lot more flexibility, especially for visual content and cross-channel campaigns.

At the same time, tools like Claude and Jasper were building in different directions:

• Claude focused on longer inputs, helping teams work with research docs, transcripts, and briefs.
• Jasper added brand voice tools, team collaboration features, and content templates that made it easier to integrate into larger workflows.

Why were businesses paying attention? Because these tools solved real problems:

• They reduced the time spent on first drafts.
• They helped scale repeatable content – product pages, ad copy, and landing page variants.
• They supported smaller teams that needed to move fast without growing headcount.

Today, AI-generated content has become a core part of every digital marketing toolkit. From blog outlines to social media captions, graphics, presentation material, and website pages, AI-generated content has become an integral part of the content creation process for almost everyone.

But with all this scale and speed comes a question that’s harder to ignore in 2025 –

Does AI content negatively impact the performance of your website? Should you be using AI-generated content in your marketing? What does Google say about AI-generated content? What is the right way to use AI content?

Let’s understand these questions better.

Does Google Penalize AI Content? What is Google’s Take on AI-written Content?

Does Google penalize AI-written content? Short answer: No, it does not.

Google has been clear on one thing: it doesn’t care who wrote the content. All it cares about is high-quality content that demonstrates quality about E-E-A-T (short for Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness).

In its February 2023 blog post on Google Search Central, titled “Google Search’s guidance about AI-generated content“, the search engine explains very clearly that AI-generated content is not automatically bad or penalized.

Here are some important quotes from Google that we should understand.

On AI content and its policy –

“Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings.”

 “Using AI doesn’t give content any special gains. It’s just content. If it is useful, helpful, original, and satisfies aspects of E-E-A-T, it might do well in search.”

 “Automation has long been used to generate helpful content, such as sports scores, weather forecasts, and transcripts. AI can assist with and generate useful content in exciting new ways.”

“If you see AI as an inexpensive, easy way to game search engine rankings, then no.”

Key Takeaways – How Google Wants You to Create Content 

1. AI content is not going to be penalised – Created by AI or humans, Google cares about showing its users quality, original, and useful content.
2. The Goal of your content matters – If content is created just to game the search rankings, it violates Google’s spam policies; if it helps people, it’s fine.
3. Should align with E-E-A-T guidelines – Your content should ideally
   • Show your EXPERIENCE,
   • Reflect your EXPERTISE,
   • Establish your AUTHORITATIVENESS and
   • Build TRUSTWORTHINESS with your target audience.

4. Create people-first content – Understand what your user wants to know and write to satisfy their intent of searching. Give them the answer to what they are searching for.
5. Avoid generic content produced by AI –Most AI content rehashes the content that already exists. This results in generic, low-value content. If you want to use AI to generate content, make sure you are adding your unique insights, opinions, case studies, examples, and data.
6. Always follow the ‘who, how, why’ framework – While you create content, you should always answer:
   • Who created the content? – Is it evident to your users who wrote the content
   • How was it created? – Was it based on testing, experience, or process
   • Why was it created? – Meaning, what answers are you trying to answer for your audience vs SEO manipulation
7. Thin and poor quality content will be rated as LOW QUALITY – By this, it means content that is simply copied from some source, paraphrased, AI-generated with little to no value to users.

‘Helpful’ Still Means Human Insight

Even though AI tools are improving, Google’s algorithms are still built to reward content that reflects experience, expertise, and clarity.

Their ‘Helpful Content System’ is specifically trained to detect content that appears to have been created ‘just to rank,’ without actually offering anything useful.

This is where interpretation matters. Many people read Google’s statement and assume AI content is fine as long as it’s grammatically correct or keyword-optimized. But that misses the point; Google is looking for value, not just correctly-worded language.

What Google Hasn’t Said, But SEO Experts Believe

While Google hasn’t banned AI content, they also haven’t fully revealed how well its systems can detect it. SEO professionals working with large sites have noticed some patterns: pages that rely heavily on AI content, without human editing and value addition, tend to slip in rankings over time, even if they see an initial boost in traffic.

There is also speculation within the SEO community that Google uses behavioral signals (like bounce rate, scroll depth, time on page, or rapid back-clicking) to assess whether content is meeting user intent. If visitors land on a page, skim a generic AI-written intro, and leave immediately, that sends a clear signal, regardless of how it was written.

So, while AI content is not being flagged outright, content that lacks depth or relevance quietly underperforms. And that, more than any official penalty, is what affects your rankings.

What are the Common Problems of AI Content? 

While generative AI has turned content creation into a breeze, we advise marketing teams to avoid totally relying on AI content.

Here are the top three reasons why your marketing should not depend on AI content:

1. Faster Content, But Not Always Better

Using AI can help you move quickly. It’s useful for drafting outlines, creating base-level content, or scaling pages that follow a fixed format, like product descriptions or location pages. For small teams, that’s a big advantage.

But the speed also leads to shortcuts. A lot of AI-written content ends up sounding the same. It repeats what’s already online, often using the same phrases, stats, and examples. The content might look fine on the surface, but it usually lacks depth or a fresh point of view, which means it doesn’t stand out in search.

2. Google Is Getting Better at Spotting ‘More of the Same’

Search engines are getting better at recognizing patterns. If your content feels like a remix of what’s already out there, it may not rank, even if it’s accurate. Google now prefers content that sounds like it was written by someone who’s been there, done that, someone who has actual experience or insight.

This is where a lot of AI-generated content falls short. It covers the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of a topic, but misses the ‘why it matters’ part that gives a page real value.

3. Accuracy is Still a Risk

AI tools don’t verify what they write. They generate text based on what’s likely, not what’s true. So if you’re not checking the facts, it’s easy to publish mistakes, and those mistakes can damage both rankings and trust.

Google cares a lot about trust signals, and that’s where E-E-A-T comes in. While not the sole ranking factor, it acts like a compass for how Google’s systems define valuable content.

AI tools can mimic structure and tone, but they can’t replicate lived experience or real subject knowledge. That’s why content that includes actual use cases, results, or firsthand insight tends to perform better. It doesn’t just check boxes; it connects with both readers and algorithms.

Is AI Content Safe to Use for SEO in 2025?

The question isn’t just whether AI content is safe; it’s whether it actually holds up over time. In the past year, many websites that scaled fast with AI-generated articles have now seen steady drops in visibility. Not because they were penalised, but because the content failed to meet the expectations of real users and, eventually, the algorithms that serve them.

AI can help you publish more, but that alone doesn’t improve SEO. Content still needs to offer value beyond what’s already out there. If it doesn’t, users click away, backlinks don’t come in, and Google takes the hint. These aren’t immediate penalties; they’re slow, quiet signals that the content just isn’t earning its place.

What Google’s Systems Look For

Google isn’t targeting AI content specifically. What it’s looking for are signs of low quality. Systems like SpamBrain and the Helpful Content Update are designed to filter out pages that add little or no real value, and that includes a lot of AI-written content that’s published without much human oversight.

Thin pages, overused templates, keyword repetition, or content that sounds vague or overly generic are all signals of low usefulness. Even if each article looks slightly different, Google can detect patterns across a site. When every page starts to read the same, structurally and semantically, rankings begin to erode.

When Speed Becomes a Liability

Using AI to speed up publishing can feel like a win in the short term. But if that content doesn’t engage users or bring in links, the SEO benefits fade quickly. What you’re left with is a large volume of underperforming content that slowly drags your domain authority down.

Once Google begins to see your site as low value, fixing it takes more effort than getting it right the first time. In that sense, yes, AI content is safe to use, but only if it’s paired with a long-term view of performance, not just production.

Best Practices for SEO-Safe AI Content

AI can support your content efforts, but it needs structure, supervision, and strategy. Here are some strategies used by content marketers at Justwords to make sure that the content generated is always of the highest quality.

1. Start with Your Own Ideas, Not AI Prompts

This is what I tell my team all the time. If you begin with a prompt like ‘Write a blog on content marketing trends,’ you’ll end up with the same generic content every other brand is publishing. Instead, define your angle first. What’s your take? What have you seen that others haven’t? Then use AI to support that direction, not to create it from scratch.

This is one of the best ways to maintain originality and prevent the ‘AI sameness’ that algorithms and readers spot easily.

2. Add Real-World Examples and First-Hand Input

AI doesn’t have access to your client case studies, campaign results, or product insights. That’s where human experience matters most.

Even short additions like ‘We tested this on a client site and saw X% change in organic traffic’ or ‘Here’s what actually worked for us’ can elevate a piece from average to valuable.

Search engines respond well to content that reflects lived experience, especially on trust-sensitive topics like health, money, or professional advice. This is why following E-E-A-T guidelines is extremely important in content.

3. Build Around a Consistent Brand Voice

One of the biggest risks with AI is inconsistency. If you’re using it to write at scale, your tone and phrasing can shift from one post to the next, especially when multiple team members use different tools or prompts.

Create brand voice guidelines that cover tone, vocabulary, sentence flow, and formatting. Then edit every AI-assisted draft to bring it in line with that voice. Consistency builds recognition, which indirectly supports stronger engagement and trust signals.

4. Review Link Structure and Relevance

AI-generated content often includes vague or outdated internal links and external links that may not align with your website’s authority or topical relevance strategy. Every link should have a clear purpose, guiding users deeper into relevant internal content or backing up claims with authoritative, credible sources.

Also, avoid the common error of excessive over-linking just for SEO juice. Google has become better at evaluating the actual usefulness of internal links, and random keyword-stuffed linking can do more harm than good.

5. Always Fact-Check and Refresh

AI hallucinates, and it is not going away anytime soon. Even the most advanced AI models generate outdated or incorrect information, especially around stats, tools, laws, or fast-changing industries. Hence, make fact-checking a definite step in your publishing process, not just once, but regularly.

6. Use AI to Enhance, Not Automate

This is the one principle that ties everything together. Use AI to help ideate, outline, rephrase, or speed up parts of your workflow, but don’t rely on it to carry the content from start to finish. The best-performing content in 2025 still comes from human brains using smart tools, not tools replacing human thinking.

Final Thoughts

Here is what I want to end this piece with: If you want to use AI, make sure you are taking care to fix the stuff that is being generated. Read it carefully, check the facts, show your expertise and your experience, and create the reasons why people should trust the content in that blog. If you have done that, you’re good to go.

Remember, Google still cares about the same things it always has: Relevance, Clarity, Originality, and Trust. At one time, it was humans who were mass-producing low-quality content to game the search engine, and Google declared war on spammy content. Now it’s AI that is the culprit. So, it does not matter who is finally writing that content. What matters is the quality.

You can read the key takeaways section. If you feel that the content you create ticks all boxes, your content is good to go.

If you’re trying to build something meaningful, a brand that earns attention, trust, and traffic, content needs more than speed. It needs strategy, intention, and the kind of thinking that understands not just how to write, but what people want to read.

That’s exactly where Justwords comes in. We don’t rely on AI to write for us. Our content is built by real writers, editors, and strategists who know that impactful content should finally deliver value, engage its readers, and answer their questions. If you’re looking for content that feels human, reads with clarity, and ranks because it’s actually useful, we’d love to show you how we do it.

Fill the form to reach us or give us a call at 9910203445.