This post was originally published in April 2025 and significantly updated in September 2026.
The writing is on the wall for the efficacy of AI-generated content if you value your organic search and AI visibility. Google’s definition of low-quality, AI-generated content as spam, as well as its focus on Spam Updates this year, both point to major issues for sites that rely on AI-generated content on their sites.
Training Google’s Algorithms
Over 18 months ago, Google’s worldwide quality rating team received their first instructions on AI-generated content. Quality raters are real human beings who use the quality rater guidelines document that Google creates to manually rate the quality of pages that rank for specified search queries. That quality assessment data is then used to train Google’s algorithms to produce better search results algorithmically.
Starting in January 2025, quality raters were instructed to give pages that use AI-generated content that contains little added value the “Lowest” quality rating. As you can see below, the bolding and capitalization are actually in the September 2025 quality rater guidelines (download them here, see page 29), further emphasizing Google’s stance.

While the guidance Google gives to its quality rating team doesn’t affect algorithmic performance today, what Google requires them to rate and how matters to your future algorithmic organic search performance.
Is Google already judging AI-generated content algorithmically? We have no way of knowing for sure, but the most recent Spam Update in August 2026 sure looks that way.
Google’s Spam-Fighting Quest
Since 2022, Google has released 10 confirmed Spam Updates. Three of them popped up in the first eight months of 2026. After several years of what felt like lackluster attention to spam, Google is suddenly very focused on it again.
In fact, Google’s vice president of engineering, Rajan Patel, backed that up with a one-word answer to an X post speculating on whether the spam team is still well-funded: “Yes.”
Veteran SEO professional Mordy Oberstein presented his findings using the SE Ranking platform: The number of URLs dropping out of the top 100 rankings with the August Spam Update was 82% above the baseline in July 2026.
Google’s scaled content abuse spam policy, a part of which refers to low-value AI-generated content, is frequently cited as causing a greater degree of shuffling within Google’s search results during the August Spam Update.
What Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines Say
So, how do Google’s quality rater guidelines address AI-generated content? You’ll find two instances in section 4.5 Untrustworthy Webpages or Websites and 4.6 Spammy Webpages. The subsections that pertain to AI-generated content include:
- 4.5.3 Deceptive Page Purpose, Deceptive Information about the Website, Deceptive Design
- A webpage or website with “fake” owner or content creator profiles. For example, AI generated content with made up “author” profiles (AI generated images or deceptive creator descriptions) in order to make it appear that the content is written by people
- 4.6.5 Scaled Content Abuse
- Using automated tools (generative AI or otherwise) as a low-effort way to produce many pages that add little-to-no value for website visitors as compared to other pages on the web on the same topic
- Pages and websites made up of content created at scale with no original content or added value for users, should be rated Lowest, no matter how they are created. Even if you are unsure of the method of creation, e.g. whether or not the page is created using generative AI tools, you should still use the Lowest rating when you strongly suspect scaled content abuse after looking at several pages on the website.
- 4.6.6 MC Created with Little to No Effort, Little to No Originality, and Little to No Added Value for Website Visitors
- The Lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the MC on the page (including text, images, audio, videos, etc) is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated, or reposted from other sources with little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value for visitors to the website. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.
- Likewise, the use of Generative AI tools alone does not determine the level of effort or Page Quality rating. Generative AI tools may be used for high quality and low quality content creation. For example, a high level of effort may be involved in creating high quality original artwork using Generative AI tools. However, it’s also possible to use Generative AI tools to create Lowest quality content with little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value for website visitors.
What Google Is Really After
Think about it: The last thing Google, or any search engine or AI platform, wants is to waste resources crawling through an internet littered with crummy, low-quality content. Generative AI tools are being used to pump it out by the billions.
If Google can spot those pages algorithmically and decline to index them from the start, that saves Google resources and prevents searchers from stumbling across low-quality sites in search results.
Short-Term Gain (Maybe) but Long-Term Pain
Site quality is one of the hardest search engine optimization (SEO) issues to detect and clean up. The worst part is that there are no tools that diagnose site quality to tell you that that’s the issue you’re facing. And no tools that will tell you which pages on your site are considered low quality.
You can assume you have quality issues if you’re hit by one of Google’s algorithms, specifically the Core Updates or Spam Updates. Those algorithms can determine quality as a sitewide marker. Posting low-quality pages on one area of your site, like a blog, can drag down the organic search performance for the entire site, not just for the low-quality pages.
Overcoming a spam or other content-quality issue is a long, painful process that can take six to 18 months or longer. The recovery process looks like this:
- Day 0: Get hit by a Google core or spam algorithm update;
- Day 14: Determine what the causes could be with no information besides what you can glean from your own analytics and the actions taken on your site;
- Months 3-6: Fix the issue entirely;
- Months 7-9: Wait 90 days for Google to crawl and recrawl your site repeatedly to determine that the issue is gone and isn’t coming back;
- Months 10-15: Wait for another Google core or spam algorithm update to finish rolling out;
- Month 16: Determine if the fix improved performance;
- Month 16.5: If not, try again.
After all of this work, there’s no guarantee of success. It’s far better to play it safe with Google’s algorithms.
So let’s put the pieces together:
- Google instructs human quality raters to assign the “lowest” quality rating for content that provides low value-add, including AI-generated content;
- Google uses human quality rater data to train its algorithms;
- Google’s algorithms can punish sites at the whole-site level for content quality issues;
- It’s a long, difficult process to fix content quality issues across a site, and it takes months and months to rebound from algorithmic dampening.
Using AI-generated content on your site is not worth the risk to your organic search performance.
Ways to Safely Use AI in SEO
Despite the risks of using generative AI for SEO, there are ways to use AI safely to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your content creation.
- Research: Often, you need to optimize or create content on topics you’re not a subject matter expert in. Tools like ChatGPT are incredible research tools in this regard. If you ask it a question, it will not only give you an answer, but also explain the answer in easy-to-understand terms. Just remember to always fact-check the information for accuracy.
- Outlining: A well-constructed piece of content should have an outline that flows well behind it. But this was most people’s least favorite part of English classes in school. Ask tools like ChatGPT for an outline on any subject, review and update it to ensure you’re adding value, and then complete each section in your own words using your subject matter expertise and/or the information you’ve researched.
- Combating Writer’s Block: Input a general idea or topic, and your favorite AI engine generates ideas in complete sentences that you can use to guide your writing. It gets the ball rolling so that you can keep the momentum going as you write to avoid writer’s block.
The Bottom Line
It’s just not worth trying to produce content automagically for organic search benefit. Site quality issues can burn a domain’s organic search performance to the ground. Do you really have the ability to withstand decreased organic search leads or revenue over the months or years it can take to diagnose and fix site quality issues? If the answer is no, then you’ll need to future-proof your performance by saying “No” to low-value-add AI-generated content today.I-generated content today.
