AI is everywhere these days. Tech companies are scrambling to add generative AI features to their services, and for millions of people, running questions past ChatGPT has become as routine as searching for information on Google. Whether you love it or you hate it, AI seems to be here to stay.
This raises a question for webmasters and SEOs: should we just use AI tools to generate our website content? Chatbots like Microsoft’s Copilot and the aforementioned ChatGPT can spit out thousands of words on just about any topic you like, but is this AI-generated content actually capable of competing in the organic search results?
We’ve taken a close look at Google’s official stance on AI and run some tests to discover the truth. Read on to find out whether you can rank with AI-generated content.
What Do Google’s Guidelines Say About AI-Generated Content?
According to Google’s own guidance on AI-generated content, their organic search algorithm ranks web pages according to their quality, not the method used to create them. In other words: yes, AI-generated content can rank just as well as human-written content if it’s useful and engaging.
However, that guidance was published in February 2023 – that’s nine core algorithm updates ago. This remains Google’s most recent utterance on the subject of AI-generated content, but the AI landscape has changed a lot in the past couple of years. Taking a closer look at recent updates tells a different story.
Google’s most recent core update (which finished rolling out in March 2025) gives the impression that they may have changed their minds. Specifically, Google Search Central announced that the 2025 update continues their work to “surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout this year”. On top of that, Google’s quality raters were recently asked to rate AI-generated content as the lowest quality content.
This implies that Google has a preference for human-written content. But since the search giant’s official messaging re: AI-generated pages is somewhat mixed, we thought we’d run our own experiment to discover the truth.
Will an AI-Generated Blog Post Rank Well?
The Test
We have two ecommerce websites that sell safety equipment for working at height. Since both sites occupy roughly the same niche, we decided to use them to test whether an AI-generated blog post can rank above one written by a human. For the purposes of this test, we’ll call the two websites Site A and Site B.
Site A already had a blog post that ranked very well for the query ‘where do most falls from height occur’. This post was written by a human, and it was the #1 Google result for that keyword. The same blog post was also linked multiple times in Google’s new AI Overview section.
Now, ‘where do most falls from height occur’ is not an especially popular query. It averages roughly 40 Google searches per month, and the competition is fairly low, so we figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult to get a new page ranked for this query. To begin with, Site B didn’t show up anywhere in the Google results for ‘where do most falls from height occur’, so we asked ChatGPT to produce a blog post that would rank for that keyword. We then published the resulting article on Site B and submitted it to Google for indexing.
The Result
With both blogs posted, we just had to wait for the Google rankings. Site A and Site B belong to very similar businesses in the same industry, and both websites were created by us and even use the same blog engine. So, the only real difference between the two blog posts was the quality of the writing.
In the end, the AI-generated blog post on Site B showed up in position #3 for ‘where do most falls from height occur’. That’s two places lower than the human-authored blog on Site A, although other SERP features (such as the AI Overview and the ‘people also ask’ section) meant that Site B’s result actually appeared roughly halfway down the SERP.
What Can We Learn From This Test?
Our test suggests that Google will happily index AI-generated content and even display it on the first page of their search results, but human-authored content still has the edge.
Google’s algorithm prioritises content that demonstrates expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Though generative AI tools are likely to get better with time, they cannot effectively emulate these values in their current state. Generative AI can only repeat other people’s expertise; it can’t demonstrate its own. Google may also penalise AI content for low trustworthiness, since AI-generated articles often contain misinformation.
One other thing: even though Google will allow AI-generated content to rank, they have stated that using AI-generated content to manipulate their search rankings is against their spam policies, so using AI specifically for SEO purposes may count as a violation.
(Of course, the elephant in the room is that neither we humans nor Google’s algorithm can detect AI-generated content with 100% accuracy. This is probably why Google’s official stance remains ‘we don’t care where it came from, we only care about the quality’ – it’s because they can’t always tell! So, whether you’re using AI tools or not, the most important thing is to review your content carefully to make sure it’s easy to read and that all of the information is correct.)
Other Issues With the AI-Generated Article
Though our main goal with this experiment was to gauge whether AI-generated content could outrank a human-written article, we did find a few other issues with the piece that ChatGPT wrote for us.
Firstly, the AI-generated article clocked in at over 1300 words, whereas the human-authored article on Site A was only 600 words. Longer content can be better for SEO purposes, but only if that length actually serves a purpose and the article is shaped for the intended audience. Otherwise, it’s just pointless filler!
Also, the AI-generated article referred to OSHA – an American regulatory body. Site B belongs to a British company, so the OSHA guidelines aren’t really relevant to them. This is the kind of irrelevance that’s unfortunately all too common when using AI to create content.
Worst of all, the AI article contained an entire section that focused on a completely different set of keywords, some of which Site B was already targeting on other pages. Unlike a human writer, AI isn’t aware of all the other pages that make up Site B and which may already rank for certain popular search terms. This creates a risk of keyword cannibalisation, which could end up worsening the website’s overall rankings.
Is AI-Generated Content Bad for SEO?
Though Google claims to have no problem with AI content, it does seem that Google’s algorithm might be moving towards penalising it. In our own test, we saw that Google prefers human-written content. We’ve also seen that the quality and relevance of human-written content is much better for your blog. You might argue that we’re biased, but it seems pretty clear that the issues with AI-generated content run quite deep and that some human intervention remains essential.
And there’s another factor to consider here too. While there are people who fiercely defend AI-generated content, there does seem to be a trend towards people becoming irritated by the prevalence of AI across media. Only time will tell where public perception ultimately lands, but in this current period of volatility, relying on AI for your content could turn some customers against you.
To summarise: in search engine results, high-quality human writing still has the edge over AI, and AI content may be perceived negatively by your customers.
Struggling to get your website shown in the Google search results? The SEO experts here at Designer Websites can help. Contact us today for a consultation.
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