A Potentially Hidden Side Effect of Using AI Generated Copy

There has been a lot of chatter about AI-generated copy and how it could change the Web, as well as making homework easier to produce (and a horror to mark)… The fact is that ChatGPT and it’s like will make it easier for anyone to churn out copy at an incredibly fast speed. It may not be that good, but most of it is eminently readable, even if the facts can sometimes be a bit dodgy. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐀𝐈 𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐲 However, we also know that Google is not that keen on AI copy and has made noises to the effect that it will ignore it when it finds it. If people take note of this and either use the orignal AI copy as just a guide, or rewrite it totally, just using the AI words as an aide memoir about what to say, then all should be OK. 𝐀 𝐏𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 But if website owners just start using the AI copy as it comes, or don’t make enough changes so that AI copy detectors don’t mark it as AI-generated, then there is a chance, just a chance, of another quite worrying side effect…. You see, we know that Google has a finite ability to crawl the Web, and we know that it shares this out on the basis that the most ‘interesting’ and fast changing sites (and those with a high enough Trust Factor i.e backlinks) get crawled more often. And now we learn that there could be a whole lot more content being created as AI makes it easier to produce. 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐲 𝐈𝐭 𝐂𝐫𝐚𝐰𝐥𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬? This will undoubtedly put the ability of Google to crawl the Web to the test. So, what if Google decides that any site that has too much (level to be defined) of AI-generated content should have its crawl rate as well as its ability to rank reduced? This could have a major impact on the traffic to the the site, with all the potential damage to sales and leads… 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞, 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲… I cannot say that this will happen, but the fact that it might (for good reasons) should make everyone think carefully about using AI content, or at least that is my view and my warning. I wonder what other #SEO people think?

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