SEO

Google closes the shortcut: content for AI is simply good content

Google has added manual review of AI-written content to its guidelines and openly discourages tricks aimed at AI answers. In Google's view, there is no separate optimization for AI.

Bartosz Bielawski

Bartosz Bielawski

· 3 min read
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Google closes the shortcut: content for AI is simply good content

Signal in the data

Independent sources on this topic: 6 in the last week, 15 in 30 days, 24 in 90 days. We have tracked it since 2024-07-24; 108 claims in our database in total.

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Number of independent sources per week (last 12 weeks).

What is happening

In early October, Google updated its guidance on creating content with AI. It now includes a clear requirement: before you publish AI-generated text, review it by hand.

This goes beyond the article itself. Titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text need review too - in other words, everything AI can churn out in bulk.

Where sources agree

Sources consistently say that Google's AI features run on the same systems as regular search. Your page needs to be crawlable, indexed and useful, and that is enough.

Google also discourages specific tricks. The list includes llms.txt, chunking text for AI, special schema for AI and artificial brand mentions. Mass-producing pages that target variations of one question can be treated as scaled content abuse, and attempts to manipulate AI answers count as spam.

Where they differ

Part of the industry still believes in separate rules for AI. People cite a Princeton study claiming that adding quotes and statistics to a text increases visibility in AI answers by up to 40%.

Others argue that the requirement to label AI content will disappear anyway, because AI is now built into every tool. So the debate is not whether you may use AI, but how much human work the finished text needs.

What to do

Set a simple rule: no AI text goes live until a human has read it, including the title and meta description. That is cheaper than cleaning up after a manual action.

Instead of creating llms.txt files and adding extra markup, work on the content you already have. Refreshing an old article often pays off more than writing a new one.

Our take

Google leaves no room for separate SEO for AI: what counts is the same quality as always, and AI-written text has to pass through human hands. If you invest in tricks aimed at AI answers, you risk Google treating them as spam.

Confidence: high - this is stated in Google's official documentation and confirmed by many independent sources. We will change our view if: Google publishes separate technical recommendations for AI Overviews or AI Mode, or officially starts using llms.txt.

Sources

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