AI-generated content is now officially on Google’s radar

As of the January 2025 update to the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, Google is telling its quality raters to flag AI-generated content as “Lowest quality” if it shows little effort, originality or value.

Here’s the important bit:

“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.” – Google, Section 4.6.6

According to Search Engine Land, this is the first time Google has formally defined “Generative AI” in these guidelines:

“Generative AI is a type of machine learning (ML) model that can take what it has learned from the examples it has been provided to create new content, such as text, images, music, and code. Different tools leverage these models to create generative AI content. Generative AI can be a helpful tool for content creation, but like any tool, it can also be misused.”

The key takeaway here is that using AI to support content creation isn’t inherently bad, but if your pages are mostly AI-driven, copied or lightly paraphrased without human input or curation, they’re now at serious risk of being rated the lowest quality.

We’ve touched on this issue before, but if you’re leaning on AI tools for content, real editorial input and value for users has to be considered and reflected in the content.