Whilst AI powered language models (such as Chat GTP) can offer benefits across a range of web disciplines users shouldn’t forget Google’s Panda algorithm and it’s continued influence on SEO.
Panda
The original Panda update from Google, dating back to 2011, addressed the problem with delivering original online content. With the long held notion that “content is king” ringing loud and clear, online marketeers where desperate to deliver chunks of relevant copy for websites. The Content Farm was born, pumping out textual web content in the form of thousands of low-quality articles, in return for advertising revenue via increased page views.
Even though much of this content was indeed generated by human writers and not AI, many articles were lacking expertise or insight and often delivered to the user less relevant search results.
Google Panda was designed to weed out this low quality content by lowering the rank of websites relying on such content. Even though the Panda algorithm was originally rolled out on 2011, its influence is still very much apparent. Google’s search ranking systems include E-A-T which might be seen as a natural progression to Panda.
E-A-T
E-A-T refers to Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness and is part of Google’s quality guidelines aimed at ensuring high quality content is rewarded in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Expertise identifies authors with the knowledge, qualifications and credentials to provide reliable information.
Authoritativeness relates to the reputation of an author or body within a particular industry. Websites scoring well are often regarded as leaders in a particular field and a source of reliable, accurate information.
Trustworthiness relates to the accuracy and legitimacy of website content. Transparency of who is responsible for this content, along with sufficient contact information are factors in determining trustworthy content delivery.
OK, so this isn’t a new concept. E-A-T was first introduced in 2014. In December 2022 it was E’d up to include Experience so now we have E-E-A-T which, in my view, made a mess of a perfectly good acronym and was somewhat superfluous. The original E-A-T all imply a certain depth of experience, don’t they?
Chat GPT
So, what does all this mean for today’s writers and marketeers looking to deliver high-quality content as a boon to SEO? Given that Chat GPT3 primarily uses scraped web content to provide albeit re-worked answers to user enquiries, it seems to me this is hardly constitutes original, innovative, high-quality content in keeping with E-A-T (or E-E-A-T if you prefer).
Maybe content creators can use AI to build subject and structure but I’d be very wary of employing such content verbatim.
