There Is No AI Content Penalty. Here's What Actually Ranks

Nikki AI: 00:00:12

AI overviews now show up on 43% of Google searches.

Nikki AI: 00:00:17

A year ago, it was 15%.

Nikki AI: 00:00:33

instead of setting fire to a monthly retainer.

Nikki AI: 00:00:36

This one's a bit different because I'm trying something new.

Nikki AI: 00:00:39

Once a month, I'm gonna try and do a kind of news episode 'cause every

Nikki AI: 00:00:44

month, there's a bunch of SEO news, and every month, roughly 970 agencies

Nikki AI: 00:00:50

turn that news into a LinkedIn post saying, This changes everything.

Nikki AI: 00:00:54

Book a call." But it doesn't change everything.

Nikki AI: 00:00:58

It pretty much never changes anything.

Nikki AI: 00:01:01

But you don't know that because the only people telling you about

Nikki AI: 00:01:04

it want to sell you something.

Nikki AI: 00:01:06

The problem is there's not enough meat in most of those stories to make

Nikki AI: 00:01:09

even a 10-minute podcast episode.

Nikki AI: 00:01:12

So here we are with my John Craven's Newsround kind of roundup of a few things

Nikki AI: 00:01:17

that have happened recently and how they affect you as a small business owner.

Nikki AI: 00:01:25

three stories.

Nikki AI: 00:01:26

What happened, what the LinkedIn gurus say it means, and what it actually means

Nikki AI: 00:01:31

for a business with fewer than 10 staff and a website that gets 400 visits a month

Nikki AI: 00:01:37

Nell, is it?

Nikki AI: 00:01:37

And most months, the honest answer will be this changes fuck all for you.

Nikki AI: 00:01:42

Carry on.

Nikki AI: 00:01:43

And I'd rather tell you that than invent a crisis.

Nikki AI: 00:01:46

Let's go.

Nikki AI: 00:01:50

Story one, Ahrefs studied 331,000 pages to see if Google hates AI content.

Nikki AI: 00:01:59

They published a big study at the end of July.

Nikki AI: 00:02:02

It's probably the most useful thing anyone's put out in months,

Nikki AI: 00:02:05

which is exactly why it's about to get misrepresented by everybody.

Nikki AI: 00:02:11

So they pulled a million pages from the top 10 results across

Nikki AI: 00:02:15

100,000 searches in June.

Nikki AI: 00:02:18

About 150,000 of those million pages had enough text on them to

Nikki AI: 00:02:23

run through an AI detector, which is a whole other story in itself,

Nikki AI: 00:02:27

but we're not gonna go into it now.

Nikki AI: 00:02:29

What they found was that just over half, so 54.7%, of the top ranking

Nikki AI: 00:02:35

pages had less than 20% of AI content.

Nikki AI: 00:02:39

Pages with under half AI content accounted for about 82.2% of the top three rankings.

Nikki AI: 00:02:47

But fully AI-generated pages do rank.

Nikki AI: 00:02:50

5.3% of top-ranking pages were 100% AI-generated.

Nikki AI: 00:02:57

And when it comes to indexing, which let's not forget is not ranking, it's just

Nikki AI: 00:03:01

being included in the Google index, low-AI content pages got indexed about 49% of the

Nikki AI: 00:03:09

time, and very high-AI content about 40%.

Nikki AI: 00:03:13

So what's gonna happen to this study?

Nikki AI: 00:03:15

We're gonna have camp one, the stop being a dinosaur lot.

Nikki AI: 00:03:20

They'll scream that Google doesn't penalize AI content, so crack on, spin

Nikki AI: 00:03:24

up 400 blog posts, nobody's checking.

Nikki AI: 00:03:27

And then you'll have camp two, the doom merchants.

Nikki AI: 00:03:31

They'll scream that AI content ranks worse and gets indexed

Nikki AI: 00:03:34

less, so buy their human-written content package at £350 a post.

Nikki AI: 00:03:40

They're both wrong, and they're both wrong in the same way.

Nikki AI: 00:03:43

They're reading a correlation and calling it a rule because what the study actually

Nikki AI: 00:03:48

tells you is this: Google is not sitting there with a machine that goes, "Beep,

Nikki AI: 00:03:54

this was written by a robot. Into the bin with you." There is no AI penalty.

Nikki AI: 00:03:59

That's over.

Nikki AI: 00:04:00

Stop worrying about it.

Nikki AI: 00:04:02

But heavily AI-generated pages do perform worse on average,

Nikki AI: 00:04:06

but it's not because they're AI.

Nikki AI: 00:04:08

It's because of what they are.

Nikki AI: 00:04:10

Think about who produces a page that's 100% AI with no human touching it.

Nikki AI: 00:04:15

Someone doing volume, someone who doesn't know the subject, someone who

Nikki AI: 00:04:20

typed, "Write me a 1,500-word blog post about commercial insurance,"

Nikki AI: 00:04:25

and hit publish without reading it.

Nikki AI: 00:04:27

That content is shit for reasons that have nothing to do with the tool that made it.

Nikki AI: 00:04:32

And the ones in the 5.3% that do rank, well, somebody who knew what

Nikki AI: 00:04:37

they were talking about probably looked at the output and fixed

Nikki AI: 00:04:39

it, and that's the difference.

Nikki AI: 00:04:41

Which brings me back to the thing that I will keep banging on about until I'm dead.

Nikki AI: 00:04:46

You cannot judge writing about your industry unless you

Nikki AI: 00:04:50

already know your industry.

Nikki AI: 00:04:52

you can't tell whether a model has given you something useful or

Nikki AI: 00:04:56

something plausible-sounding and wrong unless you already know the answer.

Nikki AI: 00:05:01

If you're a chartered surveyor using AI to draft something on party wall agreements,

Nikki AI: 00:05:07

you'll spot the bollocks in four seconds because you've been doing it for 20 years.

Nikki AI: 00:05:11

Fix it, publish it, fine.

Nikki AI: 00:05:14

If you're that same surveyor using AI to draft something about, let's

Nikki AI: 00:05:18

say, SEO, you've got no idea whether it's right, and that's how you end up

Nikki AI: 00:05:23

publishing bollocks with your name on it.

Nikki AI: 00:05:26

There's one practical thing about this one.

Nikki AI: 00:05:28

Ahrefs used their own AI detector for this, and they said outright

Nikki AI: 00:05:31

that it has limitations and it isn't exactly what Google's doing.

Nikki AI: 00:05:36

So don't go and run your own website through an AI detector this week.

Nikki AI: 00:05:39

They're unreliable.

Nikki AI: 00:05:41

They flag human writing as AI constantly.

Nikki AI: 00:05:44

I have my own stuff flagged as robot written, and I can promise

Nikki AI: 00:05:48

you I am extremely fucking human.

Nikki AI: 00:05:51

Run your site through a detector, get a scary number, rewrite 40 pages in a

Nikki AI: 00:05:55

panic, and you've wasted a fortnight and probably made your website worse

Nikki AI: 00:06:00

Let's move on to story two.

Nikki AI: 00:06:05

Search Console now reports on your social posts, and it's live for everyone.

Nikki AI: 00:06:09

Google announced this on the 7th of July, and it's been trickling out since.

Nikki AI: 00:06:13

As of the 29th, it's live globally, so no more waiting.

Nikki AI: 00:06:17

You connect your Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, never X, or YouTube account

Nikki AI: 00:06:23

to Search Console, and you can see how those posts perform in Google Search

Nikki AI: 00:06:27

and in Discover and Google News.

Nikki AI: 00:06:30

You can see clicks, impressions, and the search terms bringing

Nikki AI: 00:06:33

people to your posts.

Nikki AI: 00:06:34

Google's also published a guide on reading the data.

Nikki AI: 00:06:38

There's one kind of interesting bit on this one.

Nikki AI: 00:06:41

Until now, every Search Console property has needed you to

Nikki AI: 00:06:45

prove that you own the domain.

Nikki AI: 00:06:46

This one doesn't.

Nikki AI: 00:06:47

You can connect an account.

Nikki AI: 00:06:49

So if your whole business lives on Instagram and you've never bought a

Nikki AI: 00:06:53

domain, which kind of raises the point of why the fuck are you listening to this?

Nikki AI: 00:06:57

But hey, hey.

Nikki AI: 00:06:59

You can now get real Google search data.

Nikki AI: 00:07:02

And that tells you who Google built it for.

Nikki AI: 00:07:04

They built it for creators.

Nikki AI: 00:07:06

They didn't build it for website owners.

Nikki AI: 00:07:07

And the reaction about it has been, "Oh my God, slightly deranged." " It's

Nikki AI: 00:07:12

the dawn of social SEO, a new era for search." Mate, it's a report.

Nikki AI: 00:07:18

Your social posts have been showing up in Google results If you search

Nikki AI: 00:07:23

a business name, you get their Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn.

Nikki AI: 00:07:27

That's been happening forever because Google understands your business as an

Nikki AI: 00:07:31

entity, a thing that exists in the world, with your website and your profiles

Nikki AI: 00:07:36

all connected together in its head.

Nikki AI: 00:07:38

The posts were already there.

Nikki AI: 00:07:40

The connection was already there.

Nikki AI: 00:07:42

Google's just given you a dashboard.

Nikki AI: 00:07:44

And here's my prediction.

Nikki AI: 00:07:46

Give people a scoreboard and some of them start playing to it.

Nikki AI: 00:07:50

We're about to get a wave of social posts written for Google instead

Nikki AI: 00:07:53

of for the humans scrolling past.

Nikki AI: 00:07:56

We've already got keyword-stuffed captions.

Nikki AI: 00:07:58

They're gonna get worse.

Nikki AI: 00:08:00

Posts that read like a meta description.

Nikki AI: 00:08:03

Google's already published a guide on optimizing social content for

Nikki AI: 00:08:06

search, which is a hell of a fast turnaround on that particular prophecy.

Nikki AI: 00:08:12

One last thing on this one, and it's why I'm not more excited.

Nikki AI: 00:08:16

The four platforms are Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube.

Nikki AI: 00:08:22

No LinkedIn, no Facebook.

Nikki AI: 00:08:25

For a B2B service business, that list is completely arse about face.

Nikki AI: 00:08:30

LinkedIn is probably where nearly all your social effort goes, and it's not on it.

Nikki AI: 00:08:35

Google says the four are a starting point and it might grow.

Nikki AI: 00:08:39

So the businesses most likely to get something useful out of this

Nikki AI: 00:08:42

are the ones who can't have it yet.

Nikki AI: 00:08:44

Make of that what you will

Nikki AI: 00:08:50

Story three, 43%.

Nikki AI: 00:08:51

Back to the number that was at the top of the episode.

Nikki AI: 00:08:54

Similar web data, which was reported by TechCrunch on the 27th of

Nikki AI: 00:08:58

July, says that AI overviews now appear on 43% of Google searches.

Nikki AI: 00:09:04

A year ago, that was 15%.

Nikki AI: 00:09:06

Their take is that this stopped being a layer on top of search and

Nikki AI: 00:09:10

became part of the search journey.

Nikki AI: 00:09:13

Google drops you into an AI overview.

Nikki AI: 00:09:15

You carry on into AI mode from there, asking questions conversationally.

Nikki AI: 00:09:21

I did an episode a while back about ranking number one being useless.

Nikki AI: 00:09:25

that argument has aged frighteningly well, and it needs updating.

Nikki AI: 00:09:29

It's not just about whether position one earns a click anymore.

Nikki AI: 00:09:33

On nearly half of searches, there's a summary sitting above

Nikki AI: 00:09:38

everything, answering the question before anyone reaches the results.

Nikki AI: 00:09:43

But don't let anyone use this number to sell you something, because

Nikki AI: 00:09:46

that's mostly what's gonna happen.

Nikki AI: 00:09:49

Some chancer is gonna put 43% in a slide deck and flog you an AI visibility

Nikki AI: 00:09:54

retainer off the back of it What it means for you is that to get cited in

Nikki AI: 00:09:59

an AI overview, you have to be in the index and ranking, and the work is the

Nikki AI: 00:10:05

work you were already meant to be doing.

Nikki AI: 00:10:08

There's no separate AI SEO.

Nikki AI: 00:10:10

But what it does mean is that if you measure success by traffic alone,

Nikki AI: 00:10:15

your numbers will look worse, even when your visibility improves.

Nikki AI: 00:10:20

That's not you failing.

Nikki AI: 00:10:22

That's the search results changing shape underneath you.

Nikki AI: 00:10:25

So that's the news.

Nikki AI: 00:10:26

Now the actual to-do list.

Nikki AI: 00:10:29

Three things, 20 minutes total.

Nikki AI: 00:10:31

Stay with me.

Nikki AI: 00:10:38

So your homework.

Nikki AI: 00:10:39

One, connect your social accounts to Search Console.

Nikki AI: 00:10:43

It's live for everyone now, so no excuses.

Nikki AI: 00:10:46

Log in, property drop-down, add property, pick whichever of the four you use.

Nikki AI: 00:10:51

Five minutes.

Nikki AI: 00:10:52

Then leave it.

Nikki AI: 00:10:53

Data takes a few days to appear.

Nikki AI: 00:10:55

So if you're staring at an empty chart tomorrow and conclude

Nikki AI: 00:10:58

that Google hates you, don't.

Nikki AI: 00:11:00

When it does arrive, look at one thing, the search terms

Nikki AI: 00:11:04

bringing people to your posts.

Nikki AI: 00:11:06

Not the volume, the terms.

Nikki AI: 00:11:07

If people are finding your Instagram through searches you

Nikki AI: 00:11:10

never expected, that's content ideas for your actual website.

Nikki AI: 00:11:15

Two, take one page you drafted with AI and do the parts you skipped.

Nikki AI: 00:11:20

Just one, not all of them.

Nikki AI: 00:11:23

Your most important service page or your most recent blog post.

Nikki AI: 00:11:26

Read it properly, out loud if you can.

Nikki AI: 00:11:30

Ask one question all the way through.

Nikki AI: 00:11:33

What do I know about this that the LLM or the chat didn't?

Nikki AI: 00:11:38

The specific client situation, the thing that always goes wrong on this type of

Nikki AI: 00:11:43

job, the price range nobody publishes, the bit customers always get confused about.

Nikki AI: 00:11:49

Go back, put that in, and cut out anything that could have been written

Nikki AI: 00:11:54

about any business in your sector.

Nikki AI: 00:11:57

That's the difference between AI content that ranks and AI content that doesn't.

Nikki AI: 00:12:02

It's not the tool.

Nikki AI: 00:12:04

It's whether somebody who knows the subject went in afterwards.

Nikki AI: 00:12:10

Three, search your top three money terms and look at what's above the results.

Nikki AI: 00:12:15

Open an incognito window, type in the three searches you most

Nikki AI: 00:12:18

want to be found for, and look at the screen before you scroll.

Nikki AI: 00:12:22

Is there an AI overview?

Nikki AI: 00:12:24

Yes or no?

Nikki AI: 00:12:26

Are you cited in it?

Nikki AI: 00:12:27

Yes or no?

Nikki AI: 00:12:29

Write it down.

Nikki AI: 00:12:30

That's your baseline.

Nikki AI: 00:12:32

Do it again in three months.

Nikki AI: 00:12:33

Cheapest AI visibility tracking on Earth, and roughly £900 a month less than the

Nikki AI: 00:12:38

tools being sold to you right now And that's your lot for the first news one.

Nikki AI: 00:12:44

Tell me if you want more of these because if nobody likes it, I'll happily go back

Nikki AI: 00:12:48

to shouting about meta descriptions.

Nikki AI: 00:12:55

Make sure you're following SEO Fucking What in whichever app you're listening

Nikki AI: 00:12:58

to so the next one turns up on its own.

Nikki AI: 00:13:01

And if any of this made you realize you've got no idea what's going on

Nikki AI: 00:13:05

with your own website, that's what the Non-Wanky SEO course is for.

Nikki AI: 00:13:09

It's at nonwankyseo.com.

Nikki AI: 00:13:12

The non-wanky Onpage SEO toolkit is currently free.

Nikki AI: 00:13:16

Go and sign up for it.

Nikki AI: 00:13:18

It's 10 lessons, a couple of modules.

Nikki AI: 00:13:21

Perfect SEO for your website.

Nikki AI: 00:13:24

Until next time, get found, make money.

Nikki AI: 00:13:27

And if anybody tries to sell you an AI detector this

Nikki AI: 00:13:30

month, tell them Nicky said no