Everyone’s writing now; just not all of them are human. With AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude making it ridiculously easy to mass-generate content, it’s no wonder Google’s search results have started to feel a little... off. So when Google came out and said, “We don’t care how content is made, as long as it’s helpful,” many took that as a green light to flood the web with AI-generated articles, hoping to rank.
However, this has left Google overwhelmed, users dissatisfied, and search results odd. This article breaks down what’s going on behind the scenes, how Google’s trying to handle it, and what it means for people who care about publishing content that lasts.
There was a time, not long ago, when AI-generated content was a nonstarter on Google. It went against the rules and was treated like spam. But the explosion of tools like GPT-3, Jasper, and ChatGPT changed the game. Google adapted, saying it cared more about the quality of content than how it was made. That sounds fair in theory, but in practice, it was like pulling off the warning labels and telling the internet to “use responsibly.” Spoiler: it didn’t.
“Google didn’t loosen the rules — it lit the fuse. Once AI content was ‘allowed,’ the flood was inevitable,” says Seth Price of blusharkdigital.com.
Instead, the web was hit with a tidal wave of AI-written articles, many of them pumped out at scale without review or oversight. Some of these even ranked surprisingly well at first. And just like that, people had a recipe: feed the algorithm, collect the clicks, skip the human work. But what slipped through initially didn’t stay unnoticed. The sheer volume created noise that Google wasn’t built to handle in real time, and now, it’s trying to recalibrate.
Google doesn’t know what your content means. It doesn’t read articles the way a person would — following arguments, picking up tone, or evaluating insight. What it does is look for patterns. Keywords in the right places, headings that match search intent, and phrases it’s seen on other high-ranking pages. If the formatting and structure check out, it says, “Sure, this looks decent,” and lets it through. That’s the sniff test. If your content smells algorithmically “clean,” it gets a shot.
But here’s the real test: what do people do when they see it? Google watches what happens on the search results page. If users click your link and stay, great. If they click and immediately bounce back or skip your page entirely? That’s a red flag. It tells Google, “This content may not be as good as it looks.” And slowly, sometimes quietly, that page slips down the rankings. So while AI-written content might pass the first gate, it rarely survives without real user approval.
Google is throwing everything it has at solving the AI spam problem — and that includes leaning on heavyweight language models like BERT and MUM. The goal is to teach these systems how to sniff out low-effort content without relying so much on user interaction. If Google can get there, it will finally be able to judge content more like a human would before it ever shows up on your screen.
But, until it happens, we are in a strange in-between state. Reddit, Quora, and other raw-feeling forums dominate the results, not because they are necessarily the most correct, but because they feel authentic. Human messiness has become a signal of authenticity. It is a smart short-term fix, but it’s not a full solution. The arms race between quality and quantity is still on, and no one’s fully winning yet.
Those who develop with care still have an advantage in the long run. Google may be swamped, but it is not blind; as its systems grow, true value will emerge.If you’re focused on content that helps people, content that answers instead of fakes, then you’re already ahead. The noise may get louder for a while, but the signal still matters. Keep writing for humans. That’s what lasts.