Learning about AI

[Dani]

rproffitt will be pleased to know I'm currently at PubCon, an SEO conference for publishers, and the second half of the day today is all about how to integrate AI content into your workflow for SEO gains.

[Reverend Jim]

Does that mean, "how to use AI to game the system"?

[Dani]

SEO hasn't been about gaming the system for nearly 15 years now. Rather, SEO is about helping Google to help you. Microsoft Bing and Google are always top sponsors at all the SEO conferences I attend/speak at.

[Reverend Jim]

SEO hasn't been about gaming the system for nearly 15 years now

Then you may find this interesting. Also this.

[Dani]

Neither article is published on a site devoted to digital marketing, or written by someone close to the SEO industry, so I take both articles with a grain of salt. However, according to the Tech Crunch article, Google announced a search quality update on Tuesday. I actually spent the first half of this week at an SEO conference where they made the announcement. Google likes to launch their big algorithm updates to coincide with SEO conferences as the quickest way to get the word out throughout the industry.

That being said, there's nothing particularly inaccurate in this article, with the exception of the first sentence. I would rewrite, "Google today took aim at the SEO industry, which has gamified search rankings to destroy the value of Google Search results." to instead say, "Google today took aim at bad actors within the SEO industry, which has gamified search rankings to destroy the value of Google Search results."

The second article you linked to on ars technica is much the same. It seems as if tech journalists without a firm grasp of the SEO industry make the generalized assumption that Google is at odds with SEOs, and that couldn't be further from the truth.

Google has an SEO getting started guide and SEO community advocates such as John Mueller, who frequent SEO conferences (I think in his latest tweet he mentioned attending the upcoming BrightsonSEO conference). For as long as I've been in the industry, Google has been one of the biggest sponsors of every SEO conference I've ever attended.

There's nothing wrong with SEO, as long as you do it right. If you try to cheat the system, it might seem like it's working at first, but you're ultimately going to be in for a rude awakening. And that goes for any industry, right?

[rproffitt]

I have to ask if any mention was made about CNET which went all in on AI generated content. Wikipedia downgraded CNET's reliability rating as a result. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNET

All the folk I knew there have left or been laid off.

[Dani]

No. I haven't heard the name CNET from anyone other than you in probably close to a decade.

There was a huge ton of talk about Reddit, though. Especially revolving around Google's recent partnership where they are now paying a shit ton of money to access a private API of all Reddit content, and how favorably Google is ranking Reddit in the search results, perhaps undeservingly so.

But, yeah, basically what you're describing is exactly the reason why I don't feel DaniWeb is an appropriate place to post AI-generated content. I feel like, within the context of a community forum, posts should be written by the posters they posit to be written by.

[Dani]

Oh, but to follow up to Rev Jim's links, Google's recent core algorithm update that launched during the conference is meant to specifically go after AI-generated editorial content.

[Dani]

Huh?! GEnie to now? Sorry, I think I'm totally missing something here.

[Dani]

I don't know anything before Usenet.