The introduction of advanced AI technologies has marked the beginning of a new era in digital content creation. OpenAI's ChatGPT has revolutionized how content is generated, edited, and disseminated across various sectors.
From finance to fashion, AI-generated content has become a staple. With its help, you can produce vast amounts of text quickly and efficiently. AI's impact is particularly notable in marketing. Approximately
44.4% of marketers have embraced AI for content production.
However, using AI to write health content needs careful thought. It’s not just about being right or ethical. Google is keeping a close eye on health websites. They want to see real expertise and trustworthy information, especially because it affects people's well-being and finances. This is called E-E-A-T for YMYL content.
AI-written articles might not meet these high standards. If they don’t, a website could rank lower in search results. So, it’s important to ask: should we really use AI for health information online?
Why the High Bar for Healthcare Content?
Google's algorithms are designed to provide users with the most relevant and reliable information possible. One key criterion for achieving this is E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These factors help Google determine the quality of content, especially in fields where accuracy is critical, such as healthcare.
Understanding E-E-A-T
| Experience |
This aspect considers whether the content creator has personal experience in the field they are writing about. In healthcare, this could mean a medical professional who shares insights based on their clinical experiences. |
| Expertise |
Expertise requires formal knowledge or qualification in the topic area. For healthcare, this means that the content should be written or reviewed by experts with medical credentials. |
| Authoritativeness |
This factor assesses the credibility of the content creator and the content itself within its specific field. For healthcare content, authoritativeness could be enhanced by citations from reputable medical institutions or publications. |
| Trustworthiness |
This involves the accuracy of the content, the transparency about the source of the information, and the presence of clear, factual support for the statements made. Trustworthiness is critical in healthcare because the consequences of misinformation can be severe. |
What is YMYL?
YMYL, short for "Your Money or Your Life," is a category used by Google to classify web pages or topics that could significantly affect a person's well-being, finances, safety, or future happiness.
The quality of information on these topics is critically important because inaccuracies or low-quality content can lead to serious consequences for users. Therefore, Google holds these pages to particularly high standards to ensure the information is reliable and trustworthy.
High Standards for Healthcare Content
The bar for healthcare content is set exceptionally high because of the potential impact on individual health and safety. Misinformation or inadequate advice can lead to health risks or mismanagement of medical conditions. That's why Google rigorously applies E-E-A-T to ensure that users receive information that is not only useful but also safe and reliable.
Meeting the high standards set by Google for healthcare content can be challenging. Working with a specialized agency could significantly improve your efforts. Enhance your
online presence with SeoProfy. They can help ensure your healthcare SEO strategies align with best practices, saving you time on research and testing strategies until you find the one that works.
AI-Generated Content Cannot Meet Google’s Standards
While AI offers promising capabilities in content generation, AI tools come with multiple limitations. Simply put, content created by artificial intelligence can’t meet the rigorous requirements set by E-E-A-T and YMYL guidelines without significant human intervention.
Expertise and Depth of Knowledge
AI technologies can process and generate information based on patterns and data they have been trained on, but they lack real-world experience and the deep, intuitive understanding that healthcare professionals gain through years of study and patient interaction.
This limitation becomes evident when AI attempts to tackle complex medical topics that require a nuanced understanding of the human body and disease processes. The content produced might miss critical subtleties, leading to generalizations or inaccuracies that can be misleading or even dangerous in a healthcare context.
Maintaining Authoritative Voice
While AI can pull information from various sources, it doesn't inherently possess authority on any subject. In healthcare, content must be accurate and recognized as authoritative. AI-generated articles lack the endorsement that comes from being written or reviewed by a medical professional, which can undermine the content’s credibility and reliability, essential components of the Authoritativeness in E-E-A-T.
Ensuring Accuracy and Trustworthiness
Accuracy is non-negotiable in healthcare content due to the direct impact it can have on a reader's health decisions. AI systems, while sophisticated, can still propagate errors present in their training data or make incorrect associations.
Such errors, even minor, can have serious implications, compromising the trustworthiness of the content. Ensuring every piece of information is verified and correct is a challenge for AI without significant human oversight.
Personalization and Contextual Understanding
Healthcare is highly personal, and advice often needs to be tailored to individual circumstances. AI lacks the capability to fully understand personal health contexts or histories, which can lead to content that is too general or not applicable to all individuals. This lack of personalization can be particularly problematic in healthcare, where personalized advice is often crucial.
Ethical and Transparency Issues
Concerns have been raised about the morality of using AI to make content, especially since the method is not being made public. For healthcare information, it is important that users understand whether the content was generated by an AI or a human expert.
Misrepresenting AI-generated content as human-authored can mislead users about the reliability and basis of the information they are receiving, impacting the ethical transparency required in healthcare communications.
What is Google’s Stance on AI Content?
Google's stance on AI-generated content, as outlined in their
Search Central Blog, is nuanced and focused on the quality and purpose of the content rather than the means by which it is produced. Here are the key points from their approach:
- Quality Over Production Method: No matter if it's created by humans or AI, Google's ranking algorithms always give more weight to unique, high-quality material that displays E-E-A-T qualities.
- No Ban on AI Content: Google does not prohibit AI-generated content outright. Instead, they focus on the intent behind the content. Using AI to create content primarily to manipulate search rankings is considered a violation of Google's spam policies.
- AI for Helpful Content: Google acknowledges that automation and AI can be used to generate useful content. They support the use of AI in creating content that is intended to be helpful and informative to users.
- Preventing Misuse: Google continues to enhance its spam-fighting systems, like SpamBrain, to tackle poor-quality content and spam, whether created by humans or AI. They aim to ensure that AI-generated content does not degrade the quality of search results.
- AI and Misinformation: Google's systems are designed to surface high-quality information from reliable sources and filter out information contradicting well-established consensus on critical topics. This approach applies to human-generated and AI-generated content, especially in sensitive areas like health, civic, or financial information.
- Recommendations for Creators: Google advises creators who use AI to focus on producing content that is original, high-quality, and primarily designed for people, not just for ranking well in search results. They suggest that creators think about who is creating the content, how it is being created, and why it is being created to ensure alignment with what their systems reward.
Google's approach to AI content is pragmatic. It is focused on ensuring that the use of AI in content creation enhances the user experience by contributing positively to the information ecosystem rather than manipulating it for higher search rankings.
To Avoid or Not to Avoid AI Content in Healthcare?
If you don’t want to wonder why
your website is not ranking on Google, you should refrain from using AI-generated content on your site. When creating landing pages or blog posts, it’s best to hire a professional writer and have a healthcare professional review the content to avoid penalties and maintain the credibility of the site and your brand in general.
As discussed, AI tools, while helpful, cannot meet Google’s strict criteria for online content. Given the complex nature of healthcare, writing content using AI tools can actually be harder and take longer than creating a piece from scratch.
And take this: Google has
announced plans to enhance its ranking algorithms to better identify and exclude low-quality content that seems crafted solely for SEO rather than to assist users. This update is a response to the surge in AI-generated content tailored to meet SEO guidelines. Even if your goal wasn’t to manipulate search engine results, your site still could get affected since algorithms aren’t perfect.
While completely avoiding AI might not be necessary, it's crucial to use it judiciously. AI can assist in the content creation process by helping organize data, generate ideas, and draft outlines.
FAQs
What Is AI-Generated Content?
AI-generated content refers to text, images, or other media created by artificial intelligence systems rather than directly by human hands. These systems, such as machine learning models, use data and algorithms to produce content that can mimic the style and informational structure of human-generated material. AI can create content ranging from simple reports to complex articles on a wide array of topics.
How Does Google Determine if AI Is Being Used to Manipulate Search Results?
Google uses a variety of sophisticated algorithms and systems, including their SpamBrain technology, to identify patterns and signals that suggest manipulation of search results, including those potentially driven by AI.
These systems analyze the content's quality, the authenticity of the user engagement, and other SEO factors to detect if the content is being created primarily to game the search engine rather than to provide genuine value to users.
Does AI-Generated Content Violate Google's Search Guidelines?
No, AI-generated content in itself doesn’t violate Google’s policies. However, content that is created solely to manipulate search rankings, regardless of whether humans or AI produces it, violates Google's policies against spam. The focus is on the intent behind the content and its usefulness to users. Google encourages content that is original, high-quality, and designed with a user-first approach, demonstrating qualities like expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
By Chris Bates
