Each few years, the search engine optimisation business discovers a brand new approach to mass-produce content material and convinces itself that this time it’ll work. That the sheer quantity of pages will overwhelm Google’s skill to evaluate high quality. That for those who simply publish sufficient, the numbers will carry you.
It by no means works. It has by no means labored. And the individuals promoting you these approaches understand it has by no means labored. They simply want it to work lengthy sufficient to gather the bill.
The Sample Has A Title. It’s Referred to as “Not Studying”
Let’s stroll via the timeline, as a result of apparently, we have to do that once more.
2008-2011: Content material Spinning
The pitch was easy: Take one article, run it via software program that swaps synonyms, and instantly you have got 50 “distinctive” articles. The phrase “distinctive” was doing lots of heavy lifting in that sentence. These articles learn like somebody had fed a dictionary via a blender. However even when the output had been polished, the premise was damaged. Right here’s what the content material spinners by no means grasped, and what their successors nonetheless don’t: Uniqueness is trivially simple to supply. A monkey dropping its fingers on a keyboard produces distinctive content material. The string of characters has by no means existed earlier than – congratulations, it’s unique. The exhausting half was by no means uniqueness. It was producing uniqueness that’s price one thing. Distinctive and priceless usually are not synonyms, and the hole between them is the place each scaling technique falls aside.
Google tolerated it for some time. Its programs merely hadn’t caught up but. Then Panda arrived in February 2011, hit almost 12% of all search queries, and content material farms watched their visitors evaporate in a single day … I used to be “lucky” sufficient to look at it occur in actual time. Demand Media, the poster youngster of the content-farm mannequin, reported a $6.4 million loss the next yr.
The lesson was alleged to be clear: You can’t industrialize high quality. Quantity with out substance is a legal responsibility with an extended tail than most budgets can take in.
2015-2022: Programmatic search engine optimisation
The pitch advanced. As an alternative of spinning present articles, you’d construct templates and fill them with structured information. “Greatest [X] in [City]” pages, generated by the thousand, every one a skinny wrapper round a database question. A few of these truly offered worth – if the underlying information was good and the template served real person wants. Most didn’t. Most had been simply doorway pages carrying a greater outfit. Google spent years refining its skill to detect and demote templated content material that existed primarily for indexing functions somewhat than for people.
The lesson was alleged to be strengthened: scale works when there’s substance beneath. With out it, you’re simply constructing a much bigger goal.
2023-Current: AI-Generated Content material At Scale
And right here we’re once more. Similar pitch, shinier instruments. “We will produce 500 articles a month!” Fantastic. Are you able to produce 500 articles a month which can be price studying? That comprise one thing a reader couldn’t get from the outcomes already within the index? That show any type of experience, expertise, or unique thought?
No? Then you definately’re not scaling content material. You’re scaling your crawl budget waste.
And the sample recognition failures are gorgeous. (This wasn’t delicate. A number of of us seen. No, we weren’t impressed.)
I lately got here throughout an AI visibility device – one which sells itself on serving to you get found by AI programs – that had generated lots of of pages following the sample “greatest search engine optimisation companies in {metropolis}.” Déjà vu. Anybody who lived via programmatic search engine optimisation acknowledges this instantly – it’s the 2017 playbook, besides now the copy is written by an LLM. The template bought a grammar improve and an “it’s AEO” stamp. The technique didn’t.
Lily Ray flagged a similar case: a resume website with 500+ programmatic pages for “resume examples for {profession}.” Each title following the very same method. Close to-identical web page templates. Misused AggregateRating schema. Apparent AI content material all through. Her abstract was three phrases: “Labored till it didn’t.”
That phrase must be tattooed on each content material scaling pitch deck. Labored till it didn’t. It all the time does. After which it doesn’t.
The irony of an AI optimization device utilizing mass-generated doorway pages to construct its personal visibility could be humorous if it weren’t so completely on-brand for this business.
The Qualitative Wall Doesn’t Transfer
Right here’s what each technology of content material scalers fails to know: Google doesn’t consider content material in isolation. It evaluates content material relative to every little thing else within the index on the identical subject.
Publishing 500 AI-generated articles about mortgage charges doesn’t make you an authority on mortgage charges. It makes you the five hundredth supply saying the identical factor in barely completely different phrases. And Google already has 499 of these. It doesn’t want yours.
The qualitative wall is that this: There’s a minimal threshold of real worth – unique perception, lived expertise, particular experience, one thing the reader can’t get elsewhere – beneath which no quantity of quantity helps you. You possibly can publish one million pages beneath that threshold. You’ll rank for nothing that issues.
And it will get worse. For the individuals scaling AI content material particularly to achieve visibility in AI-powered reply programs, the amount technique doesn’t simply fail; it actively backfires. A 2025 paper on retrieval evaluation for LLM-era systems introduces a metric that measures each useful and distracting passages in retrieval. The discovering that issues right here: Low-utility content material doesn’t sit quietly within the index ready to be ignored. It may pull retrieval fashions off-track, degrading the standard of solutions these programs produce. Your 500 skinny articles aren’t simply invisible. They’re noise. And in case your website additionally has genuinely helpful pages buried in that noise, congratulations – you’ve constructed your personal interference sample. The quantity you thought would assist discovery is actively drowning the pages which may have earned it.
This isn’t a brand new perception. It’s the identical perception that content material spinners ignored in 2010, that programmatic search engine optimisation factories ignored in 2018, and that AI content material mills are ignoring proper now. The instruments bought higher at producing textual content. The textual content nonetheless has nothing to say.
Google Informed You. Repeatedly
Google’s spam insurance policies outline scaled content material abuse as producing pages “for the first objective of search rankings and never serving to customers.” They explicitly checklist “utilizing generative AI instruments or different related instruments to generate many pages with out including worth for customers” for example. This isn’t subtext. It’s textual content.
In June 2025, Google started issuing handbook actions particularly for scaled content abuse, focusing on websites that had been mass-publishing AI-generated content material. Websites throughout the UK, US, and EU obtained Search Console notifications citing “aggressive spam strategies, akin to large-scale content material abuse.” Full visibility drops. Pages didn’t slide down the rankings; they vanished.
The August 2025 spam replace continued the enforcement. Subsequent core updates have saved tightening the screws. Every time, the identical profile will get hit: excessive quantity, low substance, no editorial oversight.
And every time, the affected website house owners acted stunned. As if Google hadn’t been telling them this for 15 years.
‘However Our Content material Is Rating Properly’
That is my favourite delusion. I’ve seen it at each stage of this cycle. “Our AI content material is rating, so it should be advantageous.” Claiming “that is rating properly” is commonly exactly why Google points algorithmic enhancements and handbook actions in your website. In case your low-value content material is rating, the system hasn’t gotten to you but. That’s all it means.
Google aggregates alerts on the website degree, not simply the web page degree. You possibly can have particular person pages performing whereas the general high quality sign of your website degrades. And when the enforcement catches up (algorithmically or manually), it doesn’t choose off pages one after the other. It hits the lot.
That is the content material spinner’s fallacy, recycled: “It’s working proper now, so it should be a method.” Demand Media’s content material was rating too. Proper up till it wasn’t.
Lily captured this perfectly: “The case research: scaling AI content material is working! The truth:” – adopted by the visitors cliff that inevitably arrives. Each scaling success story is a snapshot taken earlier than the correction. No person publishes the sequel.
The Economics Don’t Even Make Sense
Put aside the danger for a second. Let’s speak about what you’re truly producing.
5 hundred AI-generated articles a month. Every one must be reviewed for accuracy – as a result of LLMs hallucinate, and publishing incorrect info is a legal responsibility that extends properly past search engine optimisation. Every one must be checked for originality – as a result of if it reads like every little thing else within the index, it gives no added worth; no aggressive benefit. Every one wants editorial oversight to make sure it truly serves the viewers you declare to serve.
In the event you’re doing all of that, the fee simply moved – and probably elevated – whilst you satisfied your self you had been being environment friendly. The “effectivity” of AI content material technology evaporates the second you apply the standard requirements the content material truly wants to satisfy.
And for those who’re not doing any of that? You’re publishing unreviewed, unoriginal, doubtlessly inaccurate content material at scale below your model title. I genuinely don’t perceive how anybody indicators off on that.
Similar Mistake, Higher Instruments
Content material spinning. Programmatic search engine optimisation. AI-generated content material at scale. Three completely different instruments, one equivalent mistake: treating content material as a producing downside.
Manufacturing produces equivalent outputs at scale – that’s the purpose. Content material derives its worth from the alternative: from being particular, from being knowledgeable by expertise, from saying one thing the remainder of the index doesn’t. Each try to industrialise it crashes into that contradiction.
You possibly can’t automate specificity. You possibly can’t template expertise. You possibly can’t generate unique thought by operating a immediate via an LLM and hoping one thing helpful comes out. And these constraints received’t be solved by the following mannequin launch. They’re baked into what makes content material price studying within the first place.
The individuals who preserve chasing scale are optimising for the incorrect variable. They see “extra content material” as an enter that produces “extra visitors” as an output. However the perform shouldn’t be linear. It by no means was. It’s gated by high quality, and no quantity of quantity bypasses the gate.
The Solely Query That Issues
Earlier than you publish something (AI-assisted or in any other case), ask one query: What does this web page provide that the reader can’t already get?
If the reply is “nothing, however we’ll have extra pages listed,” you’re not constructing a content material technique. You’re constructing a legal responsibility. And also you’re doing it with the boldness of somebody who has apparently by no means heard of Panda, by no means checked out what occurred to programmatic search engine optimisation websites in 2022, and by no means learn Google’s own spam policies.
You possibly can persuade your self for so long as you need. However you’ll solely idiot everybody else for some time.
The wall remains to be there. It’s all the time been there. The instruments preserve altering. The wall doesn’t.
Extra Sources:
This put up was initially printed on The Inference.
Featured Picture: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
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