Its hard to ignore the fanfare over ChatGPT recently with the headlines about millions of job losses, the idea of content generation changed forever and ChatGPT becoming Sky-net, but away from the headlines what could actually happen with ChatGPT and SEO, aka Search Engine Optimisation?
Should we be worried about ChatGPT taking over Search Engine Optimisation is the question many are currently asking.
What is ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence that was developed specifically as a natural language processing model that is capable of generating human-like text.
As many academics have pointed out the ‘human-like’ reference is another way of saying ‘mimicking human content’.
Whilst many people have had experience of dealing with chatbots when trying to reach the customer service team for their utility providers or online retailers and the like, ChatGPT is a next generation artificial intelligence chatbot that isn’t as infuriating to engage with apparently.
However, it is not without its own flaws and there are many examples of content being produced by ChatGPT that is littered with factual errors, inconsistencies and as such has a very generalised feeling about it.
Additionally, Professor Christopher Bartel of Appalachian State University is quoted by The Insider as saying that, while a ChatGPT essay may exhibit high grammar qualities and sophisticated ideas, it still lacked insight.
A word of warning fro OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT should also be taken into consideration in that it said: “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”
How Can ChatGPT perform SEO?
One of the key components of a sound search engine optimisation policy is to create great content that engages your audience.
So naturally, there is a lot being said about ChatGPT potentially causing millions of job losses around the world as businesses transition their content creation from human copywriters to ChatGPT.
Whilst the ‘human-like’ content may mimic content generated by a human you only have to consider your own internet endeavours and how shockingly bad some content is that it causes you to leave the site and find another source.
Whilst ChatGPT can indeed generate ‘human-like’ content that could be used on the web in place of human generated content, for many quality focused writers, the threat of ChatGPT is no different to the content farms churning out low quality 600 word articles for $1.
As an SEO consultancy we always drive home that businesses shold write content for the potential customer that ends up reading the content and not the saerch engine that gets them there. But, as with human nature, there is a tendancy to cut corners.
ChatGPT and Search Engine Optimisation
What Will Google Do about ChatGPT content?
This is the crucial argument as Google has always championed high quality, relevant and engaging content yet, ChatGPT seems to fail on all three of these measures.
The question is whether Google will overtly identify AI generated content within the search results, or perhaps more likely, whether it will incorporate AI generated content detection in its search ranking algorithm.
Given a Google research paper named ‘Generative Models are Unsupervised Predictors of Page Quality’ was very disparaging about low quality SEO content that litters the internet you would expect that low quality content, be it human or AI generated, will be given equal evaluation thus giving high quality content creators competitive advantage in not rewarding mediocrity.
In the research paper Google suggested that low quality, copy and paste posts or content from content farms is basically a bunch of keywords thrown together with some filler to pad out the spaces between those keywords. Something which ChatGPT has also been criticised as doing.
Just like most modern journalism is pretty much dead and which now ranges from clickbait to filler content as an excuse to serve ads, there has been a general race to the bottom in terms of content quality where quantity is now favoured by many of the mainstream news outlets.
The worry is that if Google dont act and dont identify ChatGPT content as being low quality, that there will be such an explosion of content that the basic funtion of Google Search will be at risk and you just cant see Google undermining its own survival.
If Google is trying to deliver search results that best match the intent of the given search, if its content quality checks favour genuine, unique, well written, high quality, relevant and engaging content, then surely ChatGPT (in its current form) is no different to the low quality human content farms that sell you a 600 word ‘business article’ for $1?
If so, there is still hope yet for those that produce engaging content.
How Can We Compete with ChatGPT when it comes to SEO?
As touched on above, you would like to think that Google will refine its search algorithms to identify ChatGPT and other AI generated content and place it in the same category of value as content that has been copy and pasted or cobbled together simply for SEO purposes.
You would like to think that your hard work in crafting well thought out, accurate, genuine, unique, well written, high quality, relevant and engaging content would be rewarded by Google.
Until the day comes that ChatGPT content and your own high quality content are not viewed differently and rewarded as such by Google, good content creators should continue in their content efforts as they always have and regard ChatGPT and SEO as no more a direct threat than cheap posts bought off the internet threatenthem now.
If you are going to add something to your website, make sure you are adding value as anything less is just wasting your time.
