Is A.I. Content Causing SEO Indexation Problems?

[CCarter]

You know, I'm a pretty smart guy, but I never put one and one together. It never dawned on me that SEOs were using A.I. content on their websites.

Even though all those A.I. bot generating content services were offered in the marketplaces of SEO/marketing forums, I never put it together. I assumed they were using it for spam or twitterbots or something...

In fact 3 old-school WickedFire guys I just talked to about this, THIS MORNING, were also just as baffled.

One guy summed it up perfectly: "I’d guess EVERYONE complaining is doing something real dumb but won’t say it out loud and is willing to waste serious peoples time in discussing it."

We always just assumed people would realize it wasn't going to rank well in search engines.

There are just certain things you assume, "No one is that stupid to look down the barrel of a shotgun they just loaded to see if they can see the bullet."

I mean, no one is that stupid to put bot content on their own assets right?

Assets which they are staking their future on.

Assets which they cherish and are suppose to give them financial freedom. No one is that stupid.

Yet here we are.

I came to this realization when this morning I read @freshpeppermint's journal entry and realized - whoa, these people that have been having indexation issues were using the A.I. content on their sites.

It never dawned on me to ask the people complaining about indexation problems whether their content was created by humans.

I just assumed people understood Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and the likes were funded and created by the corporations and therefore they of all people KNEW how to detect their own creations. They have billions of dollars to invest.

They are going to use machine learning resources to test and verify against known human versus bot content. It would be one of the easiest hypothesis to understand - I mean think about it. If I'm creating a A.I. one of tests would be whether the A.I. can understand what was written by a human versus another bot.

Now why do people use this A.I. content? Laziness. Either that or they don't want to really invest in their business. I call a website a business cause it is at the end of the day.

But if you can't afford $1000 of content to be written by writers, what are you doing with your life? There are 24 hours in a day, why not get a job or second job to fund the content creation of your "side business"? Unless you just don't want to work or invest time into your future, it doesn't make sense.

Why not go work at McDonalds for 40 hours a week for $15 an hour for 9 weeks and have $5400 to start off your new business with?

I'm not trying to insult the A.I. bot content crowd - but, are you guys serious? I mean seriously? Why? Google literally has bots to detect spam, they've been doing this for 20 years, with billions of dollars in their back pocket. The dude @UFO literally posted one of the Open-AI detector to show you, FOR FREE, it's rather easy to detect.

Serious question, I don't understand - What were you guys expecting down that route?

 

[eliquid]

People will never admit that they are wrong. Those that do are so few and far between that they don't even register in the statistics to be counted.

Everyone wants an easy button.

They see these hyped up stories about GPT-3 and the life changing articles it makes ( not realizing the amount of money behind the press paid for on purpose ), then a few months later see a slew of tools come out based on it... AND they think they can get the same type of results.

But they must not have put any time or real money into looking at the results ( Gee, a pattern maybe? How you do anything is how you do everything ) because when you actually try the tools at AppSumo, or pay full price for the premium tools, you realize they are all cookie-cutter, generic, and produce undesirable results, even at full premium price.

It's garbage.

But because people won't admit they were wrong, fell for the hype and press coverage, and don't want to put in time and money to understand how things are.. and on top of it are given an "easy button" promise.. they just go forward and burn their whole house down with it.

They then come back to the forum and act like the old heads are wrong.

• "You can't rank with aged domains"
• "You can't rank without backlinks"
• "XYZ tool didn't help me rank"
• "Quality human produced articles aren't needed, Elon told me so"
• etc dribble dribble dribble

Ehh..

Everyone wants to be a guru, but no one wants to put in the decades of work and humility that comes with it though.

I consider it the shifting of the wheat when they do things like this and drop from the SERPs.

 

[Ryuzaki]

One guy summed it up perfectly: "I’d guess EVERYONE complaining is doing something real dumb but won’t say it out loud and is willing to waste serious peoples time in discussing it."

Twas I that said the red part!

I postulated publicly that the recent rash of indexation problems (including sites dropping 50%- 80% of their indexed URLs) had to do with Google trying to kill 3 birds with one stone:

1. Block out link spammers & crap tier PBN style sellers
2. Block out AI content spammers & PAA scrapers
3. Block out rewritten "me too" content with no value added

How are they achieving this? By raising up some kind of threshold based on what I think are 3 things:

1. outbound link profiles,
2. content quality,
3. and authority levels.

Link spammers (the unsophisticated ones) are using new domains with trash content and spamming volumes of trash links. AI content people are using new domains with trash content and not worried about links. And "Me Too" content is the millions of us (guilty as charged) publishing the same rewritten content that's already ranking.

You don't have to worry about ranking this trash when it's not even in the index. Suddenly there's a lot less noise to worry about muddying up the weighted factors in the algorithm.

So you have a bunch of people losing most of their indexation and a bunch more new people complaining that Google isn't indexing their new content.

What's really going on? Google is trying to not only NOT index everything as the net grows exponentially in size (and even faster with AI content), but they now want to SHED crap that doesn't meet their new criteria for indexation.

What's the solution to the AI and link spammers? There isn't one.

What's the solution to the new guys coming along already dealing with the time-based delays and sandboxing? Build links, publish a lot of content to build topical authority, give off expertise signals, and build brand signals. (AKA do everything the spammers are too lazy to do, and give it time).

P.S. I still wholeheartedly believe Google screwed the pooch when trying to sort this out and there was a lot of civilian casualties. I think they'll claw some of it back until they can refine it better and some of the serious SEO's out there that got caught in the crossfire will have a medi-pack applied and their health bar rejuvenated.

 

[freshpeppermint]

I know a guy whose content is also AI and his content is far far worse than mine. How come he's ranking fine? So many others are ranking fine with their Jasper content? (I could send you their sites if you want, aglowlifestyle com, this is Emily Dyson's website, she reveals it publically in her newsletter and twitter.)

But okay maybe in time they will get deindex sure. But, how come the articles which are written by garbage human writers still ranking whereas the AI articles seem to be of a much higher quality aren't??

Also, if the article gives helpful advice to the reader what's the issue? I don't see any issues if the article is good enough for the reader. I understand if there are other articles that are more useful ranking but if there are none and my articles are providing value to those who read them, why should they get deindexed??

FYI That AI Detector, I put my articles in and it couldn't detect if it was AI or not. I got like 0.08% fake.

 

[Potatoe]

@freshpeppermint Didn't you say, last week, that you wouldn't use AI content anymore? Now it sounds like you're looking for excuses to keep using it cos you know a guy or cos some outlier site is doing fine still?

You need a disclaimer in your signature that says "I'm going to ask tons of questions, I'm going to have people write paragraph after paragraph trying to help me, and then I'm largely going to completely disregard it." I've seen people spend, probably an hour+ multiple times, in replies to you and not even get an acknowledgement or a measly like, let alone seeing their advice be ignored. Why would anyone bother at this point?

It's hard to tell when you're asking a genuine question or when you're trying to be combative and contrarian. I struggle with it, at least, but maybe that's just me, though. So, if I'm misreading you here, my bad, truly. But respectfully, if you spent half as much time following the fantastic advice you've been gifted, as you've spent trying to poke holes in it, you'd be chillin'.

YOUR OWN SITE isn't working with AI content, right? What other information do you need other than it's not working for you? Who cares if Emily is making it work? Good for Emily, but how does that help PeppermintPat?

Lots of people are getting their skulls crushed into the pavement with AI content, but you "know a guy"?

How come he's ranking fine?

It could be 999 reasons. Is he in the same niche as you, same strength of a domain, same on-page optimization, same interlink scheme, same age of the site, same size of the site, same quality of links, etc?

There are so many variables beyond just "AI content" or "not AI content". Your AI content site not working and his working doesn't necessairly have anything to do with the content, or at the very least, it certainly doesn't have everything to do with the content.

---

People will never admit that they are wrong.

True....

Everyone wants an easy button.

Very true, very TRUE...

Everyone wants to be a guru, but no one wants to put in the decades of work and humility that comes with it though.

TRUUUUUEEEEEEEEE

 

[eliquid]

I know a guy whose content is also AI and his content is far far worse than mine. How come he's ranking fine?

Doesn't every SEO say this, every update though? I mean, we all know SOMEONE that is still magically doing ABC anything and then eventually drops or goes offline.

You'll see who is skinny dipping when the tide goes out. Maybe the tide hasn't gone out far enough to see this person.

Also, you shouldn't judge where you are at.. to another person anyways.

I could ask the same type of question about anything in life.....

I know a guy that lives like a king on $30k a year and doing Dave Ramsey. I know others who can't get by on the same income, doing the same stuff. How come he's doing fine though?

I mean, you never know anyones true 100% story and reasons.

So many others are ranking fine with their Jasper content? (I could send you their sites if you want, aglowlifestyle com, this is Emily Dyson's website, she reveals it publically in her newsletter and twitter.)

See above. Also, we don't know if they have a target on their back and Google just hasn't pulled the trigger yet. So many 999 variables in play here though.

And maybe they slipped through for now. But in 3 weeks Google might deindex it.

It still begs the question, why do you want to copy them?

But okay maybe in time they will get deindex sure. But, how come the articles which are written by garbage human writers still ranking whereas the AI articles seem to be of a much higher quality aren't??

The problem is, you don't know how to play the game by the rules the game maker sets up.

You don't make the rules. I don't make the rules. The rulebook you were handed by Google, isn't really everything you actually need to know. You either learn the rules by any means necessary, or you don't.

If Google says they are targeting AI content, who are you to tell them anything else?

Going to Larry or Sergie or any of the shareholders and saying... "but but but this human garbage content on XYZ website isn't quality.. so why target me?" isn't going to do you any good.

Also, if the article gives helpful advice to the reader what's the issue? I don't see any issues if the article is good enough for the reader. I understand if there are other articles that are more useful ranking but if there are none and my articles are providing value to those who read them, why should they get deindexed??

It could be the most helpful article of all time. Highly polished and millions of words of deep thoughtful help.

But if Google doesn't like the words "woke liberal" in it, it's gonna get nuked. Google made the rules and they don't have to share the rules with you. They just nuke it.

Google has told you they don't want Ai content in so many ways prior. Why not take the hint and stop worrying about quality.

If I don't wanna buy hormone injected chicken, I won't buy it. It's my rule. You could have the best damn tasting chicken of the highest quality in the world.. but if you injected it with hormone I ain't buying.

It's not hard to understand.

FYI That AI Detector, I put my articles in and it couldn't detect if it was AI or not. I got like 0.08% fake.

And that detector was slapped together by some neckbeard in his basement using some API more than likely.

Even if not, it wasn't Google quality code and resources.

Just because this bargain basement tool can't tell, you trust it over Google and their engineers and tech and resources?

Come on man.

 

[CCarter]

The logic of @freshpeppermint is really insane for anyone following. We have to use an analogy:

The sky is blue. Everyone that's been on this Earth knows the sky is blue during the daytime.

Mr. Peppermint goes outside and notes "The sky is blue". He writes it down in his journal: "Today I observed the sky is blue".

I come along and say, "Yeah I can't believe you wasted your time experimenting on this for 3-6 months on the color of the sky."

Mr. Peppermint rebuts: "But Emily says the sky is green."

Who the fuck is Emily?

You saw it with your OWN EYES the sky is blue.

You want me to answer why Emily says the sky is green?

Why?

OR do you want me to answer why your OWN EYES saw blue?

You saw it with your OWN EYES the color of the sky.

You wrote it down in your journal.

It's your data.

 

[Boy]

GPT-3 & SEO just don't work together in most cases. Started a new site that was entirely written by AI. About 20/100 of the published articles were indexed and only 1 gets any amount of traffic.

Dropped it, back to what works for me.

But I haven't written it off by any means. Email marketing? Great. Landing pages? Great. Features to benefits? Great. Summaries? Great. But for it to jam out a whole 1,500-word article based on a 20-word prompt, that shit's not going to work out well. It's a tool that needs be used for what it's made for, not what you want it to do. I could use a Playstation as a midi controller but a keyboard would be better.

And as far as that Emily gal, her site is all woowoo horoscope stuff, dating, and gemstones, the same shit I said GPT-3 could work for because it's all fairy dust. Like creating clickbait listicles that don't rely on SEO for traffic, GPT-3 could crush that.

"The best burger in every state ranked for 2022"
"How to tell if your boyfriend is using your tampons in 9 GIFs (Funny!)"
"15 reasons you're using AI content wrong"

 

[freshpeppermint]

Did I ruin my domain or can I still redeem my site? If I myself rewrite every article which was written by AI. Cause I have like over 100+ articles I spent money on and they are still indexed. But does kill your reach if they know your AI forever?

 

[eliquid]

Did I ruin my domain or can I still redeem my site? If I myself rewrite every article which was written by AI. Cause I have like over 100+ articles I spent money on and they are still indexed. But does kill your reach if they know your AI forever?

There is only 1 person that can help you now.

If you can track him down and DM him, he can save everything you got.

Who the fuck is Emily?

I think she is the Director at a local SEO agency

 

[Taq]

Did I ruin my domain or can I still redeem my site? If I myself rewrite every article which was written by AI. Cause I have like over 100+ articles I spent money on and they are still indexed. But does kill your reach if they know your AI forever?

Did you not pay some guy on Fiver for a load of backlinks? That and A.I, you're pissing against the wind.

 

[freshpeppermint]

Did you not pay some guy on Fiver for a load of backlinks? That and A.I, you're pissing against the wind.

I did pay to get 50+ DA on both Moz and Ahrefs. I don't think this would do any damage since I am not really looking for a boost on serp, just something to trick moz & ahrefs.

I also have instant indexing which Google said not to use unless you have a news site but I don't think these are the main reasons for deindexation, more so just the AI. But the strange part is my older site also has AI content yet not all of it is deindexed whereas the newer site has pretty much all the AI content deindexed. But, I think the other day or 2, I updated an AI article (rewrote part which was AI) and tried instant indexing it, it got indexed the other day.

I was just concerned if Google has blacklisted the domain or cut the reach or something. But I will just fix all the articles which are AI and see how it goes.

 

[tyealia]

I did pay to get 50+ DA on both Moz and Ahrefs. I don't think this would do any damage since I am not really looking for a boost on serp, just something to trick moz & ahrefs.

I also have instant indexing which Google said not to use unless you have a news site but I don't think these are the main reasons for deindexation, more so just the AI. But the strange part is my older site also has AI content yet not all of it is deindexed whereas the newer site has pretty much all the AI content deindexed. But, I think the other day or 2, I updated an AI article (rewrote part which was AI) and tried instant indexing it, it got indexed the other day.

I was just concerned if Google has blacklisted the domain or cut the reach or something. But I will just fix all the articles which are AI and see how it goes.

I had a post on this talking about these fiver gigs and if their risky to get da 50+ to scare away competitors. I did an analysis on 5 sellers and all of them were using crappy pbn links that SHOULD NOT be used on money pages. I even had one of the vendors expressly say don't use them for money pages, these are to pump up fake sites to then sell guestposts on to unsuspecting newbs (Horrific in its own right).

If your site got hit and isn't indexing, these links could be a factor, if you can remove them asap from money site.

People will never admit that they are wrong. Those that do are so few and far between that they don't even register in the statistics to be counted.

Everyone wants an easy button.

They see these hyped up stories about GPT-3 and the life changing articles it makes ( not realizing the amount of money behind the press paid for on purpose ), then a few months later see a slew of tools come out based on it... AND they think they can get the same type of results.

But they must not have put any time or real money into looking at the results ( Gee, a pattern maybe? How you do anything is how you do everything ) because when you actually try the tools at AppSumo, or pay full price for the premium tools, you realize they are all cookie-cutter, generic, and produce undesirable results, even at full premium price.

It's garbage.

But because people won't admit they were wrong, fell for the hype and press coverage, and don't want to put in time and money to understand how things are.. and on top of it are given an "easy button" promise.. they just go forward and burn their whole house down with it.

They then come back to the forum and act like the old heads are wrong.

• "You can't rank with aged domains"
• "You can't rank without backlinks"
• "XYZ tool didn't help me rank"
• "Quality human produced articles aren't needed, Elon told me so"
• etc dribble dribble dribble

Ehh..

Everyone wants to be a guru, but no one wants to put in the decades of work and humility that comes with it though.

I consider it the shifting of the wheat when they do things like this and drop from the SERPs.

I've been saying this in all my groups and people dismiss me immediately, saying you can't tell AI from normal writing. Do these guys not understand how easy it is to stamp things with patterns.You can hack a 8 number password instantly using a program, literally instantly, how long would it take to find certain patterns in an article? Sounds very doable. And do they really even need to go that far when they have usersignals? Wouldn't an ai article cause a higher bouncerate and automatically dilineate your article as low quality.

What I'm trying to say is since I tried ai writing 10 years ago with wordai's turning ai its improved massively but still writes horribly for anything worth using your brain to read. Its great for "Benefits of protein powder" like articles but anything where you need research like "How to change your galaxy s12's battery" will give you generic fluff with fake facts. These types of articles may rank but eventually with user signals will get weeded out.

I am honestly scared to even use it for intros, in the future I can see a filter being applied for % of ai content for maybe google detecting a 50% tipping point where it tanks your site. Just a opinion however as mentioned this isn't even necessary with user signals they get from chrome users.

 

[LinkPlate]

@freshpeppermint Is this the website you said DIDN'T get hit with the algo update?

from the looks of it, it did and to be honest, the content is not full AI generated. Looks like it was AI generated and then edited and in my opinion that is just a waste of time.

It's always easier to write content from scratch, than get some AI content and then edit it. Editing takes longer than writing fresh well researched content.

What about this thread. https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/how-did-this-site-get-so-much-traffic-this-fast.6250/. This website was spamming AI content for a longtime and ranking amazingly. Dude probably made a ton of money in a few months, but like all blackhat stuff, it will eventually go to shit.

 

[eliquid]

I did pay to get 50+ DA on both Moz and Ahrefs. I don't think this would do any damage since I am not really looking for a boost on serp, just something to trick moz & ahrefs.

I also have instant indexing which Google said not to use unless you have a news site but I don't think these are the main reasons for deindexation, more so just the AI. But the strange part is my older site also has AI content yet not all of it is deindexed whereas the newer site has pretty much all the AI content deindexed. But, I think the other day or 2, I updated an AI article (rewrote part which was AI) and tried instant indexing it, it got indexed the other day.

I was just concerned if Google has blacklisted the domain or cut the reach or something. But I will just fix all the articles which are AI and see how it goes.

I'm not trying to bash you, but

1. You used AI content, that Google says not to do.

2. You use Instant indexing, which Google said not to use.

3. You bought cheap crappy low quality Fiverr links, no matter the reason. You should know Google also doesn't want you doing this.

You are literally doing everything Google doesn't want you to do, but wanting to rank well on Google.

Instead, you are doing all the things You think you should be doing, or what other vendors tell you to do ( Jasper, Fiverr, Instant indexing, etc ).

If you want to rank well in Google, how about doing what Google wants you to do?

 

[mcfarlanek]

Out of curiosity, for those that have used AI content and seeing indexing issues, have u tried removing it from your site to see if indexing returns on human generates content?

 

[voLdie]

I use some AI to help keep my flow of writing going. I'm shit at sitting down and writing and it helps push me to the next paragraph.

I use it as a supplement or a tool to get work done by doing 75% of the lifting and letting AI do the last mile.

I have a 2 month old site on a fresh domain that is pushing 10k organics from google. I have managed to post 53 articles in these past 60 days.

In my opinion, the "trick" to SEO is to outdo your competition. If your content looks better, is easier to digest, and covers a keyword better you can "win".

If I used > 50%(maybe even more than say 25%) AI or did not do heavy editing or just let the automation do the whole article I am confident the site would be fairly fucked.

Just 2 cents from someone in the middle of this debate.

Note: This month I am adding 20 articles outsourced and then edited in-house so we will see if there is a big difference there.

Edit: I also go HAM on making these sites look legit:

• Real office address
• Citations
• Fully built out services that add credibility
• Links from big local news orgs
• Reviews on Google
• Authors with footprints solid enough to apply for passports
• Design that would cost 20k+ from an agency
• Podcast (links from apple, google, spotify, etc)
• Youtube videos, branded and placed into the relevant articles)

Are all of these things the answer or helpful? IDK, but it has worked in my experience.

Everyone calls them niche sites these days but we used to call them authority sites and that is still what I shoot for today.

Being an authority.

 

[freshpeppermint]

@freshpeppermint Is this the website you said DIDN'T get hit with the algo update?

from the looks of it, it did and to be honest, the content is not full AI generated. Looks like it was AI generated and then edited and in my opinion that is just a waste of time.

It's always easier to write content from scratch, than get some AI content and then edit it. Editing takes longer than writing fresh well researched content.

What about this thread. https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/how-did-this-site-get-so-much-traffic-this-fast.6250/. This website was spamming AI content for a longtime and ranking amazingly. Dude probably made a ton of money in a few months, but like all blackhat stuff, it will eventually go to shit.

Yeah, my sites aren't pure AI-generated like that one, or else I would have tens of thousands of articles. Mine is heavily edited like that aglow website and one of my sites is in the same niche.

More of my articles are getting deindexed. Even the ones which were bought by my writers... I don't think this might be an AI issue because the other day I rewrote an article and instant indexed it and it's been a day or 2 I think and it hasn't been indexed. The original article took me like 3-5 hours to write even with AI.

But Ima try to rewrite a few more and see.

 

[CCarter]

instant indexed it and it's been a day or 2 I think and it hasn't been indexed.

Wait what? Google tells you not to do Instant Indexing, or whatever the latest flavor to calling forced indexing- and after everything said above, you STILL continue shooting yourself in the foot and complaining you can't walk...

I know I can't be the only one here thinking this... Am I in a mental asylum, yet just don't know it?

 

[LinkPlate]

I rewrote an article and instant indexed it

Instant index? That's like flushing turds into an already clogged toilet. Stop doing it.

But Ima try to rewrite a few more and see.

How about you write an article (without AI) and then NOT instant indexing it. Test that out for a while and see what happens.

 

[Boy]

I know I can't be the only one here thinking this... Am I in a mental asylum, yet just don't know it?

It may seem that way when you continue interacting with and trying to understand a patient.

 

[DanielS]

More of my articles are getting deindexed.

How old is the site(s) having the issue?

 

[thisishatred]

Something that nobody is bringing up either is monetization.

Of the AI sites I track, none, and I mean not a single fucking one is monetized with a decent AD provider - No Google Adsense, no Ezoic, no Mediavine, no Adthrive; This tells me these folks are also wise to what AI folks are doing.

If you can't even monetize properly with a decent display ads provider, what the fuck is the point? I guess they're happy with the low tier crappy ads that fuck with UX and make pennies?

Even though they have tons of estimated traffic on tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs, they aren't monetizing in a way that even makes it worthwhile. That or if they reach a certain level of traffic, they get manually reviewed and tank - or this new algo update has worked and these folks have tanked because of that.

As the saying goes "You can only polish a turd so much - that shit is still a turd."

 

[glamdring]

It’s posts like these that make me think psyops is a very real thing in SEO with people going out of there way to provide false information.

AI generated content does work. It has worked and it will always work. Just look at the trend of PAA sites over the last 18months. These people made bank and still are, generating 100,000’s of dollars. There are now very sophisticated shops who have taken this beyond simple GPT-3 with their own training models.

And to the fact that Google can recognize these AI sites? Yes, of course it can. But it is a question of whether it can use the resources needed to make that determination. When there are trillions of resources to crawl and render, Google isn’t going to expend more resources than necessary. Most mass builder AI sites got hit with manual penalties not algorithmic.
Oh and they are indexing 1000’s of posts quite easily.

 

[Ryuzaki]

And to the fact that Google can recognize these AI sites? Yes, of course it can. But it is a question of whether it can use the resources needed to make that determination.

Another item I like to point out isn't whether they should whack AI content on "principal". Google tends to only act on "problems" as we see them when they're forced to. "Forced" doesn't just mean that the SERPs are full of AI content. Forced doesn't mean that the SERP quality is suffering. Forced often means when the public awareness rises enough that it starts to affect their bottomline or there's pressures and negative press campaigns going on.

For instance, Google never stopped the "right arrow on Adsense ads" trick for paginated galleries and top 10 lists. Companies were defrauded for tons of money and webmasters and Google both took advantage of it. Only when the Adsense team determined it was time to redesign the text ads did it stop. Same goes for image scraper sites that litter Google Images and have Adsense all over those pages. Still hasn't stopped. Hell, let's not forget about the millions of Blogspot web 2.0 automated spam they leave up.

It's not just "should" they or if they have the resources. It's a matter if "is there enough public pressure." Are they embarrassed enough?

Which takes me back to this indexation issue that's been going on for a while. For the longest time I thought it was them making mistakes, but I think they were laying the ground for raising the threshold for what they feel should be indexed. By not indexing low-authority, low-quality crap, they dodge all these problems all at once.

Which begs the question about what is high-authority and high-quality. Some of it is undoubtedly topical authority (which means having enough content on one topic), which is something AI sites can do with ease.

Someone pointed out above that these AI sites aren't monetized well. This is true. Someone who's building these sites said (and I'm trying to go off memory so forgive me) that their RPMs were like $3. They make way less money with a million page views a month ($3,000) than a real site can with 100,000 pageviews ($5,000 if executed well.)

They also said that the true mission wasn't to make money, although they can certainly scale the number of sites and niches they're building these sites in. The true mission is to build these on low powered domains to find out which keywords are weak enough to tackle on real sites. It's a research game for this one guy anyways.

But back to the original point: If all they're doing is scraping questions and essentially spinning answers and those answers are written very simply: "What color is The Hulk?" "The super hero named The Hulk has green skin that develops when he becomes angry due to radiation exposure." That's not only perfectly readable and to the point, but Google can take advantage of it for very specific queries by displaying the answer right in the SERPs. Google is winning by allowing this to exist. It keeps users in their ecosystem and stops them from sending traffic out as much as it would.

So the question becomes "Why would they deindex and penalize these sites?" which they obviously are trying to get a handle on (as well as the classic spam sites). Because the exponentially exponential size of the net is going to preclude them from crawling and indexing and processing everything anyways.

I think the question for us as webmasters becomes "what is this threshold that they're using to determine what to index that's going to undoubtedly become harsher as time goes by?" And like anything in SEO, it's going to be exploitable, but that doesn't mean that those that exploit it and survive will always survive or are completely condoned (but as mentioned above, sometimes the parasites offer mutual benefits to the host).

Oh and they are indexing 1000’s of posts quite easily.

My real content sites where I'm steadily publishing content is being steadily indexed day after day at a 100% indexation rate. I don't think they're having problems. I think they're running experiments.

I think everyone whining about indexation has either AI content, low powered domains, new sites, new sites with not enough existing content in general, scattered topics without topical authority, horrible page speed, bad above-the-fold implementations, all BOFU content, etc.

The problem with these convos that sends us all on a wild goose chase is nobody ever admits to what they're doing. But this thread came about because someone did finally admit. It's the same when people get banned by Adsense and Amazon or Paypal and pretend those companies are cheats and thieves. They never tell you the true and full story of what they did.