September 21, 2026 •

Google’s problem with AI-generated content is less the process than the lack of effort. The search giant’s spam policies don’t penalize AI content per se , but its guidelines for human quality raters ( PDF ) emphasize the importance of “effort” 120 times.

A lack of effort could explain studies that consistently show penalized AI content, presumably from the search algorithm’s spam component.

Low and high effort

The guidelines direct the quality raters, as in:

Consider the extent to which a human being actively worked to create satisfying content.

Effort is not necessarily manual composition, according to the guidelines.…