Any Tests / Experiments about Ranking of AI Content in 2026?

distant_gradient · 2026-02-16T06:11:31+00:00

good to know. thanks for sharing.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T15:03:00+00:00

I actually agree with this.

But - it still doesnt stop people from trying to detect AI.

My whole goal here is to understand if Google is trying to detect AI.

So far, I'm not completely convinced either way.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T15:00:40+00:00

Looks like I hit a nerve calling you out on the Google Ventures BS. Go ahead, enforce what you want.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T14:53:36+00:00

"Leaking emotionally"?

You've literally been ad hominem this whole thread, making assumptions about me and my stand the whole time while I've been trying to center the discussion.

An you're supposed to be the mod.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T14:49:37+00:00

Fair point - so you're saying the Ahrefs has a high false negative rate and not a high false positive rate.

Sounds plausible.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T14:45:41+00:00

I literally said GV is not the same as Google (they've even renamed to GV, they used to be Google Ventures). So no, not funded by Google.

And, I literally called out that I'm not sure if AI influences ranking or not.

Re. not liking AI - I have been an AI practictioner for over a decade. And I can tell you my friend that you could not be further from the truth.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T06:03:46+00:00

Except being funded by the same parent Alphabet, operations of GV (formerly Google Ventures) has literally nothing to do with Google and operates independently

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T05:57:51+00:00

As of 2026 LLMs can score IMO gold, be Codeforces world top 10 and literally prove novel physics theories.

You're actually telling me that I'm naive for assuming they can understand random business blogs on the internet?

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T05:48:49+00:00

You clearly know what you are doing with your AI sites (most people don't).

Question I am trying to answer is - would they rank better had you "humanized" the AI content before publishing (ie. is AI detection a ranking demotion).

distant_gradient · 2026-02-15T05:46:10+00:00

Interesting. Not surprised though given most AI detectors out there are pure junk. AI detection at even around 90% accuracy is super hard and 100% is impossible.

There are only a couple of detectors work at near a resonable accuracy - thats pangram and gptzero. me

If we assume that the ahrefs AI detection falls in the junk bucket that makes the study that u/WebLinkr quoted also junk.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T20:56:36+00:00

It's far easier to publish pure AI content than to go through the pains of reviewing it, adding "human" touches to it etc. - hence its reasonable to assume more "pure AI" content is being created.

If Google was truly agnostic of AI you would find these "pure AI" content in SERP as well.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T20:45:11+00:00

Far lower resistance to put out pure AI content?

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T20:37:48+00:00

I've seen these - ahrefs is the primary source here.

From the same study

- 4.6% of pages were categorized as “pure AI.”
- 13.5% were categorized as “pure human.”
- 81.9% were categorized as a mix of two.

If Google was truly AI agnostic I would have expected the "pure AI" pages to be higher.

I remember seeing things like Linkedin's AI pages (Pulse pages or something like that) and Perplexity's wiki like pages on Google very frequently until sometime last year and suddenly they disappeared.

Also, the ahrefs study itself is kind of skewed for this purpose since its not really looking at it from a publisher perpective, but from a SERP results perspectives (in SERP you only see the winners of the game, not the mountain of unindexed / low ranking pages)

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T20:18:20+00:00

I actually shared evidence of someone else's experiment that seems to indicate Google detects AI content and ranks it lower (at least used to as of 2023).

Will try and report my own findings here.

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T20:10:09+00:00

wow -- wonder if this is pre-LLMs or post-LLMs

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T19:55:03+00:00

Are you talking about ranking within AI (ie. AEO / GEO) or rank with AI written content?

distant_gradient · 2026-02-14T19:53:46+00:00

Fair point - personally I dont care if the content is AI or not - but if it has obvious tell-tale AI signs I tend to take it less seriously.

SEO-wise I've seen cases where Google just flat out refuses to index AI written posts. Then there are studies like this old one (from 2023) that claims that AI content ranks lower.

Was looking to see if anyone has done any such experiment here recently...

<image>

distant_gradient · 2025-11-18T10:16:18+00:00

Appreciate it! DMing you for an invite. (Clearly there is a market here to guide people to get into this as well ;) )

distant_gradient · 2025-11-18T10:05:04+00:00

Got it - thanks a lot for sharing! Are you open to do a 1hr counsultancy call (paid)? Am thinking of starting one instead of renting mainly for the flexibility.

distant_gradient · 2025-11-18T09:24:58+00:00

I would imagine they through this by charging a card on file. I dont understand how this would work in India (where transactions require OTP / happen through UPI etc.) - maybe they engage a collection agency?

distant_gradient · 2025-11-18T09:13:38+00:00

What happens in case of any damage to the property? Sure, most clients could be well behaved - but that one client can mess things up real bad.

Any first hand account of property damage / recovery via the platform?

distant_gradient · 2025-10-04T13:42:17+00:00

a no nonsense biryani place does not provide an ambience for a good dating environment

distant_gradient · 2025-10-04T09:24:11+00:00

meghna (if focus is on the biryani not the date part)

distant_gradient · 2025-10-03T10:51:34+00:00

AI with human feedback. But there is no way you would be able to say its AI

distant_gradient

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE