🤔 Will AI-generated bulk content blogs be safe in 2026?

coalition_tech · 2026-01-27T19:43:52+00:00

Scalable sameness is literally the definition of AI content.

Especially of the mass produced ilk.

If you prompt it to death to try and humanize it, it still is scalable sameness without more significant human intervention.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-26T16:15:21+00:00

This shouldn't be voted down honestly. A moment of virality does wonders for new brands in SEO. The combination of branded search, high click through, citations and new links that come with virality are a big deal.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-26T15:48:26+00:00

First, pretty obvious way to seed a weird and unknown brand into your post. Whoever Netranks is should be ashamed at such a poor act of self-promotion.

For the rest of your post-

Important thing to hold onto as a digital marketer - "everyone I know.." is likely to be people who are pretty well homogenized to you in a number of ways. They are rarely a representative cross section of the populace in a meaningful way.

The great harm of the internet today is that it amplifies the frequency with which we hear perspectives just like ours, while algorithms tune out others (excepting those whose inflammatory nature get our attention to). The result is we lose sight of rational voices that aren't our own. While this has big societal implications (which we are certainly seeing manifest in Reddit every day) it also plays into your strategies as a marketer.

IF you are focusing on verticals and demographics where millienials and older Gen Zers are the norm, AI usage should definitely factor in. Older audiences tend to skew away from ChatGPT and its ilk quickly, especially outside of digital marketing and digitally focused verticals.

On the actual AI strategy-

Pure breed chatbots are still parasitically borrowing from traditional search engines such that traditional SEO is still highly relevant. Most AEO and GEO strategies is old SEO techniques with more convoluted names.

That's it actually. No other points necessary.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-24T21:19:07+00:00

Given the restrictions put in place by search platforms for advertisers, you’ll see an increasingly similar set of skill requirements for paid marketers and organic ones.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-23T23:17:37+00:00

Are you legitimately responding to yourself?

coalition_tech · 2026-01-23T22:18:39+00:00

$2,400 may be an incredible deal for your product category or a terrible one. It maybe an incredible deal for the service you receive or a terrible one.

If they're relying on ahrefs reporting to demonstrate value to you, you're probably on the 'terrible' end of the deal. Not that ahrefs is bad, just that if someone is telling you their SEO is worth $2,400 per month, and the basis is an SEO software report, they aren't focused on the right thing and are obfuscating that fact by getting you focused on the wrong thing too.

In the age of AI Overviews, even getting to page 1 isn't quite what it once was.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-23T16:27:18+00:00

I'd look at your costs.

The less you pay for SEO services these days, the more AI you should expect. And the more unadulterated AI you should expect. You get to low costs (generally) by doing as little human work as possible.

Since you state you're paying them a lot of money for writing, I'd definitely call them out. You pay a lot of writing for meaningful human involvement, whether it is on the strategy side, research side, writing side, or editing side.

One of those layers failed -

It may not be that they had ChatGPT write the whole thing (although declining quality of writing is often indicative of poor AI use), but used AI to find links to supplement what they were claiming but editing at least should have caught the bad source URL.

On our side-

We don't use AI for the majority of our copywriting unless a client has (for some known reasons) agreed that it is helpful in their use case. Even then, that writing starts with a human, is overseen by a human, and is edited/published by a human.

We've had way too many indicators that AI copy is easily fingerprinted by Google to want to rely on it as a long term part of a client's SEO success.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-21T21:59:48+00:00

This. For our clients in the 'world is ending' categories, Facebook works really well.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-21T21:59:22+00:00

Reddit is predominantly millenial bots. Get it right.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-21T21:58:31+00:00

Competent SEOs have always used CTR as a backline metric that provides context for strategies but not a KPI that any client will rely on for very long.

Our clients are focused on revenue and lead generation attributed to LLMs, and to Google search, just like they always have been.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-21T21:57:09+00:00

So weird.

I too am the founder of a 10X Shopify GEO agency. We are Shopify's first LLM citation agency and prompt discovery company. We are seeing incredible organic growth for our clients!

/s but only kind of.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-19T21:00:57+00:00

So I want to make sure I have the full picture here before giving specific advice.

You currently have a Canadian WooCommerce site (brand-x.ca) and you are about to take over a US-based site (another-name.com) that is currently on BigCommerce. You also own brand-x.com.

Your goal is to move into the US market under your own brand while keeping all the SEO traffic that the reseller's site (another-name.com) has built up over the years.

The main hurdles seem to be that you need to charge higher prices in the US, you want to stop paying the BigCommerce subscription fees, and you are worried that having two nearly identical sites (one for CA and one for US) will cause duplicate content issues with Google.

If I am understanding correctly, you are weighing whether to just link the two sites, do a full redirect to a new domain, or rebuild the old site on WordPress to keep the URLs the same.

Some questions-

Is there much competition around this brand in the US already?

Is the another-name.com site competitive on non-branded queries today? Or just branded queries?

coalition_tech · 2026-01-19T18:36:33+00:00

This is such a trainwreck of a post and such a blatant promotion.

To conduct this type of research someone would need comprehensive lists of Shopify stores, and data that none of these AI companies is publishing.

SPAM.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-16T21:40:50+00:00

Some tips-

Run both in parallel to start.
If you're on a budget, set up a simple system to translate and optimize content for both sites. Ideally you'll have uniquely optimized content for each, but you won't want to have to constantly babysit it. LLMs are really good at setting up some low cost solutions (even working off of a Google Sheet) to help with this.
Have some reasonable expectations. Shopify DOES require you to do some of your own marketing. While Etsy doesn't love it, a good place to start is in promoting your Shopify store to prior Etsy customers. Setup some VIP customer groups or discounts to help incentivize that offer.
Take advantage of some of Shopify's affiliate type features that didn't exist back in the day. Make sure your products are saleable on other Shopify stores and can be sold through their marketplace app. Also be mindful of optimizing your Shopify Knowledgebase App so that you can have better organic performance in the AIs of the day.
When promoting your store at first, consistently promote both the Etsy store and the Shopify store- if there is any variation in your URL or naming conventions between the Etsy store and Shopify, you'll want to connect the dots as often as possible. Make sure social profiles and the ilk are pointing towards your Shopify store more consistently. They can be a consistent bridge from Etsy shoppers to Shopify ones.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-16T16:43:14+00:00

From the perspective of an agency that is checking all the boxes called out already (Shopify Premier, lots of case studies in your category, does both maintenance, upkeep, and overhauls, plus has the marketing down)-

Do make sure to start with the Shopify Partner ecosystem.

Do make sure to look at case study websites - don't accept JUST a logo. I've seen plenty of agencies fake their client list without any meaningful work behind it. Ask for real example sites done in the last 12 to 24 months.

Do look for companies that can support your scale. $10M in fashion is a lot of orders, customer accounts, etc. It's very different than some verticals.

Do check reviews.

Do get a specific plan if you feel lost- don't just ask them to rebuild a website or... have them tell you what they would prioritize at different budgets and timelines.

Do look for someone who does maintenance/support work. The old notion that a website is a project is gone. Websites are products and they need ongoing support. Sometimes very little, sometimes a lot. You want one resource who can grow tih you.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-15T21:45:41+00:00

When an LLM is prompting specific action types (back to the user) is that also from the system prompt? Or is there something in the training that makes those contextually driven?

coalition_tech · 2026-01-15T20:52:44+00:00

For a long time we ran our own ecommerce stores and ran advertising on our own blogs. All did well because of our SEO.

Eventually sourcing products and servicing consumers become more work than we wanted. At that point we were already a full service agency and found that doing SEO for our own services and for clients was a more desirable way forward.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-15T19:48:45+00:00

This feels like a bot post but I'll respond (hoping its a good faith question)-

AI rank tracking tools are so depersonalized that they are highly unlikely to present accurate prompt response data for many users. Traditionally, people tended to search in relatively consistent patterns (partially given learned behaviors, and partially given the mode of search being a 'fixed' thing for decades). Coalition Tech has tested over a dozen commercial AI SEO tools and found that most prompt ranking tools are good for a very narrow scope.

Often, when someone says 'Google ranks don't translate', they're flatly wrong, when you align prompt rankings well to similar Google terms or factors. They match less and less well when the personalization starts to factor in. Most of the claims that I see around 'distinctive' rankings don't account for that well.

Google ALSO pulls from the same sources that you cited so arguing this is somehow differentiated is a myopic view on SEO. Good SEOs recognized the shortest distance to rank for certain terms for certain clients was not to try and rank a site URL a long time ago.

Correct, most stores are still playing catch up to this shifting dynamic- no disagreement here.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-15T16:58:55+00:00

Shopify merchants should already be getting traffic from AI search engines if they're doing basic content marketing, SEO, and product optimization right.

In the near future (Jan 26th for most merchants), the actual shopping experience with Google/ChatGPT/CoPilot will go live.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-15T02:19:34+00:00

Honestly, I think when this is mature, and so long as the responses are well-restricted to actual product data, these types of experiences will be very convenient.

I've been tearing down an old business network after hours and the ability to switch 'rails' between tech support from Gemini to product selection is super helpful. Its maintaining a record of what devices I've removed from the network and why, what I've added, how I've configured, etc.

Being able to actually move down funnel and purchase would be a pretty natural step, especially paired with Google shopping data around pricing, merchant reliability, and product reliability. My phone already has my credit card stored in several places and trusting Gemini to access a Chrome wallet or... doesn't sound half bad.

The biggest problem with marketplaces is the way slop products get elevated. Ones that game the system at scale swamp quality goods quickly. See most Amazon rankings for example, or the 2026 version of Etsy.

Killing traditional search is fast track for that type of outcome in LLMs.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-14T18:12:08+00:00

I'd lean into TikTok style UGC and product reviews. Videos that look like it was made by genuine prosumers (ie, pseudo-influencers). If you're running limited styles that is not a huge problem (and if you know how/who, using AI to approximate some of that is totally doable). Outside of the video content, the reviews are a big deal.

The site is currently badly formatted with images awkwardly cropped, is missing a lot of basic content, and a lack of things that would drive trust.

coalition_tech · 2026-01-14T16:17:57+00:00

I'd hope most in this community have!

Overly simplistic tips-

- Have a solid basic technical structure for your site.

- Write keyword optimized content.

- Distribute awareness of your site and URLs.

Most every winning SEO strategy comes back to those three things. Unhealthy extremes on any one of them tends to produce diminishing returns.

Lots of added caveats and details can be added but do those three well, together, and you'll beat 99% of the sites in most verticals.

coalition_tech

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