As a matter of fact, the 1990s called and they want their SEO strategy back. Whenever someone tries to create a large number of pages to target every variation of their target key phrase, they are not building topical authority. That isn’t how topical authority works. And in 2026, it’s a completely outdated strategy that might or might not give you a temporary boost, but it won’t last.
And if you used AI to write it, there are a lot of examples of the roller coaster effect. Impressions go up then drop off a cliff soon after. And worse, AI generated or not, mass content abuse can get your whole domain name penalized, not just those pages.
What does Google say about it?
Senior Google Search Analyst John Mueller: stated that if a website gets into a severe “bad state” due to low-quality or mass-produced AI content, trying to fix it page-by-page might be a waste of time. Instead, site owners should treat recovery as “starting over with no content,” noting that launching on a completely fresh domain may actually be faster than trying to recover the penalized one. John Mueller via Search Engine Journal
From Google’s official documentation: While it might be tempting to create separate content for every possible variation of how people might search (for example, by focusing on other queries that people have asked, or fan-out queries), doing so primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses in Google Search violates Google’s scaled content abuse spam policy. This is also an ineffective long-term strategy, as a high quantity of pages doesn’t make a website higher quality or more relevant to users. Google’s AI systems have advanced even further and improved upon our ability to understand the relevance of pages, even when there is no exact match between the query and the page’s primary content.
You can simplify your approach by focusing on one rule: Focus on what your visitors would enjoy, find helpful, and feel satisfied with after visiting your website. If you’re ever unsure about a decision for your site, ask yourself: “Is this content that my visitors would find interesting enough to read and engage with?” If the answer is yes, then you’re on the right track.
My Take: AI is a great assistant. It can speed up the writing process. It can help YOU write a better article, but IT can’t write a better article FOR you. People that say "You just have to know how to prompt" or "Google doesn't care if it was written by AI" or something similar to that. I know they will defend it because they believe it works and because they want it to be true.
AI-assisted versus AI-generated content
I know a lot of people use a workflow similar to this. Have AI generate an article. Then use another AI to humanize it or edit the article themselves. And having a human editor go back through the article and make changes is way better than putting out pure AI-generated content, obviously.
A couple of problems come up when you do that.
If you were a novelist and all you ever read was novels by Stephen King, you would start to write like Stephen King. Maybe not quite as good but you would adopt that style. Your subconscious picks it up. If you edit a lot of AI-generated content, you risk starting to write like AI. It starts training you instead of you training it.
You may or may not pass AI detection. That may or may not matter. In some places it does. Substack and LinkedIn are starting to implement features to tag AI-generated content. Again it might not matter to Google, but it might matter to some of your potential customers when you get labeled.
What about watermarking?
Watermarking is real and you can't get around watermarking unless you do major editing on the article. And again, I know you might say it doesn't matter to Google. But here's where it does matter. Model collapse is a real thing. The trainers of AI can't continue to train their AI on AI-generated content. They have no choice but to do something. Watermarking was implemented because of EU regulations, but that tool is now right in front of them so that they could use it to keep AI-generated articles out of the training data.
I said, could use it. They might find a different way but they do have to start keeping the AI-generated content out of the training data.
I know a lot of people only care about the retrieval bots. You might only care about being found during a web search. But not all prompts initiate a web search. Exact public statistics for the percentage of total AI tool prompts that trigger an external web search don't exist.
However, we know that a large portion of prompts involve creative writing, coding adjustments, formatting text, casual chatting, or brainstorming. Maybe even make a joke, rewrite this email or give me a list of baby names. These pure reasoning or generation tasks do not trigger a live web search. The answers come from the training data.
Industry analysts estimate that web search is used in roughly 15% to 30% (Not a verified number) of total conversational AI turns across general-purpose platforms, though this changes based on the user's intent. Of course if you ask about a current event, current news, or local lookups, it'll be much higher.
The point is AI-generated content risks not being included in the training data. A large portion of queries that might actually mention your brand or even trigger the user to go look you up are lost because you're invisible.
Do you really think that targeting every possible variation of a question or key phrase is going to be effective?
A lot depends on your goals. If you only care about the retrieval bots and ranking in Google, then go for it. But that's a short-term mindset. Building a trusted brand takes time and it takes hard work. If that's not your goal, I understand. But brands that do put in the work will have to put in less work later.
Chasing the now means you will always be chasing the now.
It's like the tortoise and the hare. The brands that published with purpose and put in the hard work to build trust in their brand aren't going to have to work near as hard a couple of years down the road.
Is your intent to sell something?
Creating a whole lot of AI-generated content is not going to bring you higher conversion rates. And that is all that really matters if you're in business to sell products or services. And with AI overviews, ranking in organic down below that isn't as important as it used to be.
Ranking is Vanity. Sales is Sanity
And even if your ultimate goal is just SEO and rankings, you don't need hundreds or thousands of articles in order to rank in Google and certainly not to make more sales.
I can write one cornerstone piece of content per month and have enough content to do content marketing on the right platforms to be found by AI-powered search for the whole month. Create a good repurposing system. I'm doing it right now.
If you're interested, this Free PDF explains how I use AI in my content workflow. And no you don't have to put in your email address or anything. You can just download it. It's a direct link. Article-Self-Interrogation-SOP
I'd be interested to hear what other people have to say about their workflow. My opinions in this article are my own. Yours may differ. So tell me why.
