Ahrefs Study Finds No Evidence Google Penalizes AI Content

A large-scale analysis by Ahrefs of 600,000 webpages finds that Google neither rewards nor penalizes AI-generated content.

The report, authored by Si Quan Ong and Xibeijia Guan, provides a data-driven examination of AI’s role in search visibility. It challenges ongoing speculation that using generative tools could hurt rankings.

How the Study Was Conducted

Ahrefs pulled the top 20 ranking URLs for 100,000 random keywords from its Keywords Explorer database.

The content of each page was analyzed using Ahrefs’ own AI content detector, built into…