Search entrepreneurs assert that Google’s new long-form AI Overviews solutions have develop into the very factor Google’s documentation advises publishers towards: scraped content material missing originality or added worth, on the expense of content material creators who’re seeing declining visitors.
Why put the trouble into writing nice content material if it’s going to be rewritten into an entire reply that removes the inducement to click on the cited supply?
Rewriting Content material And Plagiarism
Google beforehand confirmed Featured Snippets, which have been excerpts from printed content material that customers may click on on to learn the remainder of the article. Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) expands on that by presenting whole articles that reply a consumer’s questions and typically anticipates follow-up questions and offers solutions to these, too.
And it’s not an AI offering solutions. It’s an AI repurposing printed content material. That motion is named plagiarism when a pupil does the identical factor by repurposing an present essay with out including distinctive perception or evaluation.
The factor about AI is that it’s incapable of distinctive perception or evaluation, so there’s zero value-add in Google’s AIO, which in an educational setting can be referred to as plagiarism.
Instance Of Rewritten Content material
Lily Ray not too long ago printed an article on LinkedIn drawing consideration to a spam drawback in Google’s AIO. Her article explains how SEOs found tips on how to inject solutions into AIO, making the most of the shortage of truth checking.
Lily subsequently checked on Google, presumably to see if her article was rating and found that Google had rewritten her whole article and was offering a solution that was virtually so long as her unique.
She tweeted:
“It re-wrote the whole lot I wrote in a publish that’s principally so long as my unique publish “
It re-wrote the whole lot I wrote in a publish that’s principally so long as my unique publish ☠️ pic.twitter.com/ucNCSMHsY4
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) Might 18, 2025
Did Google Rewrite Total Article?
An algorithm that engines like google and LLMs might use to research content material is to find out what questions the content material solutions. This manner the content material will be annotated in accordance with what solutions it offers, making it simpler to match a question to an internet web page.
I used ChatGPT to research Lily’s content material and likewise AIO’s reply. The variety of questions answered by each paperwork have been virtually precisely the identical, twelve. Lily’s article answered 13 questions whereas AIO supplied answeredo twelve.
Each articles answered 5 comparable questions:
- Spam Downside In AI Overviews
AIO: “s there a spam drawback affecting Google AI Overviews?
Lily Ray: What varieties of issues have been noticed in Google’s AI Overviews? - Manipulation And Exploitation of AI Overviews
AIO: How are spammers manipulating AI Overviews to advertise low-quality content material?
Lily Ray: What new types of web optimization spam have emerged in response to AI Overviews? - Accuracy And Hallucination Issues
AIO: Can AI Overviews generate inaccurate or contradictory info?
Lily Ray: Does Google at the moment fact-check or validate the sources utilized in AI Overviews? - Concern About AIO In The web optimization Neighborhood
AIO: What considerations do web optimization professionals have in regards to the affect of AI Overviews?
Lily Ray: Why is the flexibility to govern AI Overviews so regarding? - Deviation From Rules of E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
AIO: What sort of content material is Google prioritizing in response to those points?
Lily Ray: How does the standard of knowledge in AI Overviews evaluate to Google’s conventional emphasis on E-E-A-T and reliable content material?
Plagiarizing Extra Than One Doc
Google’s AIO system is designed to reply follow-up and associated questions, “synthesizing” solutions from a couple of unique supply and that’s the case with this particular reply.
Whereas Lily’s content material argues that Google isn’t doing sufficient, AIO rewrote the content material from one other doc to say that Google is taking motion to stop spam. Google’s AIO differs from Lily’s unique by answering 5 extra questions with solutions which might be derived from one other internet web page.
This provides the looks that Google’s AIO reply for this particular question is “synthesizing” or “plagiarizing” from two paperwork to reply the query Lily Ray’s search question, “spam in ai overview google.”
Takeaways
- Google’s AI Overviews is repurposing internet content material to create long-form content material that lacks originality or added-value.
- Google’s AIO solutions mirror the content material they summarize, copying the construction and concepts to reply similar questions inherent within the articles.
- Google’s AIO arguably deviates from Google’s personal high quality requirements, utilizing rewritten content material in a fashion that mirrors Google’s personal definitions of spam.
- Google’s AIO options obvious plagiarism of a number of sources.
The standard and trustworthiness of AIO responses might not attain the standard ranges set by Google’s ideas of Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness as a result of AI lacks expertise and apparently there isn’t a mechanism for fact-checking.
The truth that Google’s AIO system offers essay-length solutions arguably removes any incentive for customers to click on by means of to the unique supply and will assist clarify why many within the search and writer communities are seeing much less visitors. The notion of AIO visitors is so dangerous that one search marketer quipped on X that rating #1 on Google is the brand new place to cover a physique, as a result of no one would ever discover it there.
Google may very well be mentioned to plagiarize content material as a result of AIO solutions are rewrites of printed articles that lack distinctive evaluation or added worth, putting AIO firmly inside most individuals’s definition of a scraper spammer.
Featured Picture by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero
