Since generative AI’s big boom, speculation of AI overuse hurting search engine rankings began bubbling. Until now, there hasn’t necessarily been a credible source to verify or deny those worries confidently.
Yes, Google is on record saying, “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines,” in a 2023 blog post. Even still, that didn’t stop content creators from worrying about the possible repercussions of using artificial intelligence — in any capacity — to produce content.
In early July 2025, Ahrefs completed a massive analysis of 600,000 web pages to address this common concern, and the results may surprise you.
A Brief Look at Ahrefs Analysis
I won’t bury the lede here: Ahrefs’ analysis revealed that AI content neither hurts nor helps search rankings. The correlation between AI content percentage and search ranking position was 0.011 — far too small to have any meaningful impact. This finding was based on 600,000 URLs from Ahref’s database that were in the top 20 results for 100,000 randomly selected keywords.
Their analysis uncovered something else interesting, too: A vast majority of analyzed URLs (81.9%) housed a combination of AI-generated and human-written content. Only 4.6% of pages were found to be completely AI-generated, while 13.5% were written completely by humans. By a wide margin, a hybrid approach to content is most people’s preferred strategy today, and it’s working.
Furthermore, 40% of Ahrefs’ analyzed URLs contained just moderate AI usage, signaling that most brands that are serious about SEO use AI responsibly by contributing significant human-written content to their published pieces. The remaining three metrics speak to this, too: 13.8% of URLs showed minimal AI usage and 20.3% had substantial AI-generated content, while only 7.8% contained mostly AI-generated content.
Amid fears of AI content taking over the internet, it’s relieving to know that top-ranking pages are taking a responsible hybrid approach. That said, depending on your stance, learning that nearly 82% of top-ranking content contains AI to some degree may be concerning. To that end, Ahrefs’ Si Quan Ong and Xibeijia Guan — the folks behind this analysis — offer a silver lining:
“If you’re looking for a silver lining somewhere, you’d be happy to know that the very highest-ranking pages, i.e., #1, tend to have slightly less AI-generated content.”
For most people, this is good news all around. Marketers and content creators no longer need to be apprehensive about using AI, and further still, can take comfort in the fact that Google’s most coveted content appears to still put human writing first (literally).
What Does This Mean for Content Marketers?
The meaning of this revelation for marketers and content creators is twofold:
If you were already using AI responsibly for content creation, it won’t hurt if you keep it up. Perhaps these numbers will even help you realize if you’re using it too much or not enough, so you can adjust your habits and processes accordingly. Aiming for moderate usage with significant human oversight and a healthy dose of human-written content seems to be the way to go — and the current popular choice.
On the other hand, if you were hunkering down in the ‘AI content harms SEO” camp, this analysis may bring comfort. Maybe it even encourages you to experiment with AI more, where it makes sense for you and your business, without worrying whether or not you’re sacrificing precious SERP traffic.
Beyond these two folds, there are a few other key points I took away from this research:
Hybrid Content Performs Well
A significant portion of top-ranking content contained a balanced mix of human and AI-generated text. This suggests that combining human creativity with AI efficiency can help your pages climb SERPs by producing effective content that ranks well.
Content Quality Remains Unwavering
Google continues to emphasize content quality and helpfulness over volume — regardless of how it’s produced. Content that is original, informative and demonstrates expertise is more likely to perform well, whether it’s completely human-written or a combination of human and AI ideas.
AI Content Still Needs Brand Guardrails
Even though rankings weren’t penalized, AI content still risks damaging brand perception if it’s off-tone or factually weak. While Ahrefs’ data didn’t measure this nuance, it’s still critical.
Marketers and content creators using AI to achieve efficiencies should build brand-specific AI playbooks (e.g., tone rules, prompt libraries, editorial checks) to ensure AI-created assets align with brand integrity. Even though this won’t necessarily spell SEO wins, it will ensure that your editorial processes remain a solid buffer between content in production and finished products that you’re proud to publish.
Detection of AI Content Isn’t Always Accurate — So Be Strategic
Ahrefs used its own AI content detector, admitting that no tool, including theirs, is 100% accurate. This introduces fuzziness into assumptions about what Google actually “knows” about the content on its SERPs.
With that in mind, rather than either obsessing over detection or trying to hide AI use, marketers and creators should continue to focus on user intent, value delivery and trust. These will remain durable audience signals regardless of how you choose to create content.
Google’s Scaled Content Abuse Policy and How It Relates to AI
Google has numerous spam policies in place for Google Search, including one for scaled content abuse, which means, “when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.” Specifically, this section of the policy highlights generative AI, stating, “Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users” is considered scaled content abuse. It’s highly discouraged and penalized.
Guardrails like this only make it clearer that AI-assisted content reaching top SERP positions isn’t fluff — brands are making a concerted effort to create helpful and valuable content, using AI as a tool and not a trickster. High-quality AI-assisted content ranks, and that should be all the information you need to start embracing AI if you’ve been holding off.
The Future Is Efficient
For folks who were already on the AI bandwagon and using it responsibly from the get-go, this news probably won’t come as a surprise. By now, they would’ve likely noticed any negative ranking impacts and shifted strategies.
For those tepid to start exploring AI for fear of harming organic traffic, Ahrefs swoops in as a bit of a hero with this analysis, effectively telling marketers, creators and brands that reaching for AI efficiency is OK so long as you’re not generating 100% of your content with AI tools, 100% of the time. If that’s you, now is the time to start upskilling your team for AI. Time savings (and high rankings) are in your future! Just make sure to keep your human experts at the helm.
