Scaled content abuse
Scaled content abuse is Google's name for publishing lots of pages mainly to game search rankings, whether written by people or by AI.
Scaled content abuse is Google's name for publishing many pages mainly to manipulate search rankings, with little value to the people who read them. It's one of Google's spam policies, and it applies however the pages are made: by AI, by people, or by both.
It matters for AI search because many AI answers draw on search results. Pages that Google demotes or removes for spam are less likely to be found, and so less likely to end up in answers. A site caught for it can lose far more than the pages it mass-produced.
What it looks like
The policy judges pages by why they exist and what they give readers. Some common examples:
- Hundreds of pages that swap one word, like a town name, into the same text
- AI-written articles published in bulk with nobody checking them
- Pages stitched together from other sites' content, with nothing added
- Many near-identical pages aimed at slightly different searches
For example, Kestrel Roasters could generate a page for every town in the UK, each saying "the best coffee delivery in [town]" with the rest of the text the same. That's 1,500 pages and not one of them tells a reader anything new. It's a classic case.
What to do instead
Using AI to help write is fine. The test is whether each page is worth reading on its own. So:
- Publish fewer pages, each with something specific to say
- Add what only you know: your prices, your data, your experience
- Have someone who knows the subject check each page before it goes live
- Merge pages that say the same thing
If Kestrel really delivers differently in different places, a single delivery page with a clear table of areas, times and costs serves people better than 1,500 copies.
In AnswerOrbit
Recommendations may suggest creating a page on a topic, and only when there's evidence for it in your answers. Each one names the topic and the answers behind it, so you write one page with a reason to exist.