Navigating AI Cannibalism in Search

Content is the foundation of a great digital marketing strategy. Brands that consistently publish relevant, helpful content have a better chance of ranking high in SERPs, earning citations from AI Overviews, and getting mentioned by generative search engines.

Thanks to this constant need for fresh, high-quality content, AI-powered writing tools have surged in popularity. On the surface, this technology sounds like a marketing team’s dream: It can help small marketing departments thrive by quickly researching topics and creating content.

However, what happens when the web becomes oversaturated with redundant, AI-generated content?

Here’s what digital marketers should know about AI cannibalism, how to effectively leverage AI writing tools, and how to optimize content for traffic and visibility.

Imagine learning to speak French by watching a dubbed version of your favorite movie. You’d pick up some words and phrases, but your vocabulary would be limited to a single script.

Now, imagine teaching a friend to speak French using only your limited knowledge. Their conversational skills would be even more condensed and simplified; any pronunciation or grammatical errors you made would be amplified. If this process continued, your friends would eventually be speaking something hardly recognizable as French.

AI cannibalism follows a similar process. This phenomenon occurs when AI models are trained on AI-created content, resulting in a degenerative feedback loop that lowers the quality of a system’s output.

What Are the Impacts of AI Cannibalism?

AI cannibalism is detrimental to more than just the AI model itself; this issue also impacts digital marketers, consumers, and future innovation.

Content created by a model suffering from AI cannibalization is repetitive, inaccurate, and even nonsensical at times. This makes AI writing tools a less valuable asset for digital marketing teams. While they can generate surface-level, generic content quickly, they struggle with authoritative, expert-written content.

An abundance of low-quality content on the internet makes it more challenging for people to find high-quality content, reducing the value of Search if the problem becomes widespread.

Plenty of brainpower, funding, and innovation go into developing cutting-edge AI models. AI cannibalization amplifies errors and biases within a system, causing an AI model to no longer serve its intended purpose. This hinders future innovation by setting back promising AI models, impacting the people who develop these models.

As more and more content floods the internet, search engines and consumers are searching for fresh, real content. AI Overviews help people find answers quickly and efficiently, while authentic content earns the trust of consumers.

Google, for example, relies on its E-E-A-T framework to identify high-quality, unique content.

This acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Since AI is unable to share authentic anecdotes or express real emotions, AI-generated content lacks the complexity of human-generated content. Human-created or reviewed content, on the other hand, can offer valuable insights and unique perspectives.

Real people, whether they’re searching with commercial intent or out of curiosity, are also becoming skeptical of content that is obviously AI-generated. AI “hallucinations,” or inaccurately expressed information confidently presented by an AI model, have fostered a sense of distrust surrounding content that lacks a human touch.

With both search engines and searchers becoming skeptical of content created solely by AI, brands need to find ways to adapt.

Challenges aside, AI is still an incredibly valuable tool for digital marketers when used strategically. Here are a few best practices that can help digital marketers successfully integrate AI into their content creation processes.

AI is a fantastic tool, but not a replacement for human expertise. Instead of relying solely on AI tools to generate topics, research, and write content, marketing teams should use AI as an efficiency tool, not a creative one.

When identical content appears on multiple webpages, it confuses search engines. Instead of assigning high value to every page, search engines tend to distribute the link equity and ranking value across these URLs, which impacts traffic and visibility.

To avoid duplicate content penalties while maximizing the quality of their copy, brands can utilize AI writing tools to refine human-written content. Utilizing AI tools to repurpose content can save marketing teams time and energy while supporting their link building goals.

Thanks to AI writing tools, creating content is becoming easier. However, ranking in AI search results requires a strategic digital marketing approach. After all, leading brands do more than just create content; they also earn clicks and citations.

Ranking competitively on SERPs and getting cited by AI overviews or generative engines starts with expert-driven Organic Search and Generative Engine Optimization strategies.

Search engines are quickly evolving, but the goal of these tools remains the same: help searchers find what they are looking for. Consistently publishing high-quality, authoritative content signals to search engines that your brand can be trusted, earning your company higher rankings and increased visibility.

Webpages should be easy for both users and search engines to understand. Organize your content with H2s (headings), H3s (subheadings), and bullet points. This makes it easier for real people to use your content and for search engines to crawl it. Usability has and always will be an important factor in driving and converting traffic.

This step is arguably one of the most important pieces of any digital content strategy. An active blog demonstrates to both consumers and search engines that your company is engaged and up-to-date, signaling that you’re a trusted thought leader in the industry. Refreshing content on a regular basis and covering relevant topics is a great way to boost visibility.

Search engines are becoming better at answering long-tail, conversational search queries. To optimize your content for AI overviews and generative search responses, structure your content in a question-and-answer format. This helps real people find what they’re looking for when they skim your content, and also optimizes your pages for AI-powered search tools.

Both AI writing tools and AI-powered search engines are rapidly evolving. To stay ahead of industry standards and capitalize on emerging trends, it helps to partner with an experienced agency leading the way with innovative strategies and an ROI-driven approach.

Here’s how we help growing and established companies:

Growing Businesses

Small businesses or brands with lean marketing teams may lack the resources to create quality, human-written or reviewed content. Our team of renowned writers and editors helps brands create fresh, keyword-rich, optimized content on a monthly basis. This helps establish your voice in the industry and support your organic and AI search visibility.

Established Brands

Large companies with internal marketing teams can develop strong brand voices, create unique and creative campaigns, and generate fresh topic ideas. However, building strong backlink profiles and sticking to a syndication schedule requires a team of Organic Search experts. VELOX has built a network of reliable, relevant, vetted sites to ensure our link building efforts are impactful, and we have the revenue data to back it up.

Digital marketers, search engines, and consumers all share a common goal: they want the internet to be a user-friendly and helpful tool.

Although AI-powered tools have their drawbacks when left unchecked, this technology can become a valuable asset when used strategically.

By partnering with VELOX, brands can navigate these changes while capitalizing on emerging trends. Contact us today to learn more about our approach to AI search.