Google's Guidance on Appropriate Use of AI for Ecommerce Merchants
It's a brave new world and the whole planet is talking about AI....and we've run into many customers who aren't up to date with if/how to use AI and what Google has said about it, so we wanted to create an article that goes over the detials of what Google has said and how to appropriately use AI to create efficiencies.
First....let's just set everybody's mind at ease.....Google has made it abundantly clear that using AI is NOT against Google Search's Guidelines (in fact, they offer their own AI models for businesses to use). See what Google communicated that in their article "Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content" where they said the following:
"Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies."
Google actually communicates that AI is “exciting” in how it can impact the creation of quality content creation.
“Automation has long been used in publishing to create useful content. AI can assist with and generate useful content in exciting new ways.” - Google AI Guidance
Google in fact, has released and continues to develop their own generative AI technology that they are making available for businesses to use in order to enable these “exciting” new efficiencies when it comes to creating content. On the other hand, with the availability of this new exciting technology, Google also knows that it’s going to be abused and they’re going to identify and weed that content out in their search rankings. Google’s Search Quality Ratings Guidelines communicates in the ““4.0 Lowest Quality Pages” section what their raters should be aware of and looking out for in order to rate as the lowest quality pages…
“Creating an abundance of content with little effort or originality with no editing or manual curation is often the defining attribute of spammy websites. One way to do this is to use "auto-generated" content.” - Google’s Search Quality Ratings Guidelines
So....you shouldn't be abusing the use of AI to try to manipulate rankings....but it's fine to use it. You just need to use it appropriately which we'll get into below. With AI being able to write so well, it is tempting to just publish a ton of stuff and sometimes it's so good that you may feel that you don't have to review it much....but, you do. Take the efficiency that AI has to offer, which can be notable (Answerbase customers are optimizing pages 6x-12x faster than before using our AI), but just don't get greedy with it. You still want to ensure that the content is hitting the nail on the head and adding your own expertise to enhance it.
Combined with your company's data, unique content, and the expertise of your personnel it can be used to very quickly and effectively create high-quality content that satisfies your visitors to help them get to the right product and convert and also provide value for SEO. Google has made it very clear that companies should be creating content for people, not search engines, so you should be focusing on creating "People-first content" that satisfies the visitors....and Google's Helpful Content System and Core Rankings reward sites with visibility and better rankings. AI just enables you to do it faster than you were able to before all these great AI tools existed.
Answerbase has AI-Enhanced page-by-page optimization workflows which dramatically increase your productivity, enabling your marketing team to create helpful content which is valuable for improving conversion rates for visitors on your site as well as atttract new customers through search engines. We have ecommerce merchants who are utilizing our AI-Enhanced tools to optimize their pages in less than 5 minutes per page, and have seen notable lift through all of the recent Google updates (which we're happy to show you on a demo).
AI-Enhanced Product Page Optimization Workflow
Answerbase identifies what your most valuable products and which products are converting the most for you, and prioritizes it's workflow so you can walk through those products and optimize them with helpful content. Answerbase's AI understands each of your products and proposes product Q&A content that will help bolster the sales of that product as visitors view that content and ask their own questions. Answerbase understands which types of questions are most asked related to each product, and proposes Q&A content that answers those questions for that specific product, speaking to the relevant specifications that satisfy the question and also the value of that specification. For example, see the below example where it takes the question of "Is it acid-free" and then effectively answers that question, but also speaks to the "Why" behind the specification....and communicates the value of the product being "acid-free":
Each of your products have specifications and there is a purpose and value behind each one of them, so Answerbase ensures that each visitor is sold on the value of each and every one of the products details and specifications so they can not only confirm that the product is a match for what they're looking for but also seal the deal by reinforcing the value.
Answerbase also understands the keywords that customers are most commonly using when searching for that product, and our AI inserts those keyphrases (as appropriate) to ensure that you're not only posting valuable content...but posting content that is naturally optimized for search. Answerbase has other tools which will recognize which product questions are regularly asked on Google so you can efficiently fulfill that information demand as well (also utilizing AI to create as much efficiency as possible), so as you get done optimizing a product page through Answerbase your page should fulfill most of the information demands that customers have related to that product and that content will be optimized for search.
AI-Proposed Product Category Content
When it comes to Product Collection or Product Category Page content, you need to think about what is going to be useful to your audience. So, let's get into the mind of your visitor and look to service them well with great information that is both helpful to them and helps them get to the product they are looking at is a great fit for that matches .
Answerbase utilizes this approach in our category-by-category optimization work flow where we feed you with AI-Proposed Q&A threads that will accomplish these goals. The AI-Generated Q&A for category recommendations go through the common attributes of that type of product and inform the visitor about the benefits and considerations related to those attributes based on the products within your inventory. We encourage you to schedule a demo so we can speak about how we'd configure this for your site but you can see an example of what our AI-Proposed Q&A shows and includes:
As noted above, the content that Answerbase proposes for optimization of your category pages for SEO include the following:
This provides valuable information, leads customers to the right products that match their needs, and links building value back to the most valuable product pages. Of course, on top of the AI-generated Q&A you'll also be fed with the questions regularly asked on Google related to that product category along with (1) an AI-proposed answer and (2) if Google has a featured snippet for that answer to know what you're competing against.
If you'd like to hear more about how AI can help you with optimizing your product collections pages and product category pages, schedule an Answerbase demo today and we'll have a product specialist talk to you about your goals.
First....let's just set everybody's mind at ease.....Google has made it abundantly clear that using AI is NOT against Google Search's Guidelines (in fact, they offer their own AI models for businesses to use). See what Google communicated that in their article "Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content" where they said the following:
"Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies."
Google actually communicates that AI is “exciting” in how it can impact the creation of quality content creation.
“Automation has long been used in publishing to create useful content. AI can assist with and generate useful content in exciting new ways.” - Google AI Guidance
Google in fact, has released and continues to develop their own generative AI technology that they are making available for businesses to use in order to enable these “exciting” new efficiencies when it comes to creating content. On the other hand, with the availability of this new exciting technology, Google also knows that it’s going to be abused and they’re going to identify and weed that content out in their search rankings. Google’s Search Quality Ratings Guidelines communicates in the ““4.0 Lowest Quality Pages” section what their raters should be aware of and looking out for in order to rate as the lowest quality pages…
“Creating an abundance of content with little effort or originality with no editing or manual curation is often the defining attribute of spammy websites. One way to do this is to use "auto-generated" content.” - Google’s Search Quality Ratings Guidelines
So....you shouldn't be abusing the use of AI to try to manipulate rankings....but it's fine to use it. You just need to use it appropriately which we'll get into below. With AI being able to write so well, it is tempting to just publish a ton of stuff and sometimes it's so good that you may feel that you don't have to review it much....but, you do. Take the efficiency that AI has to offer, which can be notable (Answerbase customers are optimizing pages 6x-12x faster than before using our AI), but just don't get greedy with it. You still want to ensure that the content is hitting the nail on the head and adding your own expertise to enhance it.
Combined with your company's data, unique content, and the expertise of your personnel it can be used to very quickly and effectively create high-quality content that satisfies your visitors to help them get to the right product and convert and also provide value for SEO. Google has made it very clear that companies should be creating content for people, not search engines, so you should be focusing on creating "People-first content" that satisfies the visitors....and Google's Helpful Content System and Core Rankings reward sites with visibility and better rankings. AI just enables you to do it faster than you were able to before all these great AI tools existed.
Answerbase has AI-Enhanced page-by-page optimization workflows which dramatically increase your productivity, enabling your marketing team to create helpful content which is valuable for improving conversion rates for visitors on your site as well as atttract new customers through search engines. We have ecommerce merchants who are utilizing our AI-Enhanced tools to optimize their pages in less than 5 minutes per page, and have seen notable lift through all of the recent Google updates (which we're happy to show you on a demo).
AI-Enhanced Product Page Optimization Workflow
Answerbase identifies what your most valuable products and which products are converting the most for you, and prioritizes it's workflow so you can walk through those products and optimize them with helpful content. Answerbase's AI understands each of your products and proposes product Q&A content that will help bolster the sales of that product as visitors view that content and ask their own questions. Answerbase understands which types of questions are most asked related to each product, and proposes Q&A content that answers those questions for that specific product, speaking to the relevant specifications that satisfy the question and also the value of that specification. For example, see the below example where it takes the question of "Is it acid-free" and then effectively answers that question, but also speaks to the "Why" behind the specification....and communicates the value of the product being "acid-free":
Each of your products have specifications and there is a purpose and value behind each one of them, so Answerbase ensures that each visitor is sold on the value of each and every one of the products details and specifications so they can not only confirm that the product is a match for what they're looking for but also seal the deal by reinforcing the value.
Answerbase also understands the keywords that customers are most commonly using when searching for that product, and our AI inserts those keyphrases (as appropriate) to ensure that you're not only posting valuable content...but posting content that is naturally optimized for search. Answerbase has other tools which will recognize which product questions are regularly asked on Google so you can efficiently fulfill that information demand as well (also utilizing AI to create as much efficiency as possible), so as you get done optimizing a product page through Answerbase your page should fulfill most of the information demands that customers have related to that product and that content will be optimized for search.
AI-Proposed Product Category Content
When it comes to Product Collection or Product Category Page content, you need to think about what is going to be useful to your audience. So, let's get into the mind of your visitor and look to service them well with great information that is both helpful to them and helps them get to the product they are looking at is a great fit for that matches .
Answerbase utilizes this approach in our category-by-category optimization work flow where we feed you with AI-Proposed Q&A threads that will accomplish these goals. The AI-Generated Q&A for category recommendations go through the common attributes of that type of product and inform the visitor about the benefits and considerations related to those attributes based on the products within your inventory. We encourage you to schedule a demo so we can speak about how we'd configure this for your site but you can see an example of what our AI-Proposed Q&A shows and includes:
As noted above, the content that Answerbase proposes for optimization of your category pages for SEO include the following:
- Relevant Questions (in Green): Answerbase understand what types of details that purchasers consider about a product within a product category and ensures that there is a Q&A pair about each detail and the considerations/benefits for that detail within the range of products you provide.
- Helpful Answers (in Yellow): The answer speaks to the variety of options that you have within your current inventory which satisfy the intent of the question, also highlighting the benefits of the different types of options that are available within that category of products. This ensures the customer can make an informed decision and lead to the appropriate product.
- Automated Link Building to Valuable Products (in Red): Answerbase will identify the products within your inventory that are best to highlight within the answer, speak to how those product's attributes are valuable to consider within the context of the answer, and automatically create links to those products to lead the visitor (and search engines) to the appropriate product.
- Automated Keyword Optimization (in Gray): Those questions and answers are automatically optimized to include the short-tail search queries most often used in search engines related to that specific product category . This ensures that you not only provide helpful content but can also provide position lift for your product category pages and product pages within organic results.
This provides valuable information, leads customers to the right products that match their needs, and links building value back to the most valuable product pages. Of course, on top of the AI-generated Q&A you'll also be fed with the questions regularly asked on Google related to that product category along with (1) an AI-proposed answer and (2) if Google has a featured snippet for that answer to know what you're competing against.
If you'd like to hear more about how AI can help you with optimizing your product collections pages and product category pages, schedule an Answerbase demo today and we'll have a product specialist talk to you about your goals.
