Google On Negative Authorship Signal And Mini-Site Reputation via @sejournal, @martinibuster

At the recent Search Central Live NYC event, Danny Sullivan discussed what happens when a site begins publishing vastly different content on a site and how that may affect rankings, introducing the concept of a mini-site as a metaphor for dividing the reputation of a site. He also discussed the concept of negative authorship authority, which some SEOs believe follows authors from penalized websites and can negatively affect the other sites they publish on.

Negative Authorship Reputation

Danny initially discussed a negative authorship signal that some in the SEO community believe can follow an author from site to site. The idea is that an author of content that is banned on one site will also have their content banned on another site. He denied that Google tracked author authority signals from site to site.

Sullivan explained:

“If you wrote for a site that got a manual action, it doesn’t somehow infect the other site that you might work for later on, so again, this is not something that freelancers should be worried about.

If you’re a publication and for whatever reason you feel like employing a freelancer, and it makes sense, that’s fine. You don’t need to worry about who they worked for before.

And if you are a freelancer you do not need to go back to the publications and say, can you take my byline down because now I can’t get hired from anybody else because they think I’m going to infect them. It is not like that. It’s not a disease. “

The above SEO myth likely began when publishers noticed that content created by a certain author across multiple sites was banned. In that case, it’s reasonable to assume that there was something wrong with the content but that’s not necessarily true. It could have been the case that the website itself was poorly promoted with unnatural links. Or, it could be that the site itself was engaged with selling links.

The takeaway from what Danny Sullivan shared is that a manual action on one site doesn’t follow an author to another site. Another takeaway is that there is no negative authorship signal that Google is tracking.

And if there’s no negative authorship signal could it be that there is no positive author signal as well? In my opinion it’s a reasonable assumption. A signal like that would be too easy to manipulate. Whatever signals Google uses to understand site reputation is likely enough for the purpose of citing an information source in the search results.

Although claims by some SEOs have been made about authorship signals, authorship signals have never been known to be a thing with Google’s algorithms. Google has a long history of denying the use of authorship signals and Danny’s statements offer further validation that Google continues to not use authorship as signals for ranking purposes.

Ranking Drops And Mini-Site Reputation

Danny next begins talking about how a new section of a site could suddenly lose rankings. He says this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just Google trying to figure out this new section and that if it’s sufficiently different Google could even start treating it as a standalone mini-site. This is a really fascinating thing he gets into here.

Danny used the example of the addition of a forum to a website.

Danny explained

“For example, you might have a site where you start running a forum. Forums can be different and we would want to understand that this looks like a forum so that we can then rank the forum content against other kinds of forum content on kind of a level playing field or understand that that forum content should be included in things where we try to show forum content.”

What can happen is… that it could be that part of your site was doing better because it was seen as part of the overall site. Now we kind of see it as more of independent and part of a full site on its own.

And potentially you could see a traffic drop that comes from that. That doesn’t mean that you suddenly got a site reputation abuse ban issue because first of all that might not have involved third party content abusing first party work, right? Those were the things. So if it doesn’t have any of that it doesn’t have anything to do with that.Secondly, we would have sent you an email. So, it’s not bad.

Because it just could be we’ve had a general re-ranking… It could also mean that in the long run that part of your site might actually do better, because we might recognize it in different ways, that we might be able to surface it in different ways. And it might start sort of earning its own like ‘mini-site’ reputation along the way.”

Three things to take away from that last part.

A ranking drop could be due to benign things, don’t always assume that a ranking drop is due to a spam or other negative algorithmic action.

Second, a rankings drop could be due to a “general re-ranking” which is a vague term that went unexplained but is probably a reference to minor ranking adjustments outside of a core algorithm update.

The third takeaway is the part about a section of a website earning it’s own “mini-site” reputation. I think SEOs should not create theories about mini-sites and mini-site reputations because that’s not what Danny Sullivan said. He used the word “like” which means that he likely used the phrase “mini-site” as a metaphor.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Joseph Hendrickson

Data Shows Google AIO Is Citing Deeper Into Websites via @sejournal, @martinibuster

New data from BrightEdge that was shared with Search Engine Journal shows that Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) in March 2025 have rapidly expanded in size and are shifting how traffic is distributed across search results. The analysis suggests that deep, specialized content is likelier to be cited than homepages.

This shows that AIO is becoming more precise about the answers it is giving, aligning with the concepts of Predictive Summaries and Grounding Links that Google recently shared with marketers at Search Central NYC.

Google has traditionally favored showing precise answers to questions, something that the home pages of websites generally cannot do. It makes sense that BrightEdge’s data reflects the kind of precise linking that Predictive Summaries and Grounding Links display in AIO.

Google has expanded the pixel height of AIO by 18.26% in the first two weeks of March. Although some may rightly note that it’s reducing the outbound links of the organic search results it’s important to put that into the context that Google’s AIO also has outbound links and that those links are highly precise contextually relevant links.

The expansion of AIO size was not across the board. Industry-specific increases in AI Overview size:

• Travel: +39.49%
• B2B Tech: +37.13%
• Education: +35.49%
• Finance: +32.89%

Strategic Response for SEOs And Publishers

BrightEdge suggests that publishers and SEOs should monitor performance metrics to track changes in traffic, impressions, CTRs, and clicks to evaluate how AI Overviews may be influencing traffic trends. Of absolute importance is to try to identify sales or revenue trends because those are the most important metrics, not traffic.

Although it may be useful to create citable content, Google is generally summarizing content and then linking to where users can read more. Now more than ever it’s important to be aware of user trends relative to your industry and be able to anticipate them, including the context of a user’s search. Jono Alderson recently suggested targeting users at the very early side of the consumer journey in order to get ahead of AI-based citations.

Importance of In-Depth, Specialized Content

Google AIO is showing a citation preference for deep-linked content, two more clicks from the home page deep (2+ deep). 82.5% of clicks were to 2+ deep pages. Home pages accounted for less than 0.5% of all clicks.

86% of cited pages were ranked for only one keyword, often high-volume. This represents an opportunity for high traffic volume keyword traffic. The median keyword volume for citations was 15,300 monthly searches and 19% of citation-triggering keywords contain traffic volume in excess of 100k monthly searches.

Implications For Technical SEO And Content Optimization

BrightEdge suggests that full site indexing is critical for AI Overviews in order to ensure that every page is available to be cited as a potential source. Even older and otherwise overlooked content may gain value, especially if they’re reviewed and updated to make them suitable to be cited and reflect the most current information.

Google has been citing deeper content for many years now and the age of the primacy of the home page has been long over, except in local search. That said, home pages only accounted for half a percent of clicks from AIO so it’s super important now more than ever to optimize inner pages.

Takeaways:

The following are the top takeaways from the data:

• Google’s AI Overviews are rapidly expanding in visual size on the SERP
• Industries like Travel, B2B Tech, Education, and Finance are experiencing the fastest AI Overview growth
• Deeper, more specific content is overwhelmingly favored for AI citations over homepages
• Pages cited in AI Overviews often surface for just one keyword—frequently high-volume
• Technical SEO and full-site indexing are now essential for brand visibility in AI-driven search

Google’s AI Overviews are not just expanding in size; they are improving the contextual relevance of outbound links to websites. Optimizing for AIO should turn an eye toward keeping older content fresh and up to date to keep it relevant for users who will appreciate that content.

BrightEdge data shared with Search Engine Journal has not been published but a monthly updated guide to AIO is available.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/B..Robinson

Google On Scaled Content: “It’s Going To Be An Issue” via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller and Danny Sullivan discussed why AI generated content is problematic, citing the newly updated quality rater guideline and sharing examples of how AI can be used in a positive way that has added value.

Danny Sullivan, known as Google Search Liaison, spoke about the topic in more detail, providing an example of what a high quality use of AI generated content is to serve as a contrast to what isn’t a good use of it.

Update To The Quality Rater Guidelines

The quality rater guidelines (QRG) is a book created by Google to provide guidance to third-party quality raters who rate tests of changes to Google’s search results. It was recently updated and it now includes guidance about AI generated content that’s folded into a section about content created with little effort or originality.

Mueller discussed AI generated content in the context of scaled content abuse, noting that the quality raters are taught to rate that kind of content as low quality.

The new section of the QRG advises the raters:

“The lowest rating applies if all or almost all of the MC on the page (including text, images, audio, videos, etc) is copied, paraphrased, embedded, auto or AI generated, or reposted from other sources with little to no effort, little to no originality, and little to no added value for visitors to the website. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.”

Doesn’t Matter How It’s Scaled: It’s Going To Be An Issue

Danny Sullivan, known as Google Search Liaison, started his part of the discussion by saying that to Google, AI generated content is no different than scaled content tactics from the past, comparing it to the spam tactics of 2005 when Google used statistical analysis and other methods to catch scaled content. He also emphasized that it doesn’t matter how the content was scaled.

According to my notes, here’s a paraphrase of what he said:

“The key things are, large amounts of unoriginal content and also no matter how it’s created.

Because like, ‘What are you going to do about AI? How are you going to deal with all the AI explosion? AI can generate thousands of pages?’

Well 2005 just called, it’d like to explain to you how human beings can generate thousands of pages overnight that look like they’re human generated because they weren’t human generated and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

If you’ve been in the SEO space for a long time, you well understand that scaled content is not a new type of thing. So we wanted to really stress: we don’t really care how you’re doing this scaled content, whether it’s AI, automation, or human beings. It’s going to be an issue.

So those are things that you should consider if you’re wondering about the scaled content abuse policy and you want to avoid being caught by it.”

How To Use AI In A Way That Adds Value

A helpful thing about Danny’s session is that he offered an example of a positive use AI, citing how retailers offer a summary of actual user reviews that give an overall user sentiment of the product without having to read reviews. This is an example of how AI is providing an added value as opposed to being the entire main content.

This is from my notes of what he said:

“When I go to Amazon, I skip down to the reviews and the reviews have a little AI-generated thing at the top that tells me what the users generally think, and I’m like, this is really helpful.

And the thing that’s really helpful to me about it is, it’s AI applied to original content, the reviews, to give me a summary. That was added value for me and unique value for me. I liked it.”

As Long As It’s High Quality….

Danny next discussed how they tried to put out a detailed policy about AI generated content but he said it was misconstrued by some parts of the SEO community to mean that AI generated content was fine as long as it was quality AI generated content.

In my 25 years of SEO experience, let me tell you, whenever an SEO tells you that an SEO tactic is fine “as long as it’s quality” run. The “as long as it’s quality” excuse has been used to justify low-quality SEO practices like reciprocal links, directory links, paid links, and guest posts – If it’s not already an SEO joke it should be.

Danny continued:

“And then people’s differentiation of what’s quality is all messed up. And they say Google doesn’t care if it’s AI!’ And that is not really what we said.

We didn’t say that.”

Don’t Mislead Yourself About Quality Of Scaled Content

Danny advised that anyone using artificially generated content should think about two things to use as tests for whether it’s a good idea:

1. The motivation for mass generated content.
2. Unoriginality of the scaled content.

Traffic Motivated Content

The motivation shouldn’t be because it will bring more traffic. The motivation should because there’s a value-add for site visitors.

This is how Danny Sullivan explained it, according to my notes:

“Any method that you undertake to mass generate content, you should be carefully thinking about it. There’s all sorts of programmatic things, maybe they’re useful. Maybe they’re not. But you should think about it.

And the things to especially think about is if you’re primarily doing into it to game search traffic.

Like, if the primary intent of the content was, ‘I’m going to get that traffic’ and not, ‘some user actually expected it’ if they ever came to my website directly. That’s one of the many things you can use to try to determine it.”

Originality Of Scaled Content

SEOs who praise their AI-generated content lose their enthusiasm when the content is about a topic they’re actually expert in and will concede that it’s not as smart as they are… And what’s going on, that if you are not an expert then you lack the expertise to judge the credibility of the AI generated content.

AI is trained to crank out the next likeliest word in a series of words, a level of unoriginality so extreme that only a computer can accomplish it.

Sullivan next offered a critique of the originality of AI-generated content:.

“The other thing is, is it unoriginal?

If you are just using the tool saying, ‘Write me 100 pages on the 100 different topics that I got because I ran some tool that pulled all the People Also Asked questions off of Google and I don’t know anything about those things and they don’t have any original content or any value. I just kind of think it’d be nice to get that traffic.’

You probably don’t have anything original.

You’re not necessarily offering anything with really unique value with it there.

A lot of AI tools or other tools are very like human beings because they’ve read a lot of human being stuff like this as well. Write really nice generic things that read very well as if they are quality and that they answer what I’m kind of looking for, but they’re not necessarily providing value.

And sometimes people’s idea of quality differ, but that’s not the key point of it when it comes to the policy that we have with it from there, that especially because these days some people would tell you that it’s quality.”

Takeaways:

• Google doesn’t “care how you’re doing this scaled content, whether it’s AI, automation, or human beings. It’s going to be an issue.”
• The QRG explicitly includes AI-generated content in its criteria for ‘Lowest’ quality ratings, signaling that this is something Google is concerned about.
• Ask if the motivation for using AI-generated content is primarily to drive search traffic or to help users
• Originality and value-add are important qualities of content to consider

Google Cautions SEOs & Creators About Filler Content via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller cautioned publishers and SEOs about filler content, which is generally created with the apparent goal of reaching a word-count threshold without concern for the user experience. Although recipe sites are the cause of this warning, this is the kind of thing that all SEOs and publishers should be concerned about.

Probable Origin Of Filler Content

What Mueller warned about, filler content, probably has origins in the idea that “content is king” which resulted in the SEO practice that values creating content similar to what Google is already ranking except doing it ten times better so that it towers over the competition (10x and skyscraper content strategies).

John Mueller Warns About Filler Content

Mueller’s observations about filler content were in the context of an overview of recent changes in the Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG), a book that Google created to bring more objective standards to how third party raters rate search results that are being tested.

Mueller said that filler content is low quality content that’s designed to make a page longer. Speaking informally and loosely, he said that filler content is problematic because users can find it “annoying.”

This is, according to my notes, what he said:

“Recently, quality rater guidelines, there are few things that I think are interesting for some sites that we have mentioned in the quality rater guidelines now which weren’t in there before.

And so this is the kind of thing which I think is important for sites to realize. On the one hand we’ve written about filler content, which is the kind of fluff that some websites put on their pages to make the pages longer. And sometimes they have good reasons to make the pages longer.

But for us this is sometimes problematic and users sometimes find it annoying. So we have that mentioned in the quality rater guidelines.”

Filler Content Is A Poor User Experience

What Mueller is referring to is the new section 5.2.2 of the QRG which lays out how to objectively judge whether a page has filler content. Filler content previously was nestled within section 5.2 but it’s now broken out into its own section. The main takeaway is that filler content is a user experience issue.

Here’s what the new section of the QRG says:

“5.2.2 Filler as a Poor User Experience

The main content (MC) of a page should support its purpose. Web site owners and content creators should place the most helpful and essential MC near the top of the page so that visitors can immediately access it.

A high quality page has the most helpful MC placed most prominently. Content that supports the page purpose without directly contributing to the primary goal can be included, but it should be shown lower on the page in a less prominent position. For example, on recipe pages, the recipe itself and important supporting content directly related to the recipe should be prominently displayed near the top of the webpage.

Sometimes, MC includes “filler” – low-effort content that adds little value and doesn’t directly support the purpose of the page. Filler can artificially inflate content, creating a page that appears rich but lacks content website visitors find valuable. Filler can result in a poor experience for people who visit the page, especially if placed prominently ahead of helpful content for the purpose of the page.

Important: Content that supports the page purpose without directly contributing to its primary goal can still be valuable if placed appropriately. Filler refers to low-effort content that occupies valuable and prominent space without providing value or without being helpful or satisfying for the primary purpose of the page.

A Low rating is appropriate if the page

● Contains a large amount of low quality and unhelpful filler, causing a poor experience for people visiting the page

● Contains a large amount visually prominent filler that makes it difficult to find the helpful MC, causing frustration for people visiting the page”

Content Filler – Not Just For Recipe Sites

The new quality rater guideline section about filler content specifically mentions recipe sites, likely because of their notoriously long filler content that’s so bad they have to add a link to skip to the the part that’s useful.

Some SEOs generally dislike change and this will probably make some people angry, but in my opinion, any publisher that feels they need to add a link to “skip to recipe” should probably consider that they’re doing something wrong. As Google says, important supporting content should be up front. If users have to skip the content to get to it then whatever it is that’s being skipped is not useful.

Recipe sites may be the worst offenders for filler content, but that doesn’t mean publishers in other niches can ignore the policy. All SEOs and content creators should recognize that filler content is problematic.

Imitating the top-ranked content is a practice that content publishers need to reconsider. It works against what Google is actually trying to rank and can lead to artificial word count targets instead of focusing on the user’s needs.