the seo world is split. half the people say ai content ranks fine. the other half say google is burying it. they're both right, depending on what kind of ai content we're talking about.

what ranks

ai-assisted content where a human added genuine value. a blog post where ai did the first draft but a real expert added their perspective, examples from experience, and original analysis. google can't reliably detect ai anyway — what they detect is quality signals.

content that answers the search query better than competing pages. if your ai-assisted article is more comprehensive, more specific, and more useful than the human-written articles ranking for the same keyword, it'll outrank them.

long-form content with real depth. ai is good at breadth — covering all the subtopics — and humans are good at depth — providing genuine insight on each one. combine both and you get content that ranks.

what doesn't rank

mass-produced ai content with no editing. fifty blog posts a month that all follow the same structure, same transitions, same depth. google's systems identify patterns across a domain. if every post looks the same, the whole site gets suppressed.

content that matches the keyword but doesn't match the intent. ai is bad at understanding why someone is searching for something. it produces text about the topic but often misses what the reader actually needs.

thin content that covers the surface but adds nothing. "top 10 project management tools" where every entry has a two-sentence description copied from the tool's own marketing page. there are already 500 of these. number 501 isn't ranking.

the practical approach

use ai strategically, not lazily.

keyword research: find topics where you have genuine expertise or unique perspective.

drafting: use cowrite to produce a first draft from your outline and key points.

adding value: go through the draft and add your experience, specific examples, original data, contrarian takes. the stuff ai can't generate because it requires being a real person with real experience.

rewriting: run the final piece through paraai's paraphrase. the fine-tuned models ensure the text reads naturally. this helps with both detector checks and reader experience — nobody likes reading text that sounds robotic.

quality check: read it as a searcher. does this page give you everything you need? would you bookmark it? if not, it won't rank long-term regardless of how it was written.

the real ranking factor

google ranks pages that satisfy search intent better than alternatives. the method of writing is irrelevant if the end product is genuinely useful.

untraceable ai writing isn't an seo hack. it's a quality standard. text that reads naturally, provides real value, and doesn't trigger quality filters will rank. how much ai was involved doesn't matter. the output does.