- Over the last year, website Exceljet was the victim of an AI-powered “SEO heist.”
- A provocative online marketer used AI to clone thousands of Exceljet’s articles for a competitor.
- The plot shows how generative AI is transforming the web, and posing thorny questions for Google.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The site relies heavily on Google search traffic, and with the tech giant periodically updating how it ranks websites, Bruns wondered whether he’d fallen out of the company’s favor.
“The usual signal methods of what’s true are no longer clear, and trusted sources like Google searches don’t turn up the right things anymore,” said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at Wharton who studies the impact of AI.
SEO professionals help websites improve their ranking in search results, using tactics ranging from official Google trend analysis to more dubious trucks to game the system.
An expat from the north of England now living in Dubai, Ward and his business partner worked to boost business-planning software startup’s Causal’s presence on Google — in part by using generative AI to feed off Exceljet’s existing content.
Even more galling for Bruns: When he reviewed the AI-generated Causal posts, he found factual errors in some articles, with one describing a purported feature that doesn’t exist in Excel.
Sports Illustrated’s publisher recently fired the magazine’s CEO following a brouhaha over its publication of articles that featured fake writers and AI-generated profile pictures.
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