We Need To Have a Conversation About Garbage AI Content - Moz

We Need To Have a Conversation About Garbage AI Content

March 31, 2026 13 min read

Table of Contents

The SEO industry is like a slow-paced action movie, and you simply cannot look away.
Recently, we've seen:

My neurospicy brain loves the chaos!
In this article, I share my take on the trends dominating search right now and what you should focus on to win visibility in AI search.
PS: This blog post is a repurposed version of a podcast I recorded with Jon & Marc from RR Digital. Give it a listen to hear my unfiltered take, or keep reading for the PG version.

AI content strategy

1. Should we use AI to create content?

Yes, but there’s a caveat.
The problem isn’t AI, but how you use it.

AI is terrible at strategy but great at execution. If you expect LLMs to come up with solutions and basically do your job, you won’t get great outputs.
Instead of asking it to build a content outline from scratch, start with a rough outline of what you want to cover and provide background context so it understands the framing. Then ask it to find gaps and organise for storytelling to improve flow.

This is a machine that swallowed the internet. It can't think or replace your expertise. But it can help you execute faster when you stay in the driver's seat.

Here's my process for writing with AI:

Never use AI output verbatim. Infuse the content with your own examples, workflows, and anything that makes it actionable.

2. AI search features are cannibalizing clicks. Should we still create informational content?

Informational content is important and maintains a high search volume despite declining clicks.

Let’s use the legal industry as an example. People still search for things like what to do after being hit by a car, or can I sue if someone hits my car? These early-stage questions help potential leads to discover you.

The problem is you’re now competing with Google for discovery. AI Overviews and AI Mode provide detailed answers directly in the SERP. Hence, generic content replicating existing information doesn’t give people a reason to click.

Give them something they can't get from the SERP:

3. How do you show value when poor-quality content outranks your best work?

Honestly, it's infuriating. Some of the pages ranking for competitive keywords are from sites that have no business writing that content.

An email automation tool dominating the SERPs for keyword research is a perfect example.

They're not incentivised to provide value, but they rank because they’re an authoritative source, as demonstrated by metrics like high DA, links, and Brand Authority.

Great content doesn't always win in the SERPs, so choose your battles wisely.

Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere to reduce your reliance on Google. Find out where your audience spends time and create platform-specific content to attract them.

The best part is that you don’t have to create new content. You can repurpose existing content to reach new audiences.

Here are a few tips to try:

When Google doesn't reward the work, distribution is how you take back control.

4. How do you advise brands to think creatively when competing against AI-generated or cookie-cutter content?

Here are a few things I recommend:

Think more full funnel, not just organic traffic:

Obsessing over organic traffic subconsciously pushes you to regurgitate SERP information and optimize for entities to rank. It fuels an unnatural writing style that is bland, boring, and a replica of existing content.

Here’s an example of what that looked like for me.

When you switch your mindset from organic to full-funnel, several things happen:

Make affinity your new north star:

Affinity is about creating content that brings people directly to your website. Your brand becomes a habit based on recognition, and you’re the first choice people think of for solutions you provide.

For example, in the early days of learning content marketing, I would add “crazy egg” when looking for CRO tutorials because I wanted to start my learning journey with them.

If I did a generic search, I would scroll past higher-ranking results and click on Crazy Egg’s content, because they had earned my trust.

Affinity makes you the preferred choice, and that's a powerful way to grow an audience.

Tap into trends and seasonality:

One of the biggest mistakes I made early on was planning content months in advance without leaving space for flexibility. Trends are a great way to build affinity because they let you show up in conversations people are already having.

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn observing which conversations are driving the most engagement. When I see thought leaders sharing hot takes on a topic and people responding, I immediately think about how to capitalise on that moment.

Let’s stay with the legal space as an example. The Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce engagement was a huge moment in pop culture.

If I were doing content marketing or digital PR for a family law firm, here's how I'd approach it:

I’ve implemented this strategy at Moz. Some of our best-performing content isn’t ranking on SERPs but drives traffic through distribution.

Algorithms on LinkedIn, TikTok, and other social platforms are designed to serve trending content. Use it to capture audiences who wouldn't find you through organic search.

Brand visibility and the metrics that count

5. How can we show clients that branding assists SEO and AI visibility?

Brand has always mattered in SEO, but now it’s everything.

When an LLM generates a response, it pulls from known, authoritative sources. In a piece I published on the Moz blog, we found that LLMs favour brands with high Domain Authority and strong third-party recognition.

Think major media websites, high-authority publications, and established industry voices.

If your brand is earning third-party mentions, reviews, and citations on credible websites, you're feeding the ecosystem these models draw from.

The effect is cumulative:

If your content ranks but your brand isn’t strong enough to be the source people click or mention, you’re doing half the job.

6. How would you recommend showing clients that increasing impressions (but decreasing clicks) still has value, especially downstream in the funnel?

This question keeps coming up because SEOs have trained decision makers to treat traffic as the end goal. When clicks drop, and impressions rise, leadership hears “performance is down,” even if the business is still generating leads and revenue.

The only way forward is to tie visibility back to outcomes. If traffic declines but you still see brand awareness, pipeline activity, and new business, that’s the metric to highlight. If business drops alongside traffic, then it’s time to audit conversion.

Here’s how to make it actionable:

Track revenue outcomes

Measure leads, calls, form fills, consult bookings, and new business, then report those alongside impressions and clicks.

Prioritize CRO because declining clicks force the issue

Identify your main organic landing pages and optimize them to convert, not just rank.

Test the user journey

Ask someone to go from a Google result to your contact page and complete the journey. Next, highlight friction points and fix them. Heatmap tools like Microsoft Clarity are a great way to see where friction happens on conversion pages.

Audit traffic quality

Not all traffic is good traffic, and content libraries can get expensive quickly, as Helen Pollitt explained in this post.

Check how much traffic comes from commercial and transactional keywords, then look for gaps your competitors are using to drive revenue.

Explain the value of impressions

Impressions mean people are seeing you. Even if they’re not clicking right away, the visibility builds recognition.

Think about how people search in a fragmented journey. They might not click the first time, but if they see your name repeatedly across different queries and platforms, they’re more likely to choose you.

Mark Williams-Cook gave an excellent example of using ChatGPT to find a vendor and then going directly to the website to convert. That's zero clicks attributed, but impressions did the work.

7. How do we educate the C-suite who make decisions based on traffic growth and content volume, even when it doesn't show the full picture?

Start by questioning the goal, not defending the metric.
When a client says, "Our competitors are publishing 50 pages a month, why aren't we?", ask why they want to copy their competitors because FOMO is not a strategy.

The most effective way to educate leadership is to make goals the filter for every decision. What is SEO supposed to do for this business — drive leads, build brand awareness, or win market share in specific areas? Define KPIs, then measure every tactic against it, including competitor activity.

Next, make these changes:

Replace vanity metrics with business outcomes

Stop reporting impressions and traffic in isolation. Show leads, consult bookings, and pipeline activity alongside them. When leadership sees the connection between visibility and revenue, traffic becomes a means to an end rather than the end itself.

Reframe competitor activity

Instead of copying competitors, identify the strategies that align with your goals and the gaps they've missed. Copying keeps you reactive, but finding gaps and innovating puts you ahead.

8. If every LLM prompt generates a unique response, how should business owners and SEOs track AI visibility?

There is no single way to track AI visibility right now, and anyone telling you otherwise is oversimplifying.

Every prompt is unique. No two people type the same thing into ChatGPT or Perplexity, which means traditional search volume as a measurement framework doesn't apply.

What AI visibility tools are doing instead is aggregating prompts with similar intent to show you the types of queries your brand is appearing in. It's directional guidance and should be treated as such.

Here's how to track AI visibility in a holistic way:

Track AI search traffic in GA4

First, set up GA4 to see referral traffic from LLMs. Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition.

It gives you a baseline view of how much traffic you’re getting from these tools and whether it’s driving results.

Use AI Visibility tools

If you want to get more granular, Moz’s AI visibility tool aggregates brand mentions across ChatGPT and Gemini and shows you how often your brand appears in specific models. It’s a great way to understand your AI search performance and benchmark against competitors.

Crystal Carter covers this section in more detail in her prompt tracking guide.

Monitor sentiment

It's not enough to appear in AI answers. Check that the responses accurately represent your brand. If an LLM is describing you incorrectly or associating you with the wrong topics, address it at the source.

Check server log files

Log files show which pages LLMs are crawling repeatedly. Consistent recrawling signals that your content is being pulled into responses somewhere, even if you're not seeing direct referral traffic.

For some further reading, check out this article where Jamie Indigo shared tips on using log files to identify LLM crawlers.

Track impact

You can also track impact without knowing the prompt. To do this, follow the attribution from LLM referral traffic to the landing page, then to the lead and new business, and use it to identify which pages convert best from LLM referrals. Next, apply CRO best practices to improve conversion on those pages.

Concluding thoughts: The future of search rewards brands that build affinity

Stop moving with the crowd and start innovating in ways that set you apart. Brand affinity is your best lever for discoverability and trust. Create addictive content that makes people return for more. Use digital PR to reach new audiences and measure everything against your business goals.