For two decades, the SEO playbook remained remarkably consistent. Identify high-volume keywords, analyze competitor content, add 20% more words, sprinkle in some backlinks, and watch the rankings climb. The formula worked. Agencies built empires on it. Content farms thrived on it. But in a single interview, Google’s VP of Search just burned that playbook to ashes.
Liz Reid’s recent comments about AI Overviews aren’t just product updates or algorithm tweaks. They represent a fundamental shift in how Google defines quality, spam, and what deserves to rank. More importantly, they reveal something the SEO industry has been desperately trying to ignore: the era of “good enough” content is over.
The Expanding Definition of Spam
Let’s start with the bombshell that should terrify every content marketer currently using AI writing tools to pump out blog posts. Google has officially expanded its definition of spam beyond technical manipulation. Reid stated it plainly: “We’ve expanded beyond this concept of spam to sort of low-value content, right? This content that doesn’t add very much, kind of tells you what everybody else knows.”
Read that again. Content that simply repeats what everyone else knows is now treated like spam.
This isn’t about duplicate content or keyword stuffing anymore. Google is actively downweighting content that fails to bring something new to the table, even if it’s technically well-written, properly optimized, and completely original in its wording. The crime isn’t plagiarism; it’s mediocrity.
For years, the SEO community has obsessed over the skyscraper technique: find what ranks, make it 10% better, and outrank the competition. Reid just explicitly said that strategy is dead. She noted that using software to analyze ranking content or following a skyscraper approach sets you up to do “exactly the opposite” of what Google wants.
The implications are staggering. Thousands of content strategies built on competitive analysis are now fundamentally misaligned with Google’s ranking philosophy. The tools promising to help you “write better than your competitors” are leading you toward the exact type of content Google is working to suppress.
What Actually Gets Clicked in AI Overviews
Here’s where Google’s behavioral data becomes fascinating. Reid revealed that AI Overviews function as a filter, showing Google exactly what type of content makes people click through. The pattern is clear: “What we see on what people click on, on AI Overviews, is content that is richer and deeper.”
But what does “richer and deeper” actually mean? Reid provided context: it’s content with human perspective, unique insights, and demonstrated expertise. It’s content where someone “really went in and brought their perspective or brought their expertise, put real time and craft into the work.”
The word “craft” is particularly revealing. Craft implies mastery, skill, artisanship. It suggests hours of work, not 15 minutes with ChatGPT. It implies the kind of expertise that comes from actual experience, not scraped from ten competitor articles.
Google is measuring this through bounce behavior. When users click from an AI Overview to your site and immediately return to search, that’s a signal your content didn’t deliver value beyond what the AI already summarized. Conversely, when users click through and stay, exploring deeper, that signals genuine value.
This creates a fascinating paradox for publishers worried about AI Overviews stealing their traffic. Reid argues that AI Overviews actually help surface better content by reducing bounce clicks. Users get basic information from the overview, then click through only to content offering genuine additional depth. The shallow content that used to capture accidental clicks through good SEO now gets filtered out.
The User Behavior Signal You Can’t Fake
Perhaps the most profound insight from Reid’s interview concerns how user preferences actively shape rankings. She explained that Google doesn’t just measure quality in abstract terms; they respond to what users actually seek out and engage with.
The data shows users, particularly younger ones, are shifting toward short-form video, forums, podcasts, and user-generated content. They’re moving away from traditional long-form articles that simply compile information available everywhere else. This shift isn’t driven by algorithm changes; the algorithm is responding to genuine behavior change.
Reid was explicit: “We are in the business of both giving them high-quality information, but information that they seek out.” The system learns from actual user actions, then adjusts to surface more of what people demonstrate they want.
This creates a feedback loop that rewards authentic engagement. If your content format, depth, and perspective genuinely resonates with users, they’ll engage with it. The system observes that engagement and shows it to more people. But you cannot trick this system with traditional SEO tactics because the signal isn’t technical; it’s behavioral.
The death of the traditional blog post has been predicted for years, but Reid’s comments suggest something more nuanced is happening. It’s not that long-form text is dead; it’s that generic long-form text is dead. She noted the rise of four-hour podcasts as evidence that people will engage with deep content when it offers genuine value. The format matters less than the substance.
The AI-Generated Content Paradox
Reid’s stance on AI-generated content deserves careful parsing because it’s more sophisticated than the binary “AI bad, human good” narrative floating around SEO circles.
She stated clearly: “AI-generated content doesn’t necessarily equal spam.” Google isn’t flagging content simply because AI touched it. The quality bar is agnostic to origin. An AI-generated image for home decor inspiration isn’t “AI slop” if it genuinely serves the user’s needs.
The problem is that most AI-generated content currently flooding the web is what Reid calls “surface-level.” Users don’t want to click through from an AI Overview to content that tells them nothing more than what they already got from the overview itself. Why would they? It wastes their time.
This creates a challenging reality for publishers using AI tools. The technology is incredibly efficient at producing content that summarizes existing knowledge, combines common perspectives, and presents information in well-structured formats. In other words, AI excels at creating exactly the type of content Google is now downweighting.
The irony is profound. As AI writing tools became more accessible, content production exploded. But the very efficiency that made these tools attractive has flooded the web with similar-sounding content that lacks distinctive perspective. Google’s response isn’t to ban AI content; it’s to raise the bar for what demonstrates genuine value, which most AI-generated content simply cannot clear.
What “Unique Perspective” Actually Means
The phrase “unique perspective” appears repeatedly in Reid’s comments, but it’s frustratingly vague. What makes a perspective unique? How do you demonstrate it at scale?
The answer lies in what Google can measure: user behavior. A unique perspective isn’t about being contrarian or different for its own sake. It’s about bringing insight, analysis, or understanding that users can’t get elsewhere.
This might mean:
Personal expertise from years of practice. A financial advisor who’s helped hundreds of clients navigate specific tax situations brings perspective no amount of research can replicate. Their content includes nuances, exceptions, and real-world complications that generic articles miss.
Original research or data analysis. Instead of citing the same statistics everyone else uses, conduct surveys, analyze datasets, or compile information in new ways. Reid mentioned that AI Overviews will surface content users can’t find on any single web page, suggesting synthesis across sources has value—but only if it reveals genuine insights, not just stitches quotes together.
Counterintuitive takes backed by evidence. Challenge conventional wisdom when your experience justifies it. The blogosphere echo chamber rewards consensus; Google’s new approach rewards substantiated contrarian thinking.
Deep domain knowledge that demonstrates mastery. Write for the level beyond beginner. Most content targets people with zero knowledge, but many searches come from users with intermediate understanding seeking deeper insight. Reid’s emphasis on “craft” suggests Google wants to surface content from people who’ve truly mastered their domain.
The common thread is that these approaches require actual expertise, time, and thought. They can’t be automated away or produced by writers with shallow knowledge of a topic. They require what Reid calls “craft”—the application of genuine skill and knowledge.
The Revenue Equation Nobody Expected
One of the most surprising revelations from Reid’s interview concerns advertising revenue. Despite concerns that AI Overviews would devastate ad clicks by answering questions directly, Reid reported that “revenue with AI Overviews has been relatively stable.”
The mechanism is fascinating. While some queries generate fewer ad clicks, AI Overviews dramatically increase total query volume. People ask more questions when they believe they’ll get good answers quickly. This increased volume compensates for decreased per-query monetization.
Reid offered a helpful mental model: most queries never had ads anyway. Celebrity gossip searches don’t show ads before or after AI Overviews. But commercial queries—where ads appear—often benefit from AI Overviews providing context that makes users more informed and more likely to click through with purchase intent.
This suggests a future where search volume explodes but monetization becomes more targeted. Publishers relying on accidental traffic from people who clicked without strong intent will suffer. Publishers providing genuine value that users actively seek will benefit from more qualified traffic.
The winners in this environment won’t be those who capture the most eyeballs but those who earn genuine trust and authority. Reid emphasized Google’s focus on helping users find sources they specifically trust, including features that let users prioritize subscriptions and preferred creators in their results.
What This Means for Content Strategy
The strategic implications of Reid’s comments require fundamentally rethinking how we approach content creation. Here’s what changes:
Stop optimizing for search engines; start optimizing for AI Overviews. Your content will increasingly be discovered through AI summaries. If users get everything they need from the overview, they won’t click through. Your job is to offer depth that can’t be summarized, perspective that can’t be replicated, and value that justifies the click.
Abandon competitive content analysis as a primary research method. Analyzing what ranks might reveal topic opportunities, but building content around what competitors have done guarantees you’ll produce the derivative content Google is downweighting. Start with user problems and your unique ability to solve them, not with competitor content.
Invest in formats users actually want. Reid’s comments about the shift toward video, audio, and forums aren’t just observations; they’re signals about where to invest. If your content could work as a video or podcast and users prefer those formats for your topic, that’s where you should be.
Prioritize depth over breadth. The old strategy was to create thin content across many keywords. The new reality rewards comprehensive, expert-level content on focused topics. One deeply researched, genuinely insightful piece will outperform dozens of shallow posts.
Build demonstrable expertise. Google can’t directly measure whether you’re an expert, but they can measure whether users treat your content like it comes from an expert. Do people spend time with it? Do they return to your site? Do they share it? These behaviors signal expertise better than any credential.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s what nobody wants to say: most content published online shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t serve users; it serves SEO strategies, content quotas, and the illusion of marketing productivity.
Google’s shift toward prioritizing genuine value will be painful for businesses built on content volume. Agencies selling “50 blog posts per month” packages face an existential crisis. Companies measuring success by traffic volume rather than engagement will see rankings crater.
But for creators genuinely committed to sharing expertise, providing value, and building authority, this change is liberating. The playing field tilts away from those with the biggest content budgets toward those with the deepest knowledge and most authentic voice.
Reid’s vision for the future is clear: AI handles the routine information retrieval, freeing humans to focus on the complex, nuanced, and personally meaningful. Search volume explodes, but it explodes for authentic expertise, not mediocre filler.
The question facing every content creator isn’t whether AI will replace them. It’s whether they’ve been creating the kind of derivative, surface-level content that deserves to be replaced—or whether they’ve been doing the hard work of bringing genuine expertise, perspective, and craft to their field.
Google’s AI Overviews aren’t killing content. They’re killing bad content. And that’s exactly what they should do.