Google Tells Websites to Fact-Check AI Content Before Publishing

Summary

Google updated its guidance for websites that use generative AI, adding an explicit warning that model outputs can contain inaccuracies because generative models predict likely word sequences rather than retrieve verified facts. The revised guidance says all AI-generated content should be manually fact-checked and reviewed for accuracy and trustworthiness before publication. That requirement extends beyond article copy to search-facing metadata, including title elements, meta descriptions, structured data, and image alt text. Google’s October 1 changelog says the update incorporates information from the Search Quality Raters guidelines and follows recommendations that Google employees have made publicly since 2024. Compared with the December 10, 2025 version, the new wording adds the manual-review instruction, while the rest of the guidance remains substantially unchanged. Google still says generative AI can support research and content structure, but warns that producing many pages without adding user value may violate its scaled-content-abuse spam policy. The guidance also says raters use the relevant quality guidelines to evaluate search systems, and that their ratings do not directly affect rankings. For publishers, the change means an AI review process should cover both page content and metadata that can appear in Search results.