Google May Be Penalizing AI-Generated Content As Thin Content

A discussion board web site revealed a put up on Reddit expressing disbelief that Google issued a handbook motion for skinny content material, discovering it exhausting to reconcile how Google may ship a lot visitors for almost twenty years solely to seek out fault with it now. Google is asking it a handbook motion for skinny content material, however SEOs consider it might be for AI-generated content material.

Guide Motion For Skinny Content material

Based on the Reddit put up, a discussion board acquired a handbook motion for skinny content material. The notification particularly pointed to over half 1,000,000 posts in a single particular class of the location, /threads/. They defined that it’s a partial handbook motion and that the penalization doesn’t have an effect on the remainder of the location, simply this one a part of the web site.

They explained:

“The message (WNC‑651700, ~17 July 2026) is: “Skinny content material with little or no added worth.”
It’s a partial handbook motion, that means a human reviewer checked out a part of the location, judged it unworthy of rating, and suppressed it pending a reconsideration request.

The Impacts discipline names precisely one factor: the URL sample windowsforum.com/threads/.
That’s 168,290 seen threads and over half 1,000,000 posts, twenty years deep, suppressed collectively.

No instance URLs have been offered. Not one.”

Skinny Content material

Google has a number of definitions of skinny content material. Considered one of them, thin affiliate content, is content material revealed on affiliate websites which can be phrase for phrase duplicates of what’s discovered on the service provider web sites.

Former Googler Matt Cutts has said that skinny affiliate content material lacks “authentic perception or analysis or evaluation” or another type of content material like authentic movies that “add worth.”

Different types of skinny content material:

• Syndicated content material
• Article advertising and marketing content material

Cutts has additionally defined that the alternative of skinny content material is content material that website homeowners have written themselves, comprises further worth, is exclusive, and leans in on the creator’s precise experience.

That final half could also be essential for understanding why the Redditor’s discussion board acquired a skinny content material warning, however not within the context that the location homeowners have been pondering of.

Why Is Precise Skinny Content material Not Penalized?

The half that confused the location proprietor is that there have been two different sections of the web site that have been extra clearly skinny content material, but these net pages weren’t topic to a handbook motion. One part was a feed of syndicated headlines. The opposite part was an archived data base. They stated each sections have been inactive for 3 years, but neither of them was referred to as out for a handbook motion. It was the discussion board part of the location that acquired a handbook motion.

They wrote:

“The half that doesn’t reconcile

Two sections of the location are the plain candidates for a skinny‑content material discovering:

an outdated syndicated headline feed

an archived data base

Collectively, that’s 11,927 threads with a imply age of about 12.5 years.

…This materials has been crawled, listed, and ranked constantly by means of Panda, Penguin, the September 2023 useful content material replace, and thru the neighborhood’s migration from its authentic area… Fifteen years, two domains, each main rating change Google has shipped and it by no means drew a handbook motion.”

Redditors expressed outrage, with one saying that it’s the results of Google’s monopoly in search.

Stablogger’s response was consultant of the outrage many felt:

“That is fairly stunning certainly, particularly figuring out the fame of this discussion board. Is there some skinny content material? Most actually, however you may have repetitive or just about empty threads on each single discussion board, you may have them on Reddit, too.

It’s the character of person generated content material, some threads entice a great deal of interplay, some don’t in any respect, however it may possibly’t be the answer to easily delete skinny threads with out the consent of whoever posted them.”

Properly, opposite to what Stablogger wrote, pruning skinny or outdated conversations is an possibility and lots of discussion board website homeowners do it.

Perhaps Skinny Content material = AI Generated Content material?

Google has up to now stated that content material that’s AI-generated doesn’t routinely imply it’s dangerous. Nonetheless, Australian-based web optimization Gagan Ghotra steered that AI-generated content material often is the cause for the skinny content material handbook motion.

Ghotra tweeted:

Most likely their AI bot auto replying to most of posts triggered this 😅 pic.twitter.com/Dsg26DoSwA

— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) July 26, 2026

Right here’s a closeup of the screenshot:

The factors of curiosity are that the discussion board characterizes its AI chatbot as a employees member, it has been energetic since 2023, and the chatbot has posted over 100 thousand responses to questions.

Authenticity And Worth Add

The potential cause why AI-generated solutions could also be thought-about skinny content material is that the anticipated worth add of boards is that the solutions are primarily based on precise human expertise.

AI doesn’t have expertise. It offers in acquired data. Acquired data is data that comes from somebody or someplace else, like from a guide or one other web site. There isn’t any worth add there within the context of a discussion board. It’s not what customers count on once they put up a query on a discussion board.

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