When every piece of content is shaped by the same tools, scanned against the same top-ranking pages, and told to fill the same gaps — it starts to look, sound, and read the same. Which is exactly the problem.
AI content optimisation tools like Clearscope, Surfer SEO, and MarketMuse take what’s already ranking, identify what’s missing, and tell you to add it. The result is a search results page full of content that’s indistinguishable from itself. And when everything looks the same, Google — like the rest of us — goes looking for something different.
Imagine stepping through a portal, only to find yourself in a world where every piece of content looks, sounds, and reads identically. You’re not the awkward one in the corner anymore. There is no wrong thing — everyone is saying the exact same thing. It’s a perfectly optimised content experience. And it’s absolutely awful.
This is what’s happening to SEO right now.
Why AI content optimisation tools became popular
For years, many SEOs relied heavily on TF-IDF — Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency — a statistical method for calculating how important a word is within a document compared to a larger set. This was believed to help search engines determine keyword relevance, and it allowed content tools to tell writers exactly which terms they were missing to match top-ranking pages.
Then came BERT in 2018, which improved how Google understood context, intent, and natural language. Content optimisation tools evolved to match: scan the top-ranking pages, identify gaps, and tell writers to fill them.
For a while, this worked well. Businesses scaled content production efficiently, and Google rewarded well-structured, well-optimised content.
But then everyone started doing it.
From keyword matching to value-driven content
Recognising the flood of generic, formulaic content and the declining satisfaction of search results, Google pivoted. The Helpful Content Updates of 2022 and beyond shifted the dial toward originality and real usefulness.
This is where the flaw in AI-driven content optimisation became apparent. These tools weren’t built to add expertise, originality, or unique insight. They were built to mimic what was already ranking. The more brands leaned in, the more their content became indistinguishable from everything else. And when Google adjusted its systems to prioritise originality and genuine expertise, many of those sites saw their traffic collapse.
It’s not the tool’s fault. It’s the strategy.
This isn’t an attack on any specific tool, and results depend heavily on how they’re used. In the right hands they can do good.
But the results are hard to ignore. Many sites that adopted these tools heavily have seen organic traffic decline. And while some have seen short-term growth, the content often looks formulaic in a way that raises questions about its longevity. Here are a few examples worth looking at.
G2: a cautionary tale
According to G2’s own case study, they used a content optimisation tool to shift focus toward user intent, aiming for a more meaningful content approach. In theory, a sensible move.
In practice, the results tell a different story. Back in 2020, G2’s Learning Hub was pulling around 900,000 organic visits. Today that number has fallen to around 55,000 — a 94% drop. Some traffic migrated to their articles section, which saw gains until the Helpful Content Update arrived in September 2023 and reversed much of that too.
A closer look at their content raises questions. One of their top-ranking articles is “What Is Cached Data?” — a topic entirely disconnected from G2’s core authority as a software comparison platform. They tried to optimise for search but created content misaligned with their actual expertise. The result was a dramatic loss of organic visibility.
Hotjar: chasing scores, losing traffic
Hotjar’s approach involved identifying gaps in existing content, making it more evergreen, and optimising for higher scores — believing that better scores would translate to better rankings.
For a while, between 2020 and 2023, that appeared to work. Then, in March 2023, their organic traffic dropped by 50%. March 2023 corresponds with Google’s increased emphasis on real expertise and originality. Hotjar’s content wasn’t truly differentiated. When the criteria shifted, the strategy collapsed.
Toast: traffic without relevance
ToastTab is a genuine traffic success story on paper. Between 2020 and now, their blog grew from 900 pages and 70,000 clicks to 3,300 pages and nearly 500,000 clicks.
But when you look at what’s actually ranking, things get interesting. A significant portion of their traffic comes from coffee quotes, tea quotes, and food-related captions — content with almost no connection to their core product, which is restaurant management software. Around 20-25% of their traffic appears to come from food quote listicles.
Is someone reading “best low-calorie alcoholic drinks to order at a bar” likely to become a paying Toast customer? The traffic is real. The relevance isn’t. And content built around filling gaps rather than serving an actual audience tends to age poorly.
The real problem: content without empathy
What frustrates me about this approach isn’t the tools themselves. It’s the mindset behind them: optimising for what the tool says to say, rather than genuinely thinking about what would help the person reading it.
There’s no real care in that process. No consideration of what the reader is actually trying to figure out, what they’re feeling, or what would make their situation better. It’s a race to the middle — content written not to inform, engage, or inspire, but simply to rank.
History tells us that doesn’t last.
Focus on information gain instead
Search engines and LLMs have already been trained on vast amounts of publicly available data. What they need now is fresh perspectives, new insights, and evolving conversations.
That’s why Google partnered with Reddit. Reddit discussions aren’t optimised articles chasing keyword scores — they’re people sharing lived experiences, real opinions, and genuine insight. More original than most optimised content.
AI content tools don’t create new ideas. They scan what’s ranking, identify what’s different, and tell you to add it. That’s the opposite of what search systems are increasingly looking for.
Stand out or blend in. Your choice.
If you follow AI-driven optimisation tools blindly — tweaking your content to fit what’s already ranking — you might see short-term gains. But in the long run, you become just another version of the same thing.
Google isn’t looking for more of the same. It’s looking for originality, genuine expertise, and real value. Content that doesn’t add anything new, challenge the norm, or engage its audience meaningfully will eventually be ignored.
The question worth asking: are you creating something worth reading? Or are you just another version of content that already exists?