The news: AI-assisted content now dominates Google’s top search results, but pure AI rarely ranks No. 1, according to an Ahrefs analysis of 600,000 pages across 100,000 keywords. It found that most top-ranking content includes some AI input, but only 13.5% was purely human-written. 

Ahrefs ran articles through its proprietary AI content detector and discovered Google’s SEO algorithm appears indifferent to whether content is AI- or human-made. Researchers found no link between AI use and lower rankings—Google ranks content on quality, not how it’s created.

This is in line with the 45% of marketers in North America who anticipated that AI would have a slight positive impact on SEO, per Conductor.

By the numbers: 

• 86.5% of top-ranking pages surveyed contained some AI-generated content.
• Only 4.6% of top ranking pages were fully AI-generated.
• The majority, or 81.9% of pages analyzed, offered a blend of AI and human input.
• The correlation between AI content percentage and ranking position—0.011—is statistically negligible, per Ahrefs.

Human oversight still matters: Google’s true ranking signals are measured on content quality, clarity, and utility. That’s a good sign for hybrid workflows that combine human insight with AI’s speed and efficiency. 

Most top-ranked content still falls in the AI-human hybrid category, with the highest-ranking results showing a weak preference for human-generated or lightly AI-assisted content, which would include spell-checking and summarizing content. 

Key takeaways: Google doesn’t care who wrote the content, only whether it’s of good quality. Marketers should use AI to move faster but rely on human oversight to ensure clarity, credibility, and connection. 

Optimizing content for authenticity, brand voice, and user engagement—as well as generative engine optimization (GEO)—could lead to higher rankings.

Content teams should deploy AI to brainstorm, polish, and optimize. What matters most isn’t how content is created, but how well it serves your audience.