B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Recent
0.011x
0.011x -- correlation between ai content percentage and ranking position for Google search rankings (2025)
Ahrefs calculated a correlation coefficient of 0.011 between the estimated percentage of AI-generated text on a page and its ranking position across 600,000 pages in Google's top 20 results.
- AI detectors work with probabilities rather than certainty, so individual classifications can be wrong
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
0.011x
Unit
Ratio
Data Vintage
2025
Entity
Sample Size
600,000
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
95
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
35
Freshness
95
Source
Ahrefs
Primary
Tier A
http://mateaffiliates.com/news/ai-content-isnt-poison-what-new-data-reveals-for-affiliates-going-for… ↗
Source Article
AI Content Isn’t Poison: What New Data Reveals for Affiliates Going Forward - Mate Affiliates
AI-generated content spent years carrying an unofficial warning label in SEO circles. Use it too heavily, the theory went, and Google would eventually push the page out of sight.
That fear shaped how many affiliates approached content. AI could support research or editing behind the scenes, but allo…
Original Research
Ahrefs
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Correlation between estimated percentage of AI-generated text and ranking position; effectively zero
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
Google search rankings: 0.011x correlation between ai content percentage and ranking position. Source: Ahrefs (2025). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-content-ranking-correlation
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-content-ranking-correlation" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>0.011x</strong> -- correlation between ai content percentage and ranking position for Google search rankings<br><small>Source: Ahrefs (2025) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ai-content-ranking-correlation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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