Our newsletterPractitionerLily Ray, 2026
Fake authors and AI-generated headshots are now explicitly labeled by Google as a form of deception and a sign of low-quality pages
Content production
- Reader Note:
- Google's guidance now links fabricated author details directly to deception and low page quality, naming both invented author names and AI-generated headshots. This is a reading of what Google published rather than a measurement, so nothing here establishes how often such pages are actually caught or penalised.
- Evidence:
- Expert judgment
- Vendor interest:
- Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
- Sample:
- Not disclosed
Reader Note:
Evidence:
Vendor interest:
Sample:Good for
Getting a rough orientation, and deciding what to check yourself.
Not for
- Anything that needs a measurement. Nobody counted or tested this.
- This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
- The source never says how big its sample was or what went into it.
- The source never says how this number was measured.
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