Google calls fake author profiles deception in its helpful content guide

Google added a warning about fake authors to its guide on helpful content on 1 October. The Search Central page now says that inventing creator profiles, for example with AI-generated headshots, made-up names or false credentials, “is a form of deception”.

Google names AI headshots and false credentials

The new line sits in the part of the guide that asks who made the content. Google already asked whether visitors can see who wrote a page and whether it has a byline where readers expect one. Now it says plainly that a page should not pretend human experts wrote it.

Google adds that any form of deception makes a page untrustworthy to users and to its automated quality systems. It calls deception a signal of a low-quality page.

Google defines main content and four quality traits

The same update adds a definition of main content: any part of a page that directly helps it achieve its purpose. That covers text, images, tools such as calculators, user comments, tabbed sections and headings. Google says the quality of the main content is one of the most critical factors in judging a page.

The guide also lists four traits from the handbook for its human quality raters. They are effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy. Effort is the human work that went into the content. Originality means facts or views that other sites do not already offer.

Google changed its AI content page the same day

On the same day Google told sites to fact-check AI content by hand, including titles and alt text. Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Roundtable logged both edits on 2 October. They came days after Google started its September spam update.

Publishers that run author pages can open them today and check each profile. The name, photo and job title should belong to a real person who wrote or reviewed the article.