Google Tells Sites To Fact-Check AI Content Before Publishing via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has updated its guidance for sites that use generative AI, adding a warning that AI output may contain errors and advice to fact-check it by hand before publishing.

Google revised the guidance page on Oct. 1. Its documentation updates page says the change brings the guide in line with the company’s talks at developer events.

The page now extends the manual review to metadata, so teams using AI to write titles or image alt text are covered too.

What Google Added

Google’s new wording goes in the guidance page’s “Focus on accuracy, quality, and relevance” section, right after the section’s opening line. Compared with the Dec. 10, 2025, version, three sentences were added:

“Keep in mind that generative models don’t retrieve facts, but predict a likely sequence of words based on their training data. Because of this, generative AI outputs may contain inaccuracies (also known as hallucinations). It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing.”

In the metadata line that followed, “This includes metadata” became “This review also applies to metadata.” It still lists <title> elements, meta description elements, structured data, and alternate texts for images, “which can appear in Search results.”

How We Got Here

Google’s Oct. 1 changelog entry says the generative AI content guide was updated “with information from the Search Quality Raters guidelines.” It’s the only page listed for Oct. 1.

Googlers have recommended fact-checking AI output in public before. I covered an April 2024 Search Off the Record episode in which Gary Illyes said generative AI output always has to be fact-checked. In an August 2025 interview, Illyes said AI content “should be human curated,” with someone checking that it’s accurate, as Roger Montti reported.

What Stays The Same

The rest of Google’s AI content guidance page matches the Dec. 10, 2025, version. It still opens by saying generative AI can help with research and with adding structure to original content. The same paragraph warns that using AI tools to make many pages without adding value for users may violate the company’s spam policy on scaled content abuse.

The page also still points to sections 4.6.5 and 4.6.6 of the Search Quality Raters guidelines, which cover scaled content abuse and content made with little effort, originality, or added value. It says raters use those guidelines to evaluate Google’s ranking systems and that their ratings “don’t directly influence ranking.”

Why This Matters

The Dec. 10, 2025, version of Google’s guidance asked for accuracy but had no manual fact-check instruction for AI output. The Oct. 1 update adds that step and gives Google’s reason for it.

The fact-check step reaches metadata as well as article text. AI-generated metadata, such as title tags, falls under the same manual review as drafts, so a process built only for article copy misses part of what the guidance now covers.

Looking Ahead

Teams that use AI in content production can now cite Google’s own wording when they set a review policy covering drafts and metadata. The company logs major changes to its Search docs on the documentation updates page, which is the place to watch for further edits.

Featured Image: Golden Dayz/Shutterstock. Google wordmark: Source: Google.