Google Search Advocate John Mueller suggests three ways to prevent potentially inaccurate AI chatbot content from being indexed.
- Website owners should be mindful of potential issues caused by AI chatbots that could impact the visibility and search presence of their websites.
- Mueller suggests the use of a ‘robotted iframe’, ‘robotted JavaScript file/resource’, or ‘data-nosnippet’ to prevent chatbot output from being indexed.
- The move would protect unedited and potentially inaccurate AI-generated content from appearing in search results.
Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, recently advised website owners to consider ways to block artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot content from indexing.
PSA – If you’ve implemented an AI chatbot on your site, and you don’t want your its output to be seen as a part of your site for indexing: use a robotted iframe, a robotted JavaScript file / resource, or at maybe use data-nosnippet to block it in the snippet.
— John Mueller (official) · #NotABot (@JohnMu) August 7, 2023
The public service announcement (PSA) essentially provides three different methods of blocking the indexing of AI chatbot responses by Google’s algorithms.
AI chatbots are becoming increasingly common on websites across the globe, providing instant customer service and engagement. But AI-powered agents can also produce inaccurate content that website owners may not want to be a part of their human-edited and generated content.
How To Block Indexing Of AI Chatbot Content
The first method Mueller recommends is to use a ‘robotted iframe.’ This is a frame that the site owner can control independently, allowing them to apply a noindex directive to it, which prevents it from being indexed by search engine bots since Google can crawl iframes.
The second technique involves using a ‘robotted JavaScript file or resource.’ This means that the JavaScript file containing the AI chatbot’s code should be disallowed in the robots.txt file, thereby keeping search engine bots from crawling and indexing it.
Lastly, Mueller suggests the use of the ‘data-nosnippet’ tag. This is a page-level or specific-content directive that blocks a section of a page from appearing in Google’s search snippets. If applied to the chatbot’s responses, it prevents them from appearing in search results.
SEO Implications Of AI Chatbots
Website owners should be aware of these potential issues to ensure optimal search presence and visibility of their websites.
AI chatbots may generate content that can dilute the quality or relevance of a site’s indexed content, potentially affecting the site’s overall SEO performance.
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