why "just make good content" is terrible advice
january 2026every time i read another article telling businesses to "just create good content and you'll be found," i want to scream.
it's not that the advice is wrong exactly. it's that it's so vague as to be useless. it's the "eat less, move more" of digital marketing. technically true. practically unhelpful. and it completely ignores the actual mechanics of how ai systems evaluate and surface content.
if you want to be found by ai, you need to understand what "good" actually means to the systems doing the finding. and spoiler: it's not what most people think.
the problems with "good"
"good" is subjective. what's good content? content that's well-written? content that's helpful? content that's engaging? different people will give different answers. and more importantly, different ai systems will evaluate "good" differently.
aggarwal et al. (2024) found that different geo methods are effective in different domains. persuasive writing improves visibility for debates and opinion content. statistics and citations improve visibility for factual queries. legal and government content responds to different signals than creative content. "good" isn't universal. it's context-dependent.
ais parse content modularly, not holistically. here's something most people don't understand: ai systems don't read your page like a human does. they don't experience your content as a flowing narrative. they extract chunks, evaluate pieces, assemble answers from fragments.
microsoft's research (october 2025) was explicit about this. ai systems break content into usable pieces. page structure signals matter. semantic clarity matters. the relationship between sections matters. a beautifully written paragraph might be invisible if the ai can't extract and use it.
structure matters as much as substance. you could have the most insightful, valuable content ever written, and if it's structured poorly, ai systems won't find it. headers, organization, explicit connections between ideas, machine-readable formatting. these aren't afterthoughts. they're fundamental to being surfaced.
an ai trying to answer "what's the best crm for startups?" doesn't want to read your 3000-word thought piece on business software philosophy. it wants a clear, extractable answer it can verify and cite. if your content doesn't provide that, it doesn't matter how "good" it is.
what "good content" actually requires now
if you want to be found by ai, here's what "good" actually means:
authoritative sourcing. not just making claims but backing them up. named sources. verifiable statistics. citations from credible entities. chen et al. documented that ai systems systematically prefer earned media and third-party validation over brand assertions. you need to prove your claims, not just make them.
modular structure. content organized so pieces can be extracted independently. clear headers that signal what each section contains. self-contained paragraphs that answer specific questions. explicit structure that ai systems can parse and use.
semantic clarity. saying exactly what you mean in clear, unambiguous language. no clever wordplay that confuses meaning. no industry jargon without explanation. ai systems are trying to understand what you're saying. make it easy for them.
domain-appropriate optimization. understanding what signals matter for your specific type of content. legal content needs different optimization than creative content. local business content needs different optimization than b2b software content. one strategy doesn't fit all domains.
machine scannability. structured data, schema markup, explicit metadata. the technical layer that helps ai systems categorize and evaluate your content. this isn't optional anymore.
the gap between advice and reality
here's the thing that frustrates me about "just make good content" advice: the people giving it usually aren't doing geo themselves. they're repeating platitudes. they haven't tested what actually works. they haven't read the research. they haven't tracked which changes move the needle.
the research is clear. aggarwal et al. showed specific techniques that boost visibility by up to 40%. not vague "quality" improvements. specific, testable, measurable techniques. citations. statistics. quotations. domain-specific strategies.
generic advice produces generic results. if you want to actually be found, you need specific strategies based on how these systems actually work.
the uncomfortable truth
excellence in the ai search era is technical, not just creative. you can't just write well and hope for the best. you need to understand how content is parsed, evaluated, and surfaced. you need to structure for extraction. you need to prove credibility in ways machines can verify.
this might sound cold. it might sound like it's removing the humanity from content creation. but i'd argue the opposite: ai systems are actually pretty good at detecting genuine expertise versus marketing fluff. the technical requirements are really about proving your expertise in verifiable ways. if you're actually good at what you do, the game is about demonstrating that in formats ai systems can evaluate.
if you're not actually good at what you do, no amount of technical optimization will save you. which is how it should be.
the bottom line
good intentions don't get you found. good strategy does.
"make good content" is a starting point, not a destination. the content needs to be good. but it also needs to be structured, sourced, verified, and optimized for how ai systems actually work.
the businesses that understand this will be found. the businesses that don't will keep wondering why their "good content" isn't performing.