Google AI Summaries have killed the generic health tips article - and it’s a good thing
New research, published by The Press Gazette, has revealed that AI summaries are replacing media articles about health more than they are any other subject.
The analysis, conducted by SEO tool, Sistrix, found that AI summaries have replaced links to media articles in 72% of cases for health searches, compared to 49% for tech and 38% for travel.
Health is considered a ‘high-value topic’, accounting for around 5% to 7% of all searches, according to the article and it is suggested that Google wants to take control of that - despite criticism from various quarters that this is irresponsible and dangerous.
The analysis showed that when people are served an AI overview, only 11% then go on to click on the first search result, compared to 27% when there isn’t an AI overview.
The result is a significant drop in traffic to media publishers, with this analysis showing that across UK media outlets like The Guardian, Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Sun, the Mirror and the Express, the biggest drop is in the traffic previously generated by health stories.
The first reaction to this story for health businesses or health PR professionals could be concern, but I believe it is actually a good thing.
In my mid-career, prior to founding Evergreen PR, I took a short 18 month break from healthcare PR and communications to work as a Digital PR Account Director in a large integrated marketing agency that specialised in SEO.
That team was under pressure to deliver activity and outputs, with the only measures of success really being numbers of articles and numbers of backlinks. It was a world away from the AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework and my own professional beliefs, and so I found it an incredibly frustrating environment to operate in.
The focus on low impact results led to a focus on low value activity, and the most common content for the agency through that period was the ‘generic tips piece’ (no one else called it that). It was a generalist agency so whether it was generic tips for staying cool in the sun or generic tips for keeping your car safe at night, it didn’t matter. In that agency’s view, all you needed was an hour on Google nabbing generic tips from a variety of sources, someone (anyone) to agree to be the named expert, and a big long journalist list to bash it out to.
I was always super shocked when that kind of work generated cut-through with mainstream media, but, at that point, volume of content was the big focus for publishers. The ROI impact of cutting through was negligible and those low quality articles mainly served to give in-house marketing leaders some media publisher logos and an inflated audience figure to include in their monthly reports.
In more recent years, business models have changed and securing media coverage is considerably harder. More mainstream media outlets are now behind some kind of paywall or registration wall, and those that aren’t are having to work much harder to be cited by Google or Generative AI platforms. To attract subscribers or visitors, these outlets need high quality, distinctive stories that actually add value to people’s lives (see our article on distinctive news stories in an AI world for some practical tips).
Anyone can create generic content. You could have ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot write you a generic health tips article in the time it previously took to think of a topic.
However, if you can do that, then so can the journalist, so can any GenAI tool and so can the end user or member of the public.
People don’t value what is plentiful or easy to create i.e. generic content. They value what is rare i.e. genuine human creativity, breakthrough research, compelling stories of lived experience and real sector leading expertise. Our guide to writing breakthrough health PR surveys may help some readers here.
Health organisations that want to succeed in this modern landscape need to go further but, in many ways, they always did have to go further. They just didn’t realise it.
In this new landscape, there is an opportunity - even a need - for health organisations to be more strategic and ambitious with their PR activity.
By devising ideas, initiatives and research that create new information and understanding and by making them even more distinctive through lived experience stories and human expertise, health organisations can dodge AI summaries, cut through with mainstream media and be referenced by Generative AI platforms.
This kind of reputation defining activity is, by its nature, distinctive and valuable. It cannot be easily created by AI, journalists or digital creators. It cannot be easily replicated by competitors. It cannot be easily distilled into a Google AI Summary.
But it can shape how the world interprets the issues that matter to your customers and stakeholders, which, in turn, affects how those important individuals see and interact with your health business.
Leigh Greenwood is the founder and managing director of Evergreen PR, the healthcare PR agency that makes health happen. He is a chartered PR professional who has been working in healthcare PR, public affairs and communications for the last 20 years. He has worked across the whole spectrum of healthcare and has won more than 40 industry awards for effective health campaigns that generated measurable outcomes.
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