Up to 45% AI Content in SEO & Marketing Subreddits

We analyzed sample data from various SEO and Marketing related subreddits and used our AI detector, Originality.AI, to examine post text within the subreddits to find out how much content was likely generated by humans or AI. 

Summary of Key Findings: 

1. In the selected SEO subreddits, AI Content has a range of 30.85%, with the Affiliate Market subreddit holding the majority with 45.74%.
2. In Marketing subreddits, AI Content has a range of 23.53%, with the Content_marketing subreddit holding the majority with 45.74%.
3. In 2024 subreddits, AI Content has a range of 19.85% with Content_marketing holding the majority once again with 33.33%. 
4. When analyzing the distribution of AI generated content in all subreddits, Marketing based subreddits accounted for the majority of the dataset. 
5. We discovered varying percentages of AI generated content across the different subreddits with the majority residing in marketing related posts as opposed to SEO specific content. 

Study Method and Data:

1. We ran Originality.AI’s detector on text posts from various subreddits that were at least 100 words long to be rated as human or AI generated. 
2. Tracked the percentage of AI Content in categorized subreddits and through categorized posts to determine which subreddits or categories had the highest amount of AI Content. 
3. Analyzed the correlation between AI Score and posts comment count, reddit score, and word count. However no significant correlation was found during this analysis. 

AI Content in SEO Subreddits 2023

Using Originality.AI to examine the Subreddits that are either strictly SEO content related, or have high SEO content usage to find out the likely percentage of AI generated content. Due to an inability to access a workable database for the subreddits pre-2023, we will be working solely with data from 2023 in this portion. 

The results are the percentage within each subreddit dataset with an AI Score of 50% or higher. As shown in the graph above, Affiliate Market (note: this is a different subreddit from Affiliate Marketing), a subreddit with 21k members, has the highest percentage of probable AI Content, with 45.74%. The SEO, 267k members, and TechSeo, 25k members, subreddits are similar in that they have around 18% AI Content in their dataset. 

Following closely behind is Affiliate Marketing, a subreddit with 166k members, which has a score of 16.67% in their dataset. Finally JustStart, a subreddit with 149k members, has the least amount with 14.89% of its dataset.

AI Content in Marketing Subreddits 2023

Using Originality.AI to examine the Subreddits that are marketing related find out the likely percentage of AI generated content. Due to an inability to access a workable database for the subreddits pre-2023, we will be working solely with data from 2023 in this portion. The results are the percentage within each subreddit dataset with an AI Score of 50% or higher. 

As shown in the graph above, Content_marketing, a subreddit with 115k members, has the highest percentage of probable AI Content, with 38.82%. Next is Digital Marketing, a subreddit with 146k members, which has a score of 23.83% in their dataset. 

Following closely behind that is digital_marketing, a subreddit with 188k members, which has a score of 21.75%. Then we have SocialMediaMarketing, a subreddit with 92k members, which has a score of 18.44%. Finally the Marketing, 826k members, and Email Marketing, 50k members, subreddits are similar in that they have around 15% AI Content in their dataset.

AI Content in SEO & Marketing Subreddits 2023

Using Originality.AI to examine the Subreddits that are either marketing or SEO related to find out the likely percentage of AI generated content. Due to a lack of data in some subreddits in 2024 we will only use the ones with a workable dataset. The results are as follows. Content Marketing holds the highest amount of AI content with 33.33%. There is also approximately 30% and 25% AI content in the two digital marketing subreddits (Digital_Marketing and DigitalMarketing subreddits, respectively). 

More than half of the subreddits have less than 20% AI generated content in their dataset thus far into 2024. The subreddit Marketing has the lowest percentage of AI Content with 13.48% of the data. 

Distribution of AI Content Marketing and SEO

Taking a bit of a deeper look into the distribution of AI content we separated the content with an AI score of 50% or higher and categorized them into solely seo content, solely marketing content, or a combination of SEO and Marketing content. This includes the mention of SEO or Marketing within the post as well as the subreddits they belong to. From this we note that marketing has the highest percentage of AI detected content with 57.1% of the dataset. 

While examining the higher AI Score rated posts within this group, it can be noted that the posts are very advertisement-adjacent, in that a lot of the posts seem to be selling a course, tool, or method. Another thing to note while examining the post contents is that there are some reposts of the exact same content and title either posted at various times during the day, or by more than one author. 

Looking back towards the graph we can see that SEO specific content holds the lowest percentage with 15.5% of it’s dataset being AI Generated. Another thing to note about this in particular is that it also has the least amount of posts as most are either solely marketing or have a combination of both. 

In conclusion, our analysis on the percentage of AI generated posts in various Marketing and SEO subreddits shows us the distribution of AI content within the varying subreddit communities. Our research finds that AI content is more prevalent in marketing communities but not eradicated in others. This information can help the reddit community to delve deeper into the content within the subreddits and hopefully be more vigilant in evaluating the authenticity of a posts suggestions and comments.