You know it’s going to be a big week for content creation when Google rolls out a core update. However, the latest release is all about Discover, not search for once, and brings a promise that your Discover feed will show more quality, authoritative and in-depth content.
That’s not all that caught my attention this week – there’s been (as ever) more about the impact that AI’s having on the world of writing.
The good news is that it highlights how good, human-sourced writing is becoming more important than ever in many ways… but it’ll become commoditised in other areas.
A ‘promising’ Google Discover update
Google released a Discover core update on February 5, and it arrives with promising improvements the search giant claims will make “the Discover experience more useful and worthwhile.”
The key improvements in this update are:
- Showing users more locally relevant content from websites based in their country
- Reducing sensational content and clickbait in Discover
- Showing more in-depth, original, and timely content from websites with expertise in a given area, based on our systems’ understanding of a site’s content
Google also highlights that Discover will prioritise sites that can “demonstrate deep knowledge” on a topic-by-topic basis, and content shown will continue to be personalised based on people’s preferences.
The update rolls out in the US to English language users first, with more countries and languages set to be covered in the coming months.
the better web co. insight:
If (and it’s a big if) the update works as Google says it’s designed to, this is a positive update for brands creating expert, authoritative and trustworthy content. It means real expertise and honest headlines matter more than ever – and that’s a thrilling prospect for anyone with a good writing team.
This should also help combat the increasing volume of AI-generated content we’ve seen seep into the Discover feed in recent times, meaning more traffic for legitimate sites. The amount of ‘fake sites’ in recent months appearing in Discover (where organisations have created hundreds of random domains and just pushed out loads of AI-written clickbait) has been astounding… surely that will stop here.
However, Google does warn that some sites will experience declines where others improve. While that’s the same as a core update in search, that warning is a reminder that Discover is such a volatile source of traffic it should only ever be a supplementary source of clicks if you want a robust, long-term content strategy.
Read more
- Google Developer’s Blog: Google’s February 2026 Discover Core Update
- Google: Search Status Dashboard
Search is ‘fragmenting’
The Press Gazette published a piece this week about how AIOs aren’t affecting the industry as widely as some studies might claim – but, instead, search is splitting into different areas of interest.
Many of the publishers interviewed talked about the ‘managed decline’, and the need to be ruthless about what kinds of content to support. But their views echoed a piece I wrote this week, about what experience means for journalists in today’s landscape.
The Press Gazette article highlighted that even news content is being ‘gobbled up’ by AIOs, but readers are still interested in articles that show a level of expertise (this article from CNET, where it tested 35 phones to assess battery life, is a perfect example of that).
the better web co. insight:
There were many interesting insights in this article, with the overarching theme of ‘Yes, Google is slowing down, but it’s still a significant source of traffic and likely will be for years to come’.
Publishers need to think carefully about their content strategy, being clear on what is informational (i.e. too much ‘how to’ content that’s just a presentation of facts) and where the ‘imperfect voice’ of a human is engaging and informative at the same time. If they can focus resources on the latter, there’s a lot of reader eyeballs still to be had.
Read more
- Press Gazette: ‘Search isn’t dead, it’s fragmenting’: How to manage Google traffic decline
- tbwc: What does ‘first hand experience’ mean for journalists these days?
- CNET: We tested 35 phones for the best battery life. These 2 brands topped the field
Tech companies want human-written content
While there’s plenty of buzz around AI, both positively and negatively, writing by humans is still important. And perhaps slightly surprisingly, it’s tech companies who are leading the charge.
There are huge salaries being offered for writers to come in and reinforce communication departments., with Adobe, Netflix, Anthropic, OpenAI and more all doubling down on their teams.
the better web co. insight:
This is an interesting move from the brands that are arguably contributing the most to the shrinking of the creative industries, by commoditising the role of writer or artist in the process.
However, it’s a great example that AI content isn’t enough to stand out – whether it’s hiring writers to guide the process of creating words or video, or just wanting the more visceral tone that humans can provide, brands are clearly wanting to maintain that authentic connection with their audience.
We’ve seen first hand how a warmer, undulating tone of voice will attract readers across all platforms, whether search, newsletter or content aggregators, so ensuring you’ve got someone who can artfully play with (but reinforce) your tone of voice is always key.
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- Business Insider: The hottest job in tech: Writing words
What happens to journalism when AI can write the story?
A recent round table at the World Governments Summit 2026 caught my eye: asking how journalism is going to cope when AI can take on the role of the writer more powerfully.
The responses ranged from embracing technology that does what humans can’t, to highlighting that AI should only ever be used when it’s dealing with fact, not fiction.
There were plenty of discussions around whether ‘AI natives’ in the future will care less about hallucinations and misinformation, and how the ‘norms’ in journalism will change.
The piece concluded that “the ecosystem will be unrecognisable — hyper-personalised, agent-driven, and fragmented. But amid the algorithmic chaos, the human voice may become more valuable than ever.”
the better web co. insight:
A key quote here was from Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei: “If you’re not using this technology 20% of your day to 10x your output within the next year, you probably don’t have a job.”
He’s right that anyone burying their head in their sand about how AI is affecting their job – especially in the more creative spaces, like journalism – might find they struggle to adapt in the future.
But the word that’s interesting there is ‘output’ – AI can write stories hundreds of times faster than a human. Sure, most brands wouldn’t just pump out the AI content without editing, but even a human editor will just be polishing what’s being produced (as it wouldn’t be cost effective to pull apart every piece, as that’s essentially rewriting the whole thing).
If there’s no human at the start creating the stories, building briefs and crafting the words, then the output is always going to be flawed.
Output for the sake of volume has never been a good idea in the world of journalism, and we’ve experienced the downside of ‘just write more… and faster’ in a newsroom.
But the idea that people might not care about AI accuracy in the future is one to watch – the younger generations will interpret technology with different perspectives to the legacy editors and writers, and it’s important to embrace these technologies rather than eschew them for being ‘poor quality’, when actually the metric of quality could well evolve.
Read more
- Business Today: World Governments Summit 2026: Media leaders draw red lines for AI in journalism, storytelling
Can AI replace human writers? No, but it’s getting closer…
Following on from the question of ‘what happens if AI can write the story?’ above, there’s been an interesting experiment from one computer science literate journalist.
They created a bot to see if it could do their job better – iterating the chatbot as it completed tasks to help it improve and, ultimately, support creating a weekly newsletter.
What was interesting was how quickly the issues the bot created (such as poor prose, missing sources or not understanding processes) could be ironed out, but the underlying message was: it still takes too much time to manage these AI agents, and the output is never as good as it could be from a human.
the better web co. insight:
This was a fascinating experiment and one that many journalists would have been watching with bated breath – what if the bot could do things better?
It’s reassuring to see that the output still couldn’t match the thought process of a human when it comes to crafting interesting, relevant prose… but one of the key issues highlighted here (and one we’ve experienced a lot in our testing) is that when you overload an AI chatbot or agent with instructions, it quickly breaks down.
As that ability to understand complex, nuanced inputs evolves (and it surely will), it will be interesting to see if AI does encroach further into the role of the writer, especially those performing the more repetitive, research-based tasks needed to support insightful writing.
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With additional reporting from Gareth Beavis