Why AI-Generated Blogs Are Killing Your Website's Rankings

"You can't trick Google." That's the line this week, but plenty of business owners are trying anyway. One client quietly rolled out AI to auto-generate a blog post every single day. Jason and Stefanie explain why that's a fast track to getting your whole site flagged as AI slop, then dig into 10 more marketing moves you need to know about. Plus, an actual civil war has broken out inside the Media Captain office. Half the team swears by Performance Max campaigns. The other half thinks the results are smoke and mirrors. Jason and Stefanie pick a side and explain why Google's own recommendation might not be the right call for your budget. In this episode: 0:00 – Why a client's AI blog auto-generator was a huge mistake 2:41 – The hidden cost of a bad SEO strategy (and why "you can't trick Google") 5:01 – Is paying an SEO company to write blogs a waste of money? 9:03 – Why accolades and sourced media mentions matter for AI search 13:04 – New study: schema markup has 0% effect on rankings 14:47 – Google's John Mueller and rumors of an AI content crackdown 16:55 – Why every business needs an internal PR strategy 21:12 – Where AI is actually safe to use in SEO (title tags, meta descriptions) 23:56 – The Performance Max vs. Search Ads debate splitting our agency 26:34 – Google's third major algorithm update of 2026 28:19 – Instagram's new logo, and Meta's $18B settlement over kids' social media addiction