Gary Illyes from the Google Search team said on LinkedIn that you should avoid using LLMs and AI for diagnosing potential SEO issues or other issues with your site. Gary wrote, “don’t use them for diagnosing potential issues with it.”
Gary wrote, “LLMs have a very high wow factor, but they have no clue about your website; don’t use them for diagnosing potential issues with it.”
“Also remember that LLMs will hallucinate; pressed in the right way, they WILL give you information that’s completely detached from reality because the predictions on the word order make sense,” he added.
“Can they give you factually correct information in general? Yes! Can they give you information that has nothing to do with reality? Also yes!” “Use LLMs at your own risk and be very picky about what you accept from their output, otherwise you’ll be in for a very disappointing ride,” Gary warned.
I am sure you all have seen it, a slew of AI tools or AI added to existing tools, backed by LLMs, to try to give you advice on how to improve your site.
These are tools, and just like any tool, do not blindly just take their tips and advice and implement them. Review what they say, and think about if it makes sense to implement or not. Just like when you use Bard or ChatGPT or Bing Chat, you know when the responses seem off, do your research before just implementing these suggestions. And if you are new to SEO, then it probably makes sense for you to avoid using these tools completely until you really know SEO well.
Here is a screenshot of Gary’s post on LinkedIn:
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
