If that sounds brutal ... good. Because the longer you delay a real solution, the worse your brand equity erodes online. And John Mueller from Google just confirmed what I’ve been telling industrial clients for years … sometimes you don’t fix it ... you start over.
Here’s why that matters right now for B2B manufacturers, OEMs, and distributors who rely on digital channels to feed their pipeline.
Google’s Take: Just Rewriting AI Content Won’t Cut It
John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, recently dropped a truth bomb on Reddit that’s been echoing through the SEO world. A site owner asked if replacing low-quality AI-generated English content with human-written Portuguese content would help fix their site’s poor indexing issues. Mueller’s answer?
He didn’t say “yes” or “no” ... instead, he reframed the entire question:
“I wouldn’t think about it as AI or not, but about the value that the site adds to the web. Just rewriting AI content by a human won’t change that ... it won’t make it authentic.”
Translation for industrial marketers: If your site doesn’t deliver real value to real people … it’s not just a content problem. It’s a purpose problem.
Recovery Is Not a Checklist ... It’s a Reboot
Mueller didn’t stop there. He recommended a radical shift in mindset. Stop looking at your site as a list of broken URLs to fix. Instead, think like this:
“If you want to change all your site’s content, I’d approach it as essentially starting over with no content, and consider what it is that you want to do on the site ... not as a checklist of pages that you need to tweak manually.”
This is where most industrial marketers get stuck. They assume slapping some new H1 tags, editing a few paragraphs, and resubmitting their sitemap will magically restore their authority. It won’t. Google isn’t dumb ... and your buyers aren’t either.
If your digital strategy has favored quantity over quality, especially churning out generic content instead of AI-generated, then human-and brand-edited copy … you’re likely in the 'bad state' Mueller’s warning about.
Sometimes, a New Domain Is the Fastest Way Forward
Mueller even suggests that for some websites, starting fresh on a new domain might actually be faster than trying to recover a devalued one:
“Starting with a bad state will be harder than starting with a new domain (and perhaps take longer, maybe much longer), but sometimes that’s still worthwhile.”
Now, this doesn’t mean every industrial website with a bad bounce rate needs to scrap their domain. But it does mean if your site has been hammered by Google updates, lost all its traffic, and was built on a shaky foundation of keyword-stuffed content ... recovery might take years.
A clean slate with a clear strategy and buyer-centric content could deliver ROI far faster.
What Industrial Brands Must Do Now
If you’re an industrial company that’s published a few poorly written blogs or hundreds of low-value blogs with the help of ChatGPT or some offshore content mill, now is the time for hard decisions.
Here’s how to move forward:
Mueller’s Wake-Up Call for B2B SEO
This guidance from Mueller isn’t just a slap on the wrist for lazy content practices. It’s a wake-up call to B2B's to redefine your entire digital marketing foundation. Especially for industrials who’ve relied too long on templated, AI-bloated websites or too little content to prop up their lead funnel.
Google isn’t rewarding effort anymore ... it’s rewarding impact. If your content doesn’t create real value, your domain will stay buried.
So if you’re stuck in a digital rut, take Mueller’s advice: Stop tweaking. Start building something worth ranking.
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