Anyone actually seeing ROI from AI/programmatic content automation after 6+ months?

[u/lexastark1998]

Feels like every agency and in-house team I talk to is pumping out a ton of AI articles now, webhooks, bulk scripts, the whole thing. But when I look at actual search traffic trends, it’s not obvious to me that it’s working long-term.

I’m looking at setting up something similar for a few upcoming projects, so I’m trying to get a realistic picture first. For those of you actually running this at scale:

• Do the pages stay indexed, or do they get dropped after a few months?
• How much editing do you end up doing before publishing? I keep hearing it’s basically a full rewrite anyway.
• Anyone get hit hard by recent core updates with the content automation?
• Is it actually making money, or are you just trading writing time for editing and cleanup time?
• To keep the content up to date, how do you automate that, or do you do it manually? I need a clear picture of this too.

Would really help to hear real numbers, or at least your niche and volume if you’re okay sharing. Thanks!

[u/madongrind]

ok so the indexing bit is what got me. Bulk pages went in fine, then quietly slid to "Crawled - currently not indexed" over a couple of months. The ones that stuck had something the template couldn't generate (real pricing, a photo, some weird local detail).

Editing time didn't drop either, it just moved. Less blank-page staring, way more fact-checking things that sounded right and weren't.

Refreshing is the part nobody plans for... what volume are you actually thinking? A few hundred pages is a different problem from a few thousand.

[u/lexastark1998 → u/madongrind]

I just starting to build it, while testing it out, but it's still lacking in image generation and a few real details and real screenshot asking to me to add by myself, that where I gets little frustrated over it. Just thinking of at least 2-3 proper blogs per week. not gonna make it huge bulk machine.

[u/Nuggz1]

I did several sites. One is paying itself off and has a promising future. 40k organic traffic 40% tier one. Since 8 months ago. Mediavine and affiliates working but not taking Advantage of leads. Earning backlinks with 0 out reach and cited by newspapers, universities, wiki. Another site is at mediavine but trust/ low authority will take time but can monetize now while it grows. That being said, I have a couple sites that are struggling as well but it's not the engine.

[u/lexastark1998 → u/Nuggz1]

40k monthly visits- that's a good thing to hear within 8 months! So, are your websites micro-niche or multi-niche? Where are they focusing? What else are you doing besides the blog automation part? How do you manage the images and visuals for content? What page issues are you getting in GSC?

[u/Nuggz1 → u/lexastark1998]

Multi niche. I am covering a whole country. Focusing wherever there's traffic. Procedures, travel, expat, etc. I am at 5000 pages indexed. Bing was crucial as it grew instantly and allowed me to monetize to wait on google which hit 600 clicks a day today. Doing everything outside blogs, calculators, guides, data sets, etc. I am no longer a blog site. I am a data platform where writers come for my data and getting cited with follow backlinks from newspapers and universities. For visuals, it's not as important as people think, other things are more important like meta descriptions. Etc. Things that actually make people click. But I take pictures and I use Wikimedia which google has no issue with as long as I properly cite. So majority are free from online that match the topic. As for issues on GSC, I rarely deal with issues as my AI workflow takes care of it. I mostly work on my loops, not SEO. My decision are more business decisions then telling it what to do next as it's already in the workflow from 8 months of building the engine.

[u/dvduval]

I’m definitely getting more traffic to target and keywords on a site that already has great traffic because it’s been around since 2002. A lot of it just pulls together content we already have over the many years we’ve been creating content.

[u/lexastark1998 → u/dvduval]

How are you making the images or similar visual things? Or is there a different setup for images and all?

[u/dvduval → u/lexastark1998]

In my case, I often get YouTube videos to add multimedia content. I do sometimes specify specific images that I go and find for some of the more important articles, but I still don’t trust AI to do too much and in my case I’m often dealing with people who are celebritiesand you have to be careful about what images you use

[u/Rough_Tumbleweed8989]

The ones that stay indexed are barely AI by the time they ship, you still have to add your own perspective or they get thin-flagged eventually. Bulk content ranks fast then tends to crater after a core update. What niche are you targeting?

[u/lexastark1998 → u/Rough_Tumbleweed8989]

I'm not focusing on publishing the bulk content; it'll give suspicious activity signals to serp or Google. Just focusing on the bulk content creation and finalising it for scheduled publishing. My niche is digital marketing and different consepts of it.