The SEO world is always full of tips, tricks, and sometimes questionable advice. One of the latest trends is content chunking splitting articles into very small sections in the hope that AI systems, like Gemini, can easily digest the information. But Google has now issued a strong warning: this strategy is not a sustainable approach for long-term search ranking success.
On the Google podcast Search Off the Record, experts John Mueller and Danny Sullivan addressed the misconception that content should be reformatted into bite-sized pieces solely to appeal to LLMs. Sullivan explained that, after consulting Google engineers, the company does not recommend this approach.
If you’ve ever visited a site and seen pages with just one or two sentences per paragraph, paired with headers phrased like chatbot questions, that’s the product of content designed for machines rather than humans. Google sees this as ignoring the real audience human readers and following this trend blindly may do more harm than good.
Why Google Focuses on Human-Centric Content
Google’s ranking algorithms rely on real user signals: clicks, engagement, and the time users spend on high-quality content. While chunking may offer temporary gains, Sullivan warns that these are short-lived. As AI and search algorithms evolve, sites optimized solely for AI may lose visibility, because Google increasingly prioritizes content genuinely useful to human readers.
In a digital landscape where publishers face fluctuating traffic, shortcuts and SEO “hacks” may seem tempting. But tailoring content for LLMs at the expense of readability is like taking a temporary fix it may provide short-term benefits, but the system will eventually bypass it in favor of content crafted by humans.
The Takeaway
Google’s advice is simple: write for people first. Whether it’s blog posts, articles, or website structure, engaging and useful content will naturally be rewarded in search rankings. For those considering paying expensive SEO experts around $300 USD to slice content into micro-chunks, it’s worth reconsidering whether it’s truly an investment in your site’s long-term future.
Source: Ars Technica
