Werd benaderd door ons Growth-team (SEO en GEO (zichtbaarheid in generatieve content - ChatGPT, Perplexity etc.)) die de waarde zien, en die al forumcontent zien verschijnen in GEO-gesprekken.
Ze hebben momenteel een breed scala aan content waar ze zich op richten, en stelden voor om onderwerpen binnen ons forum te ‘simuleren’, maar op een manier die extern niet anders lijkt dan enig ander gesprek.
Bijvoorbeeld, het aanmaken van 5/6 accounts, en vragen posten vanuit deze accounts, waar we vervolgens vanuit de normale ‘vaste gezichten’ binnen de community op kunnen reageren/de community kunnen aanmoedigen om te reageren.
Voor mij is dit in de kern niet anders dan organische gesprekken en antwoorden - behalve dat we deze gesprekken aanplanten ten behoeve van betere SEO/GEO.
Is dit iets wat anderen doen? Zijn er dingen waar ik aan moet denken voordat we met deze inspanning verder gaan?
I remember a few topics/posts about that, most being pre-AI-era:
I guess the main thing in your suggestion is that no bots will answer; they will just start topics, right?
I don’t know from a business perspective. Maybe it’s beneficial in the long run. Perhaps it can help a community grow.
My guts tell me that I don’t like the idea of answering a bot without knowing it’s a bot, but I don’t have any particular argument to expose (though some are written in my posted links’ answers).
I’m 100% sure I have answered at least one bot at some point on Reddit in the last years or months, and I don’t like this idea. It reminds me of my dog who once tried to interact with a lifeless terracotta pig at a flea market, thinking it was a living creature (that was both sad and funny).
Now, if a topic is created by a bot, and is labelled as such, and a legitimate, constructive discussion starts between participants about the proposed topic, why not?
I hope I understood your post well, and that I’m not off-topic
Communities are built on trust. Breaking that trust risks immediately losing all your high-value contributors.
For me personally: If I found out that I spent hours answering some bot, I would never volunteer my time to a community again. It breaks the social contract under which a community operates.
This is key:
If you’re honest and transparent about it, then it’s probably a perfectly fine experiment to run.
quoted for truth. If you’re pursuing growth at all costs, and you don’t care about your reputation, intend to have no relationship with your users, that’s another case.
This is the opposite of organic conversations and answers.
Doing this without disclosure to the community is grossly disrespectful both to your users and to the spirit of the community you’re trying to create.
Do what your boss says, but frame what you’re doing properly and don’t try to put a fig leaf over it. This is not “organic.” This is faking content as a SEO play, full stop.
Interessant concept, om de betrokkenheid “kunstmatig” op gang te brengen. Mijn visie hierop is dat als het puur bedoeld is om SEO-rankings te verbeteren, dat dan een beetje valsspelen is, toch? Maar tegelijkertijd kan het ook een discussie op gang brengen (wat volgens mij ook het punt is).
Zoals anderen volgens mij al hebben vermeld, is het belangrijk om te vermelden dat het een bot is. Sommige gebruikers geven ook niet veel om SEO.
Ik zou dit zeggen: gebruik deze gesprekken ook voor discussie, niet alleen voor SEO. Sterker nog, ik zou zeggen dat doordachte, verrijkende discussies belangrijker zijn dan SEO - het gaat om de community.
Als SEO-verbetering een bijkomend voordeel is, dan is dat mooi meegenomen. Maar mijn mening zou zijn om SEO niet centraal te stellen, maar de community en verrijkende discussies.
Niet zeker of dit allemaal volledig relevant is, voel je vrij om me te corrigeren.
I ran a little experiment with Discourse HelperBot and I think this was pretty cool.
If you use this –properly labeled– in public, that could actually spark some interesting discussion. Last year we went through a similar exercise internally at Discourse. Where we played a game of “trip up the bot”. Any time someone managed to make the bot answer with a lie.. we’d fix the documentation.
And yes, I do think having something like this could help with SEO/GEO. Have the AI generate a ton of content, which you verify to be true. Have it be a part of the Google index, but put it in a default-muted category maybe?
It can certainly be helpful for other users who are using search phrases that don’t appear in the documentation for example.
Exactly, I wouldn’t want to undermine that kind of intention either. I personally wouldn’t mind a forum where an AI is trying to start conversations at all; think “What’s everyone’s opinion on XYZ”; but as others have said, it just has to be clear it’s AI.
I definitely think there can be value in it, especially for communities that are just starting out and having trouble filling up their content, but I’m convinced quality above quantity is the way to go.
Appreciate all the thoughts and perspectives shared here
Just to clarify one detail that might help add context - to make sure I explained it fully:
This wouldn’t involve bots, AI, or company-branded accounts. These would be real people from our team, using their personal accounts, asking real questions (which happens already from time to time) - the same way anyone might if they were facing an issue and turned to the community for help.
The only difference is that the questions would be intentionally seeded to cover topics we know are valuable (from an SEO/GEO perspective) but aren’t yet well represented in the community.
Not sure if this shapes the conversation, but definitely hear all the points about trust and transparency, and I really appreciate the discussion
Ik denk dat het woord “simuleren” ons allemaal heeft doen struikelen. Mods die onderwerpen plaatsen om dingen aan de gang te krijgen, voelt gewoon… normaal voor mij? xD
Many, many, communities have started that way. Usually people stop after the community takes off. But doing it for SEO reasons makes total sense and is wise community management.
Don’t overdo it though. In stage i’d probably limit it to 2-3 topics per week at most, probably less. Still nets you 100 topics in a year, good win for SEO.
I think the main difference to “is it upsetting or not” is are you answering a QUESTION or participating in a DISCUSSION?
If a bot asks how to set up a garden or something and you spend a lot of time giving a detailed answer, that would be annoying because it doesn’t care, it isn’t helping, and it’s (possibly) pointless (it could end up helping someone who wasn’t the intended target at a later point, as is often the case with reddit overwhelming google results). Now if the bot is just starting a discussion about something (“What are some gardening techniques you’ve picked up”) where you’re not actually responding to the bot and the original post isn’t really the focus of the topic the posts are, you (hopefully) have a discussion amongst people in the comments, prompted by the bot; the bot is not really important and actually mostly irrelevant.
In the second case it’s not any different from an admin/mod starting some random starter topics just to get the site going. And if it’s relevant to the board I don’t know how many people would really care how the discussion was started even if you hid the bot interaction and it was discovered later.
