AI Wrote or Edited Every Article Ranking for 100 BoFu Queries

AI Wrote or Edited Every Article Ranking for 100 BoFu Queries

Team Pick
SEO & AEO
Slate
Research study
A category-by-category count showing the split is no longer human against AI, but fully AI against edited AI.
Organisation
Slate
Written By
Akilan Arumugam
PUBLISHED
August 5, 2026
Read
3
min

What it is.

Slate scored the pages ranking for 100 bottom-funnel queries across five B2B SaaS categories, discarding a quarter of results that were not articles.

Across the 652 scoreable pages the split came out 44% fully AI and 56% AI-plus-edit. Purely human writing had effectively left the sample.

The edit is what the ranking difference tracks with. In the top three positions 62% are AI-plus-edit; in positions four to ten the edited share drops to 54%.

What you get.

  • The scoring base: 652 pages after a quarter were discarded as non-articles
  • The overall split, 44% fully AI against 56% AI-plus-edit
  • The position effect, with 62% edited in the top three against 54% in positions four to ten
  • Category consistency, with the fully-AI share inside a seven-point band from 40.8% to 48.2%
  • What it means for a content team competing on these queries
  • The scoring method, including what counted as an article

Read it at the source.

Opens on Slate. Free, and the figures on this page all come from it.
Read the guide

Frequently Asked Questions

How were unscoreable pages handled?
Who ran it?
Is human-written content still ranking for bottom-funnel queries?
Which categories are safest for human-only content?
Does editing AI content help it rank?
Does Google penalize AI content?
Strengths
  • Throws out the unscoreable pages first and says so, which most detection studies skip.
  • Reports the position cut, so the edit has a measurable payoff attached.
  • Holds across five categories inside a seven-point band, so it is a pattern and not one vertical.
Limitations
  • Slate's own research, and Slate sells content and AI visibility software.
  • AI detection is probabilistic, so page-level labels carry error.
  • 100 queries in five categories, so it does not generalize past B2B SaaS bottom-funnel.
Skip this if
  • Skip it if you have already audited who wrote the pages ranking above you.
Ideal for
  • Content leads setting an AI policy
  • SEO leads on competitive content

The plays behind the reading.

We build inbound GTM engines for B2B software teams, and these are the frameworks we build from. Bring us a pipeline target and we'll map the route.