Pew: 1 in 10 webpages show AI authorship, .com domains lead

red file folder among similar gray folders isolated on gray background — Image credit: Search Engine Journal

WASHINGTON – One in 10 webpages analyzed globally shows signs of artificial intelligence authorship or editing, with a significant increase observed since the launch of ChatGPT, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

The study, which examined nearly 500,000 webpages, found that the proportion of AI-attributed content surged to 35 percent for pages published after the introduction of OpenAI’s popular chatbot, indicating a rapid adoption of AI tools in content creation.

Commercial .com domains show AI authorship signs at approximately 10 times the rate of educational and government websites, Pew’s Data Labs reported. Specifically, 9.35 percent of .com pages displayed AI markers over a six-month average, compared to 1.03 percent on .edu domains and 0.76 percent on .gov domains.

The analysis by Pew Research Center included both fully AI-generated content and human-written material that had been edited or refined using AI tools, categorizing both under AI authorship.

Researchers identified specific linguistic markers associated with AI writing, noting a rise in the use of em dashes, Oxford commas, and particular words such as ‘explore’ and ‘interaction’ within the content.

The findings align with other industry estimates regarding the prevalence of AI-generated or AI-assisted content. Graphite, a content intelligence platform, projected that 49.9 percent of web content would be AI-generated by the first quarter of 2026.

Separate research from Imperial College London, in collaboration with the Internet Archive and Stanford University, estimated that 35 percent of online content could be AI-generated by mid-2025.

These various studies, while employing differing methodologies, collectively point to a growing reliance on AI for content production across the internet, raising questions about content authenticity and potential implications for search engine optimization (SEO).

Pew’s Data Labs utilized AI detection tools from Copyleaks and GPTZero, alongside its own custom-built AI classifier, to conduct the comprehensive analysis of webpages indexed by Ahrefs.

Source: Search Engine Journal