This is the broadest content judgement in the set: depth, structure, readability, answer-friendliness and trust, combined into one number. It sits in the middle of the dataset, and that position is informative — most published content is neither obviously thin nor genuinely thorough. It is adequate, which is the hardest state to improve from, because nothing about it is visibly broken.
Here is where that sits. The median SeoMods score is 63/100, which ranks it 10 of the 25 tools with a published benchmark by median. The ranking runs over the 25 tools on the main benchmark page; 1st is the highest median. The middle half of results falls between 53 and 70 — a band 17 points wide. That is wide: in this sample sites’ scores diverge markedly on this measure.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 3,443 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. Most results sit in the middle bands, which means sites differ here by degree rather than by whether they bothered at all.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | AI Content |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 1% · 18 |
| 20–39 | 7% · 256 |
| 40–59 | 34% · 1,180 |
| 60–79 | 47% · 1,633 |
| 80–100 | 10% · 356 |
| Total runs | 3,443 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where does my score sit?
The number is worth less here than the breakdown beneath it, because five dimensions averaging to the middle can hide a page that is excellent at four of them. Look at which dimension is lowest and start there. A page that scores well across all five is genuinely rare, and usually the result of someone treating the page as a piece of work rather than a slot to fill.
| Tool | P10 | P25 | Median | P75 | P90 | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Content | 42 | 53 | 63 | 70 | 80 | 61.3 | 5 | 95 |
A score from the AI Content Score can be read against the five values below. All of them are calculated from the scans in this benchmark: they place a SeoMods score within this sample, not in Google’s results.
| Percentile | Score | What it means for a score |
|---|---|---|
| P10 | 42 | About one scan in ten scored 42 or lower. Below it, a page is in the lowest tenth of this sample. |
| P25 | 53 | The edge of the bottom quarter. A score under 53 is below about three quarters of the scans. |
| Median | 63 | The middle of the sample: half the scans scored lower, half higher. A score of 63 is the typical result here. |
| P75 | 70 | Where the top quarter begins. A score of 70 or more is at or above about three quarters of the scans. |
| P90 | 80 | Where the top tenth begins. A score of 80 or more is among the highest 10% of scans in this sample. |
Percentiles describe the sites SeoMods scanned, not the whole web, and they apply to this tool only: the same number on another tool sits somewhere else.
The SeoMods checks most often unmet
The failures split between what the page contains and what it demonstrates. Containing — a summary, headings, lists, adequate length — is fixable in an afternoon. Demonstrating — a named author, a date, sources, original phrasing — requires a decision about how the site publishes, not just how this page is laid out.
| Check | Not met (share of scans) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Summary / TL;DR | 93% | Partial |
| Reasonable reading ease | 84% | Partial |
| Freshness date | 74% | Partial |
| Author signal | 70% | Partial |
| Substantial length | 63% | Partial |
| Question-based sections | 50% | Partial |
| Structured data | 47% | Partial |
| Clear sentence length | 41% | Partial |
| Exactly one clear H1 | 34% | Partial |
| Lists / tables | 15% | Partial |
| Paragraph structure | 12% | Partial |
| Original, varied wording | 10% | Partial |
The rate is the share of scans in which a SeoMods check was not met. It is SeoMods’ criterion, not Google’s assessment of these pages. “Hard fail” means the check’s full weight is deducted from the SeoMods score; “partial” means part of it.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Trust (E-E-A-T)” was the weakest area in 51% of scans.
What to fix first
Add the trust signals first, because they are the cheapest of the five dimensions and the most often missing entirely. A byline, a publish date and an update date are three lines in a template. Then work on depth, which is the slowest to move and the only one that cannot be faked.
A typical scan passes 9.8 of 16 checks and leaves 6.2 open items behind. In this sample what brings a SeoMods score down is mostly not one large omission but accumulated small ones.
Run the AI Content Score on your own page
Month by month
This page adds every published month together. Underneath it, each month is frozen as an edition of its own whose figures are never edited again — which is the only reason two months can be set side by side at all. Below is the AI Content Score across the 2 published editions, with the combined figure in the last row of the table.
Between August 2026 and September 2026 the median went from 64 to 63, and the share of scans at 80 or above went from 11% to 10%. The two months do not measure the same sites — the September 2026 sample has about 3 times as many sites — so read the gap as a change in the cross-section measured, not as the same sites getting better or worse.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 64 | baseline | 11% | 6.1 | 999 |
| September 2026 | 63 | −1 pts | 10% | 6.3 | 2,444 |
| All published months, combined | 63 | — | 10% | 6.2 | 3,443 |
Reading a monthly difference. Each month is a separate sample, and its size changes from month to month. A change in sample size can move a median and a distribution by itself, so a monthly difference should not be mistaken for a change in scores: it does not show that sites improved or got worse.
Which checks moved
Each check’s rate in the first edition that measured it, beside its rate in the latest. Moves under two points are marked as no change: these are independent monthly samples of a shifting set of sites, and a difference that small is not evidence that anything on the web changed.
| Check | Not met in August 2026 | Not met in September 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clear sentence length | 32% · August 2026 | 44% · September 2026 | +12 pp |
| Freshness date | 80% · August 2026 | 71% · September 2026 | −9 pp |
| Structured data | 43% · August 2026 | 49% · September 2026 | +6 pp |
| Exactly one clear H1 | 29% · August 2026 | 35% · September 2026 | +6 pp |
| Author signal | 74% · August 2026 | 69% · September 2026 | −5 pp |
| Lists / tables | 19% · August 2026 | 14% · September 2026 | −5 pp |
| Substantial length | 60% · August 2026 | 64% · September 2026 | +4 pp |
| Paragraph structure | 10% · August 2026 | 13% · September 2026 | +3 pp |
| Summary / TL;DR | 94% · August 2026 | 92% · September 2026 | no change |
| Reasonable reading ease | 83% · August 2026 | 84% · September 2026 | no change |
| Question-based sections | 49% · August 2026 | 50% · September 2026 | no change |
| Original, varied wording | 10% · August 2026 | 10% · September 2026 | no change |
What this score does not measure
- It is not a direct measurement of the signals every AI system uses. Which system uses which signal, and how, is not public; the score measures the checks SeoMods chose.
- It does not measure whether a page is actually cited in AI answers. It measures readiness on the page, not what any assistant returned.
- It is not a Google ranking. A high score does not guarantee a better position, and a low one does not mean Google has penalised the page.
About this benchmark. This benchmark is calculated from data on the sites SeoMods has scanned. The results do not necessarily represent all websites, or a random selection of them. The scores express SeoMods’ own measurement and scoring criteria; they are not ranking, quality, E-E-A-T or AI visibility scores issued by Google. Sample, anonymization and licence: the full methodology.
Frequently asked questions
Does this detect AI-generated content?
No, and it does not try to. It measures qualities that make content useful — specificity, structure, attribution, depth — which AI-generated text can perfectly well have and human-written text can perfectly well lack. The question it answers is whether the content is worth relying on, not who or what produced it.
Is longer content better?
Only insofar as length is a side effect of covering a subject properly. Length on its own is the easiest thing to fake and one of the least useful signals, which is why the checks look at whether the page answers questions, cites sources and covers subtopics rather than simply counting words. A short page that answers the question completely beats a long one that circles it.
Why does originality of phrasing matter?
Because a page assembled from the same sentences as twenty others gives an engine no reason to prefer it, and gives a reader nothing they could not get elsewhere. It is also the clearest available proxy for whether anybody actually thought about the subject before publishing on it.
What is a good score on the AI Content Score?
In this dataset the median SeoMods score is 63/100, so scoring 63 sits exactly in the middle of the sample. 70 is the start of the upper quartile and 80 or above is the top 10%; below 53 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 tools with a published benchmark have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing. They place a page among the sites SeoMods scanned; they say nothing about Google rankings.
Is the score from the AI Content Score issued by Google?
No. It is a benchmark score calculated against the check list SeoMods defined for this tool. A SeoMods check going unmet does not mean Google has penalised the page or ranked it lower.
Which SeoMods check goes unmet most often on the AI Content Score?
“Summary / TL;DR”, which was not met in 93% of scans. None of this tool's checks are scored as hard fails; every one of them loses partial credit instead.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — AI Content Score benchmarks, 2 October 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/ai-content-score. If you need to cite by date, use the September 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.