Why Google’s YMYL standards matter even more in the age of AI

If your business offers financial advice, legal insight, or health-related services, your website almost certainly falls under Google’s “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) category. That means that Google holds your content to a higher standard than other sites – prioritising accuracy, trustworthiness, and evidence of real-world expertise to protect users from misleading or harmful information. 

Without meeting those requirements, your content is far less likely to appear in search results. In short, your website content needs to meet a higher standard for it to be visible to your audience. 

That’s nothing new. What is new – and more pressing than ever – is how artificial intelligence is changing how your content is created, curated, found, and featured.

Google’s AI Overviews now appear in nearly half of all user searches – and conversational tools like AI Mode are reshaping how users interact with search – meaning that YMYL content is under more scrutiny than ever before.

So, to stay visible in the AI search marketing landscape, you’ll need reassess how your content is written, reviewed, and presented. Not just for your audience or Google, but for the AI engines who are also acting as gatekeepers to your visibility.

AI is rewriting the rules of YMYL visibility

Google’s AI Overviews represent a shift from keyword-led search to AI-assisted answers. These summaries pull from what Google considers the most helpful, relevant and trustworthy sources – without requiring the user to click through to the source site itself.

That makes demonstrating trust and authority vital. For YMYL content, they’re the criteria AI uses to decide whether your advice is worth repeating – or quietly skipped.

It’s not just Google, either. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are now trained to avoid surfacing anything that could cause harm, particularly in finance, health, and legal contexts. That means:

1. No anonymous authorship
2. No overconfident advice
3. No content from websites lacking clear expertise or credibility signals

You can read more about AI Overviews, AI Mode and their impact on search marketing here.

Human involvement is non-negotiable

There’s plenty of talk about AI tools supporting content creation. Yes, AI can absolutely help with research or early drafting – as long as it’s used responsibly. But for YMYL content, AI should never be your main author.

That’s not just a Google best practice – it’s a trust issue. If your content covers pensions, tax planning, estate law or anything else that affects someone’s finances or wellbeing, it needs to be written (or at the very least reviewed or edited) by someone qualified and accountable.

What this looks like in practice:

• Content written or reviewed by a named professional – ideally with qualifications like CFP, FCA, LLB, etc.
• Author bios with details about their expertise, credentials, and experience
• Compliance or legal team involvement in content approval
• Clear disclosures if AI was involved, with reassurance that a human expert has reviewed the work

If you’re publishing YMYL content without a clear author or without editorial controls, you’re asking Google’s AI – and your potential clients – to take a leap of faith. More likely than not, neither of them will.

AI Overviews are powered by trust signals – not just keywords

In traditional SEO, strong metadata, backlinks, and keywords might have been enough to secure visibility. But in the AI-first world, structure and trust signals matter more than ever.

Google’s AI isn’t just pulling content from a single paragraph. It’s looking across your whole site to determine:

• Who you are
• What qualifies you to say what you’re saying
• Whether you’re being cautious and responsible
• And whether your site as a whole is considered trustworthy

That’s why even brilliant content can get ignored if it sits on a site with no clear ownership, outdated information, or a lack of transparency.

To improve your chances of being featured in AI Overviews, focus on the basics:

• Use schema markup on your pages – Person, Author, Organization, and any industry-specific schema help reinforce context
• Include author bios, disclaimers, and transparent editorial policies
• Make sure your contact details are clear and easy to find
• Consider publishing a brief AI usage statement or policy, like CNET’s editorial AI policy, which helps build trust with both readers and machines

YMYL fundamentals still apply – but the bar has been raised

Google’s E-E-A-T principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) haven’t changed. If anything, for businesses within financial services or health, they’ve become more important than ever.

Search today is about instant answers. And if your content is helping provide those answers safely and clearly, that’s a win – even if it doesn’t always lead to a click. (Yes, “zero-click search” is very real now – and appearing in an AI Overview can still be a powerful brand visibility opportunity.)

So what can you do?

• Focus on experience and credentials – not just content quality, but who it comes from
• Review older content to ensure it’s still accurate and relevant
• Add structure and clarity: FAQs, summaries, bullet points, and clean formatting all help AI systems digest your contentEmbrace caution: language like “this is not financial advice” or “consult a professional” doesn’t weaken your content – it strengthens trust

For a step-by-step guide to aligning your financial or professional services content with E-E-A-T and YMYL principles, this deep dive breaks it down.

What’s next?

If your organisation is creating or updating YMYL content, now’s the time to adapt. These AI-driven changes aren’t going away – and for brands that rely on digital visibility, ignoring them could mean disappearing from the conversation altogether.

Start here:

• Audit your existing content for clarity, credentials and compliance
• Revisit your site’s authorship, bios and contact info
• Make sure your most important content is being reviewed by a qualified human – and say so
• Add schema markup and trust signals to reinforce credibility
• Don’t panic – but don’t wait either

Need a hand reviewing or rewriting your content for this new landscape? We’re always happy to help. Email me at [email protected].