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AI Studies

Human-Written Websites are Worth 39% More Than AI-Generated Websites: Study

Based on 12 months of website sales data from Motion Invest, this study set out to determine whether AI use impacts the sale price of websites valued at $6000 or more. These are our findings.

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Like it or not, AI-generated content is becoming more common across online platforms.

Key Finding: 

Publishing AI-generated content is considered risky, as Google has penalized AI-heavy sites, leading buyers to pay 39% more on average for sites with no AI content. Based on a study by the website buying and selling marketplace MotionInvest.com

In addition to popping up in Google results or Reddit posts, AI content is now a critical part of how websites that people are buying and selling get valued.

Although the use of AI isn’t necessarily a problem in and of itself, buyers know that there are both pros and cons to AI-generated content. And when money’s on the line - especially at higher price points - even a little uncertainty can impact the risk and resulting price a buyer is willing to pay.

To investigate this, we conducted a study on how the use of AI content (either fully, partially, or for grammar support) affects the sale price and time on market of websites based on real transaction data from Motion Invest.

Motion Invest is a website marketplace that offers content sites ranging from $800 to over $1 million, making it an excellent data source for our particular study. This platform specializes in vetted, profitable sites, making it a reliable source for studying how AI sites affect buyer behaviour.

Notably, it is the only marketplace that discloses and uses Originality.ai’s AI detector to verify if the website's content is AI-generated or human-written. 

Objectives of the Study

Based on 12 months of website sales data from Motion Invest, this study set out to:

  • Determine whether the use of AI content impacts the sale price of websites that sold for $6000 or more.
  • Measure how AI use on these sites affects their time on market.
  • Explore the potential implications of AI-generated content on website valuations and buyer behaviour.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  • From May 2024 to April 2025, Human content-only websites sold for 39% more than websites that had AI content on them.
  • AI sites stayed on the market an average of 19 days longer than those without, a difference of 54%.
  • These results show that buyers view AI content as risky and are willing to pay less for sites that have AI content on them.

Websites Written By Humans Sell for 39% More Than Websites With AI Writing On Them 

Our analysis of Motion Invest’s website sales (defined as those that sold for $6,000 or more) from May 2024 to April 2025 reveals that, on average, the use of AI negatively impacted sale price.

More specifically, AI sites sold for lower sales multiples (a metric that compares sale price to monthly revenue). AI sites sold for an average of 1.5x annual revenue sale multiple, while those without AI use sold for 2.1x annual revenue.

This data suggests a strong correlation between the use of AI content on websites and buyer behavior. However, other valuation factors may also come into play here. Niche, traffic trends, monetization methods, and other factors can all impact the sale price.

AI Sites Took 54% Longer to Sell

Our study also revealed another pattern: Websites that had AI content took longer to sell than those that didn’t.

The difference in the average time on the marketplace proved to be quite significant. Sites that didn’t use AI spent on average 35 days on the market, while those that did sat for 54 days until they were sold.

On average, it took 19 more days, or 54% longer, to sell websites with AI-generated content than those without.

These results clearly indicate that buyers perceive AI-generated content as risky.

Implications of AI for Website Valuations and Buyer Behaviour

A decrease in sales multiples and an increase in time on market highlight the potential impact that AI has on website purchasing decisions, signalling a shift in how buyers evaluate digital assets.

Of course, AI use didn’t prevent sales in this study, which is good news for site owners who rely on some type of AI to help run their websites. 

However, consistently lower sale prices suggest that sites with only human-written content are seen as more valuable/less risky. If that trend continues, sites with only human content could stand out even more in the market.

Tools like AI detectors and Site Scans could end up playing an important role here, as they can help both buyers and sellers flag potential instances of low-effort AI-assisted content. 

Methodology

Data Scope:

  • 12 months of sales data from Motion Invest (May 2024–April 2025).
  • Focused only on content websites that sold for $6,000 or more.

Exclusions:

  • Sites sold for less than $6,000 were excluded to avoid skewed data due to differing buyer behaviour at lower price points.
  • Websites with complex monetization or traffic sources were excluded to ensure we were minimizing the variables.
  • YouTube Channels sold were excluded as they fall outside the scope of web content analysis.

Final Dataset: 28 qualifying website transactions.

  • 11 AI websites
  • 17 Human Content only websites

AI Site Classification

AI Sites specified "Yes" to AI Disclosure: Sellers explicitly stated AI content was used (either fully, partially, or for grammar support).

Sites without AI specified "No" to AI Disclosure: Sellers stated they didn’t use AI, and this was verified by the team at MotionInvest with Originality.ai’s AI Checker scans of multiple pages.

Final Thoughts

Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that the presence of AI-generated content on websites is actively shaping buyer behavior

If sellers want to avoid lower sale prices and longer times on market, it may be worth highlighting human-written content in website marketplace listings

Sellers can:

  • Use AI detection tools to screen their websites for low-effort or unedited AI content
  • Offer disclosures about how content is created or reviewed

Buyers can:

  • Use AI checkers to help evaluate website content before purchase

Need a quick way to evaluate AI use before buying or selling a website? Scan content with Originality.ai’s AI Detector today.

Further Reading:

Jonathan Gillham

Founder / CEO of Originality.ai I have been involved in the SEO and Content Marketing world for over a decade. My career started with a portfolio of content sites, recently I sold 2 content marketing agencies and I am the Co-Founder of MotionInvest.com, the leading place to buy and sell content websites. Through these experiences I understand what web publishers need when it comes to verifying content is original. I am not For or Against AI content, I think it has a place in everyones content strategy. However, I believe you as the publisher should be the one making the decision on when to use AI content. Our Originality checking tool has been built with serious web publishers in mind!

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In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

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There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

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