Google’s John Mueller Says Some Sites in “Bad State” May Need a Full Restart

Google Search Advocate John Mueller is urging site owners to rethink how they approach recovery after publishing low-quality or unhelpful content, warning that simply rewriting material—whether by humans or AI—may not be enough to reverse a domain’s declining search performance.

The comments came after a Reddit user asked whether their site, which was showing the status “Crawled – currently not indexed,” could recover if they replaced previously published AI-generated English content with new, original Portuguese content written by humans.

Context and Google’s Position

Google has repeatedly advised publishers that content quality—not the method used to generate it—is central to how pages are evaluated for indexing and ranking. In recent years, the company has issued multiple updates targeting “unhelpful” or low-value pages, including the Helpful Content Update series, which emphasizes originality, expertise, and usefulness.

Mueller’s remarks reinforce this long-standing stance: the problem isn’t AI content itself, but whether the site is providing tangible value.

Mueller’s Key Points

In his response, Mueller cautioned against framing the issue as AI versus human-written content. Instead, he focused on a site’s ability to meaningfully contribute to the web:

“I wouldn’t think about it as AI or not, but about the value that the site adds to the web.
Just rewriting AI content by a human won’t change that, it won’t make it authentic.”

He advised that when a site’s entire content library needs improvement, owners should treat the effort as a rebuild rather than a revision:

“If you want to change all your site’s content, I’d approach it as essentially starting over with no content, and consider what it is that you want to do on the site, not as a checklist of pages that you need to tweak manually.”

Mueller also noted that domains with a troubled history—such as those affected by low-quality publishing practices—may take significantly longer to recover than a new domain would to gain traction:

“Starting with a bad state will be harder than starting with a new domain (and perhaps take longer, maybe much longer), but sometimes that’s still worthwhile.”

Analysis: Implications for Site Recovery

Mueller’s guidance suggests that domain reputation, historical performance, and previously published content play a substantial role in how Google evaluates recovery efforts.

Key implications include:

• Rewriting content may not be sufficient: Search systems evaluate the overall value and purpose of a site, not just the text on individual pages.
• Site purpose must be clear: Publishers face pressure to demonstrate why a website should exist at all—particularly in an era of mass-produced AI content.
• Recovery can be slow: Domains saddled with a poor quality history may face lengthy timelines before improvements are reflected in indexing and rankings.
• Starting fresh may sometimes be faster: While not always desirable, launching on a clean domain can avoid inheriting past issues.

This reflects Google’s broader direction: prioritizing helpful, original, and purpose-driven content, while de-emphasizing large volumes of generic or auto-generated material.

Looking Ahead

For site owners encountering indexing issues after publishing low-value or unoriginal content, Mueller’s comments highlight a strategic decision point. Publishers must weigh whether the domain’s existing state is worth rehabilitating—or whether starting over could lead to more efficient results.

The central message is clear: recovery depends less on how content is produced and more on whether the site demonstrates a distinct, meaningful contribution to users.