--- title: "Three quarters of new pages had some AI in them. 2.5% were all AI." url: https://deadwritingtheory.com/cases/three-quarters-touched/ summary: "A vendor study: 74.2% of 900,000 new web pages contained AI-generated content, but only 2.5% were pure AI. It counts any AI at all, with an unpublished error rate." published: 2026-10-09 updated: 2026-10-09 author: "Jack Stovell" publisher: "Adapt Progress Evolve Limited" language: en-GB --- # Three quarters of new pages had some AI in them. 2.5% were all AI. A vendor study: 74.2% of 900,000 new web pages contained AI-generated content, but only 2.5% were pure AI. It counts any AI at all, with an unpublished error rate. **Case No. DWT-014: Three quarters touched.** Split verdict. Filed 9 October 2026. - **The question:** What share of newly created English web pages contain AI-generated content? - **The sample:** 900,000 English-language pages newly found by Ahrefs' crawler in April 2025, one page per domain, scored by Ahrefs' own AI detector (bot_or_not) for the share of each page detected as AI - **The study:** Ryan Law, Xibeijia Guan, Tim Soulo (Ahrefs (an SEO software company)), "74% of New Webpages Include AI Content (Study of 900k Pages)", Ahrefs blog, 2025. https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-percentage-of-new-content-is-ai-generated/ - **Whose study:** Third-party study (vendor study). Not our study. Entered into evidence from Ryan Law, Xibeijia Guan, Tim Soulo, Ahrefs (an SEO software company). - **Peer review:** Not peer reviewed: a vendor study ## Findings of fact 1. 74.2% of the pages contained AI-generated content. 2. 2.5% were "pure AI" and 25.8% "pure human"; 71.7% were a mix of the two. 3. As shares of all pages (from the study's chart): 9.87% minimal AI use (1 to 10% of the page), 25.86% moderate (11 to 40%), 20.50% substantial (41 to 70%) and 15.51% dominant (71 to 99%). ## Caveats for the jury - A vendor study, published as Ahrefs was about to launch the AI detector it used. - No error rate is published; the authors say the detector "will never be 100% accurate", and partial detection, where most of these pages landed, is where detectors are weakest. - One page per domain tilts the sample towards small sites. - It measures prevalence (any AI on the page), not whether pages read alike. ## The court reporter's account The headline is a good one, I'll give it that: "74% of New Webpages Include AI Content (Study of 900k Pages)". It's by Ryan Law, with Xibeijia Guan and Tim Soulo, of Ahrefs, an SEO software company, published on the Ahrefs blog on 19 May 2025. It's a vendor study, not peer reviewed, and it was published as Ahrefs was about to launch its own AI detector. The court notes the timing and says nothing further. The method: Ahrefs' own detector, codenamed bot_or_not, run on 900,000 English-language pages newly found by its crawler in April 2025, one page per domain. No error rate is published. The authors say it "will never be 100% accurate", which is honest, I guess, if not exactly reassuring. For the prosecution: 74.2% of the pages contained AI-generated content. That's the number everyone repeats. For the defence: only 2.5% were "pure AI". And 25.8% were "pure human", while 71.7% were a mix. Ahrefs' own chart splits the mix, as shares of all pages: 9.87% minimal AI use (1 to 10% of the page), 25.86% moderate (11 to 40%), 20.50% substantial (41 to 70%) and 15.51% dominant (71 to 99%). So the headline counts any AI at all, even a light touch. The point for the court: compare case DWT-006, where Graphite found about half of new articles "primarily" AI. Two vendors, two definitions of an AI page. One counts a trace; the other counts a majority. Put side by side, they measure different things, and nobody should treat them as one finding. The caveats are heavy. It's a vendor study with a product to sell. It's detector-based, and partial detection is where detectors are weakest, which is awkward, because partial is where most of these pages landed. One page per domain tilts the sample towards small sites. And this is prevalence, not sameness: it says how many pages involved AI, not whether those pages read alike. So what does the court have? A large sample and a real number, plus a measuring stick nobody outside the company has checked. Three quarters touched is a striking figure. Three quarters converged is a different claim, and nothing here supports it. The prosecution can take the prevalence. The defence keeps the doubt about the instrument. Neither gets the whole web. Verdict: split. ## The exhibits entered in this case ### For the prosecution - **Exhibit P-17**: Three quarters of new pages contained some AI text. **74.2%** of 900,000 new English pages, April 2025. Ahrefs' own detector, one page per domain. Vendor study; no error rate published. ### For the defence - **Exhibit D-18**: Almost none were wholly machine-written. **2.5%** of new pages "pure AI", April 2025. 25.8% "pure human". Another 9.87% showed minimal AI use (1 to 10% of the page) and 25.86% moderate use (11 to 40%). ## The finding A vendor study: 74.2% of 900,000 new web pages contained AI-generated content, but only 2.5% were pure AI. It counts any AI at all, with an unpublished error rate. ## Related - [Half the articles. Then the rise stopped.](https://deadwritingtheory.com/cases/half-the-articles-and-a-plateau/) - [The machine writes half. Readers are mostly shown the other half.](https://deadwritingtheory.com/cases/half-the-articles-but-who-reads-them/) - [The detectors flagged human writers as machines.](https://deadwritingtheory.com/cases/the-detector-that-convicts-the-innocent/) ## Sources - [Law et al., "74% of New Webpages Include AI Content (Study of 900k Pages)", Ahrefs blog, 2025 (the original study)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-percentage-of-new-content-is-ai-generated/) ## Questions people ask ### What percentage of new web content is AI-generated? It depends on the definition. Ahrefs (May 2025) found 74.2% of 900,000 new pages contained some AI-generated content, but only 2.5% were pure AI. Graphite (case DWT-006) counts articles that are primarily AI and finds about half. ### Why do the two numbers differ? They measure different things. Ahrefs counts a page with any detected AI; Graphite counts a page that is mostly AI. Both are vendor studies built on detectors. ### How reliable is the 74% figure? Ahrefs publishes no error rate and says its detector will never be 100% accurate. Detectors are weakest at partial AI, which is where most of these pages fell. ### Why is the verdict split? The prosecution gets the prevalence: most new pages carry some AI text. The defence gets the rest: 2.5% were pure AI, and nothing in the study measures whether the pages became alike.