Commodity vs non-commodity content
A commodity is something interchangeable: one supplier's version does the job as well as another's, so price is the only thing left to compete on. Non-commodity is the opposite, a thing that cannot be swapped for an equivalent. Content divides the same way, and the distinction matters now because Google's own AI-era guidance asks for the non-commodity kind, meaning first-hand, specific material, and contrasts it with generic summaries “that could have come from anyone”. Official recommendation
How do you tell which kind you have?
Read your page and ask: could a competent stranger with a search engine have written this? If yes, you have commodity content. An AI system can now generate it in seconds, so retrieving your version adds nothing. If no, because the page contains your prices, your process, your failures and your photographs, you have source material.
What commodity content looks like
"5 things to consider when hiring an electrician." "Why professional photography matters for your wedding." "The benefits of handmade ceramics." Every sentence true; every sentence available everywhere; no reason to cite you.
What non-commodity content looks like
"What rewiring a 1930s semi in Leeds cost, room by room, and where the quote went wrong." "Six weddings at The Orangery: what the light does at 4pm in November." "Why our porcelain mugs crack in year one if you leave them on the Aga, and the glaze change that fixed it." Specific, dated, checkable, and unavailable anywhere else on earth.
Why this favours a small business
Here the economics run the other way from usual. A content farm cannot photograph your workbench. Your evidence exists already; the work is publishing it. Turning what you know into what a machine can cite is the subject of the next article.
Whether non-commodity material earns more citations, controlling for site authority, is our registered hypothesis H3 in the Small-Business AI Citation Benchmark. We measure it; we do not assume it. What we have measured so far is the running account of what has actually been collected, and no result for H3 sits in it yet.
Common questions
What does non-commodity mean?
Not interchangeable. Sugar is a commodity because any supplier's will do; a thing is non-commodity when no substitute does the same job. Applied to content, it means material that could only have come from you: your prices, your process, your photographs.
What is commodity content?
Material that is true, useful, and available in a hundred other places. If a competent stranger with a search engine could have written your page, that is what you have, and an AI system has no reason to fetch your version rather than one of the others.
Where does the term “non-commodity content” come from?
Google's own guide to optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search. It asks for first-hand, specific material and contrasts it with generic summaries “that could have come from anyone”.
Does non-commodity content actually earn more citations?
That is the question, not the answer. Whether it earns more citations once site authority is controlled for is our registered hypothesis H3 in the Small-Business AI Citation Benchmark. We measure it; we do not assume it.
What bernard does about this
bernard can detect commodity patterns such as vague claims, unsupported superlatives and interchangeable copy, and flag them. detectable The replacement evidence must come from you. A guided interview to extract it is on the roadmap. we're building this
- Contradicted “AI-generated content is automatically penalised”
- Contradicted “Strip the AI tells — the em-dashes, the "stands as a testament to" — and your content will be fine”
Each verdict carries its primary source and the date we last checked it. See the full ledger.