UGC (User-Generated Content)
UGC, or user-generated content, is what ordinary people make and post online, rather than a business or a media company: reviews, photos, videos, comments and forum posts. The OECD's 2007 definition says it's published, takes some creative effort and is made outside professional work. Even in 2007, the OECD said paying creators was blurring that line.
Source: OECD, Participative Web and User-Created Content (2007, PDF), section 2, checked October 29, 2026
What UGC (User-Generated Content) means for your business
People use UGC two ways now. The older meaning is what customers post on their own, like a review, a tagged photo or a Reddit thread about your shop. The newer one, common with creators, is a video a brand pays someone to make so it looks like a customer post.
For getting found, the first kind matters more to us, because reviews, tagged posts and forum threads are where buyers talk about you in their own words, often on public pages that search engines can index. Community-generated content, the threads and groups that grow up around a brand, belongs here too.
We can't write it for you, and we wouldn't try. What we'd do is make it easy to happen: ask for reviews all year, answer questions in public where your buyers ask them, and reply to comments, good and bad. If you pay creators for UGC-style videos, we'd treat those as ads, not as customer voices.
If buyers talk about your kind of business in reviews and threads but your name rarely comes up, our social search work starts there.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview and ChatGPT both gave the customer meaning first, then spent most of the answer on brands paying creators. Google cited creator posts on Instagram and YouTube, a Reddit thread, Adobe and Wikipedia; ChatGPT cited no sources.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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