It's ten at night. You open ChatGPT, type “write a homepage for a roofing company in Frisco,” and half a minute later you have four tidy paragraphs. They read fine. That's the trouble. Nothing in them is obviously wrong, and nothing in them is yours.
It's free, and by now somebody has probably offered you thirty AI-written blog posts a month. My answer: AI is a fine tool and a bad author.
Is AI-generated content bad for SEO?
Not by itself. Google says using AI or automation isn't against its guidelines, unless it's used to generate content mainly to manipulate rankings.[1] That kind of content is spam, whether a model wrote it or a person with a spreadsheet.
The version that gets sites in trouble is scaled content abuse: generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, not to help anyone. The first example on Google's list is using generative AI to produce many pages without adding value. Sites that break the policies may rank lower or drop out of results.[2]
Google also says using AI gives a page no special advantage. It's just content, and useful, original content might do well.[1] Its people-first guidance says the most important question about any page may be why it was made.[3]
Where is it safe to use ChatGPT to write website content?
Wherever the facts come from you. Google says generative AI can help with research and structure.[4]
- Turning your job notes, or a voice memo from the truck, into a first draft you rewrite.
- Tightening a rambling paragraph, or rewriting it in plainer words.
- Suggesting questions customers ask, so you can answer them on a service page from your own jobs.
- Drafting alt text for your photos. Google says to fact-check it like the rest of the page.[4]
Where does ChatGPT hurt a contractor's website?
Wherever it guesses or copies.
It makes things up. Google explains why: these models predict likely words rather than looking facts up, so they sometimes produce errors.[4] On a contractor's site, that's a license number that isn't yours or a warranty you don't offer. A start year that's off. A brand you don't install. A permit you never pulled. A price you'd never quote.
It writes the page everyone else has. Ask for a roofing homepage and you get roughly the one your competitor already runs. Google's own guide for its AI features says not to publish what's already been said, or what a generative model could easily produce.[5] We go through that guide in how to show up in Google AI Overviews. Assistants answering local questions lean on your website too:
Business websites supply 42% of the ~1.97M citations in local AI answers (ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, AI Overviews); Google Business Profile ~29%.
Source: BrightLocal local AI visibility study · (opens in a new tab)
A generic site gives an assistant nothing specific to repeat, and a site that blocks its crawler gives it nothing at all. Our two-minute check shows whether your website is blocking ChatGPT.
It stamps out city pages. “Do the same page for Columbus, Dublin and Westerville” is how doorway pages get made. Google's spam policies describe pages built for similar local searches that all lead to the same place as doorway abuse.[2] Our post on when city pages help and when they become spam has a quick test.
Never let it write a review or a testimonial. The FTC's 2024 rule bans fake or false reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones attributed to people who don't exist.[6] Its business guidance says a testimonial on your own site counts as your advertising, so a fake one could make you liable.[7] Use words real customers wrote, and ask before you quote them. If you don't have many yet, here's how to ask for Google reviews.
What should you check before a page goes live?
Run five checks on every page.
- Check every fact against a real record: insurance certificate, permits, invoices, warranty paperwork, and the license lookup if your trade has one.
- Make every number and name yours. If you can't say where a figure came from, cut it.
- Add one photo or detail no other site could have: a real job, your crew, a street you work on.
- Read it aloud. Where you stumble, a customer will stop reading. Then show the first screen to a neighbor for the five-second test.
- Delete anything you wouldn't say to a customer in their driveway.
The same “about us” paragraph twice, for a roofing company in Frisco
- First draft: We are a family-owned roofing company proudly serving Frisco and the surrounding areas. With decades of experience and a commitment to quality, our skilled team delivers lasting results using top-quality materials. We're fully licensed and insured, and we back our work with an industry-leading warranty.
- With the owner's real facts: I started this company in 2019 after eight years on other people's crews. We replace asphalt shingle roofs in Frisco, Prosper and Little Elm, and I handle any city permit myself. If we find rotted decking, you get a photo and a price before we touch it. The warranty paperwork comes stapled to the estimate.
Illustrative example
Every claim in the second version has a record behind it. The first version's “decades” and “industry-leading” have none. And don't invent a team: Google calls made-up authors and AI-generated headshots deception.[3] It says the same review covers the metadata too: titles, meta descriptions, structured data and image alt text.[4]
What should you ask an agency or freelancer who offers volume?
Three things, before you pay by the page:
- Ask who checks the facts, and against what. “Our team reviews everything” isn't an answer.
- Ask whose photos go on the page: yours from real jobs, or stock.
- Ask what happens to a page nobody visits. “We fix it or take it down” is a good answer, and silence isn't.
None of this is special to AI. A freelancer who has never seen a job site writes the same generic page, only slower, so check their draft too. Google's AI guide adds that a high page count doesn't make a site higher quality.[5]
When is it worth paying someone to look?
When a pile of AI drafts is already live and you don't have time to check it. Our website clarity audit shows what a first-time visitor sees on a phone. The Expert Action Plan ($149) is the full report plus a 30-minute call on what to fix first. Otherwise, start with the checks above and see how many pages survive.
What Google and the assistants still decide
Google decides whether a page you've checked will rank, and each AI assistant decides whether to name you. Google says even a page that meets every requirement may not be indexed or shown.[5] I don't know of an assistant that publishes a formula for who it names.
Both the rules and the tools move. Most of the Google pages behind this post were updated in 2026. Check them again before any big change. This isn't legal advice.