AI search3 min read
Google does not penalise AI writing. It penalises what most people use AI to do
Short version
Google's spam policy targets pages made in bulk to game rankings, no matter who or what typed them. AI is not the violation. Publishing forty pages a week that nobody would ever read is.
Since 2023 Google's position has not moved: it rewards high-quality content however it is produced. The policy that gets sites hurt is called scaled content abuse, and the wording turns on intent and outcome — generating many pages primarily to manipulate rankings, with little or no value added for the person reading them.
So the honest version is uncomfortable for both camps. Using a model to draft, tighten or outline a page you then check and stand behind is fine. Using one to fill a sitemap is what the enforcement is for. The tooling changed; the thing being punished did not.
What changed in 2026: the rules now cover AI answers too
In May 2026 Google updated the spam policies to say explicitly that they apply to generative AI features in Search, not just to the blue links. The definition of spam now includes attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search.
In the context of Google Search, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into featuring content prominently — such as attempting to manipulate Search systems into ranking content highly, or attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search.
In practice that puts a whole young industry inside the policy: bought citations, seeded fake mentions, rigged "best contractor in" listicles written to feed an AI Overview. If a tactic exists so a model repeats your name, it now sits in the same document as keyword stuffing and cloaking, and Google says enforcement runs through both automated systems and human review that can end in a manual action.
Why this lands differently on a trade business
A contractor has the one thing a content farm cannot fake, and almost never puts it on the website: the actual job. The pipe, the roof, the panel, the price, the reason the first quote was wrong. Ten pages of that outrank a hundred pages of generated filler, and they survive every spam update, because there is nothing in them to enforce against.
- Photos you took, not stock — including the ugly before shots.
- Real numbers. A price range on the page beats "competitive pricing" every time, and it filters the calls you did not want.
- The towns you genuinely serve, on one page, written once.
- What you will not do. Nothing signals a real business faster than a limit.
So should you use AI at all?
Yes, the same way you use a nail gun — it makes a person who knows the job faster, and it makes a person who does not know the job dangerous quickly. Draft with it, then delete the sentences that could sit on any competitor's site unchanged. If a paragraph would be equally true for a plumber in another state, it is doing nothing for you and it is exactly what the policy is scanning for.
Sources
Written by Nick Georgalos, who builds the sites. Corrections go to the same number everything else does.