Key facts
- Google's own guidance states it rewards helpful, reliable, people-first content regardless of how it was produced, and does not blanket-ban AI assistance, so the real risk is unedited, generic, or inaccurate content, not AI involvement itself.
- Content written without specific facts about your actual business, your real service area, or your real pricing and process, reads as generic because it could describe almost any competitor in your industry just as easily.
- Search engines have gotten measurably better at identifying repetitive phrasing patterns and thin, low-effort content at scale, which is part of why Google's guidance emphasizes people-first quality over production method.
- A content piece produced with unusual speed relative to the depth of research or interviewing it would normally require is one practical signal worth asking about directly, though speed alone isn't proof either way.
- Reviewing content before it publishes, rather than after, is the only reliable way to catch generic or inaccurate AI drafting before it's live representing your business publicly.
AI-Assisted Drafting Isn't Automatically the Problem
Google doesn't ban the use of AI tools outright. Its own guidance is built around whether content is genuinely helpful, accurate, and reflects real expertise, not around how the first draft was produced.
Many agencies use AI tools as a drafting aid, then edit, fact-check, and add real specifics thoroughly before publishing, which is a very different practice from publishing raw, unedited output with your business's name attached.
The useful question isn't "did they use AI at some stage," it's "is this accurate, specific, and actually about my business, my process, and my customers."
The Real Signs of Unedited AI Content
Watch for generic phrasing that could describe any competitor in your space, and an absence of real details about your specific service area, pricing, or process.
Factual errors about your own business, or claims that plainly don't match reality, are a strong, checkable signal that nobody who actually knows the business reviewed the piece before it went live.
Near-identical structure and phrasing repeated across multiple pages, with only the nouns swapped, points to a template being filled in rather than content genuinely written for each specific page.
How to Check Directly Instead of Guessing
Ask to review drafts before they publish, and read a handful of already-live pages closely, checking for specific, verifiable details about your own business.
Ask the agency directly about their process: do they draft with AI tools, and what does human editing and fact-checking actually look like afterward.
Compare a page about your business to a competitor's page in the same space. If the structure and claims feel interchangeable between the two, that's a real tell worth acting on.
What to Do If You Find Unedited, Generic Content
Raise it directly and ask for a specific plan to review and fix the affected pages, rather than letting it sit live indefinitely.
Request their actual editing process going forward, in writing if that helps hold the conversation to something concrete.
This is a fixable process problem in most cases, not necessarily a reason to end the relationship immediately, unless it's paired with dishonesty about it once you've asked directly.
Related questions
Google's own guidance says it rewards helpful, reliable, people-first content regardless of how it was produced, and doesn't blanket-ban AI assistance. The practical risk isn't AI involvement itself, it's generic, inaccurate, or low-effort content, which can hurt rankings whether a human or an AI tool produced the first draft. Judge the finished, published page on its own merits, rather than worrying about which tool wrote the first version.
Ask directly whether they use AI tools for drafting, and if so, what their human editing and fact-checking process looks like afterward. A confident, specific answer describing real editorial steps is a good sign. Defensiveness, vagueness, or a flat denial that doesn't match what you're reading on the page is worth pressing further.
It's a real, though softer, concern. Generic content that's factually accurate can still fail to differentiate your business or genuinely help the specific reader you're targeting, and it tends to perform worse for both search rankings and actual conversions than content built around your specific details, process, and expertise. Ask your agency to rework thin pages with real specifics rather than leaving accurate but generic copy as the finished product.
Not with certainty, and that's not really the useful question. Focus instead on whether the page contains specific, checkable facts about your actual business, correct pricing and service details, and language that couldn't be pasted onto a competitor's page unchanged. That test catches the actual problem regardless of how the draft originated.
Not necessarily on that fact alone. Raise it directly, ask for their editing process going forward, and judge based on how they respond and whether the actual content quality improves. If they're dishonest about it after being asked directly, or the content stays generic and inaccurate, that's a stronger reason to reconsider the relationship.
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