Will AI-written website copy hurt your Google ranking?

The big AI companies have started putting an invisible watermark in the text their tools write. If you’ve used ChatGPT or something like it to write your About page or a few service pages, the obvious question is: can Google now tell, and will it push you down for it?

Why the watermark exists

Europe’s AI Act now requires AI providers to mark machine-written text so it can be detected. The big providers serve Europe, so the mark goes on everywhere, Australia included.

It isn’t something you can see. It’s a statistical pattern in word choice. No extra characters, no label, and the text reads exactly the same.

Does Google punish AI-written copy?

Google’s published position is that it rewards helpful content however it was made. What it goes after is pages churned out in bulk to game rankings. Its spam policies call that “scaled content abuse”.

So the tool isn’t the problem. Thin, generic pages are, whoever or whatever wrote them.

What actually moves your ranking

• Real local detail. The suburbs you actually work in and the jobs you do there.
• Things only you know. How you quote, what happens when you turn up, what you won’t touch.
• A Google Business Profile that’s kept current, with reviews coming in.
• Pages that answer the questions customers ask before they ring.

The trap to avoid

Forty suburb pages with only the suburb name changed will hurt you, whether a person wrote them or a machine did.

A quick test for any page on your site

Swap your business name for a competitor’s. If the page still reads true, it’s too generic. Rewrite it until it could only be about you.