AI Sounding Website Copy: How to Find and Fix It

A service page sounds like AI when it's built from phrases that belong to nobody. The giveaways tend to travel together, so a page with one usually has the rest.

Stock phrases

These are lines pasted onto so many sites they've stopped meaning anything. On service pages, the usual ones look like this:

• “Your trusted partner for all your roofing needs”
• “Our team of experts is committed to excellence”
• “We pride ourselves on quality workmanship and unmatched customer service”
• “Look no further” and “your one-stop shop”
• “Whether you're a homeowner or a business owner”

Chat tools add a layer of their own: a small set of words that turns up again and again in machine written marketing copy, like promises of an effortless experience or a home taken to the next level. Plenty of readers now spot them on sight. The long dash belongs on that list, and so does opening a sentence with “it's worth noting.”

A rhythm that repeats

Generic copy has a beat you can hear when you read it out loud. Every paragraph runs about the same length, adjectives arrive in threes like “fast, friendly and affordable,” and lines flip a phrase for effect, as in “It's not just a roof, it's peace of mind.” One of these is ordinary writing. When every section follows the pattern, readers start to distrust the page without knowing why.

No owner behind the words

The biggest giveaway is copy with no person in it. “ABC Roofing is a leading provider of residential roofing solutions” could describe anyone. It's also the hardest part for a chat tool to fake, because the tool has no idea who does your inspections or what they found on your last job in Fishers.

No, Google doesn't penalize content for being written with AI, and it says so in its own guidance. Its 2023 post on AI generated content states that “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines,” and describes a “focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced.”

Two parts of that guidance still matter for a small business site. Google's spam policies describe scaled content abuse as “when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users,” and list “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users” as one example. A stack of town pages with only the city name swapped sits close to that line whoever typed them.

The other is the list of self-assessment questions in Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. Google asks whether a page provides “original information, reporting, research, or analysis” and “substantial value when compared to other pages in search results,” and whether it shows firsthand expertise. Generic copy struggles there because it says what the other pages already say. That's the real case for rewriting it: buyers can't tell you apart from the next result.

Site Scan is a free tool, powered by Jev from TypeSafe, that reads up to 10 pages of your site, your home page plus an even spread of the rest. Code counts 24 technical facts from each page's HTML, marked Measured. Jev answers 44 typed questions about each page, marked AI judgment. The checks that catch generic copy sit in the report's “Sounds like you” category.

Only you could say it and Firsthand experience carry the most weight in that category. A page can pass the stock word check and still be generic, since swapping a flagged word for a plain one adds no facts. The report is plain about its limits, too: AI judgment findings are Jev's answers and can be wrong, so read the page yourself before you rewrite on the tool's word. The CSV export has columns for each page's reading grade, its “we” rate and the stock words found, so you can sort the weakest pages to the top.

You can find most generic copy yourself. Start with your home page and your main service pages, since those are where buyers land.

1. Run the swap test. Copy a paragraph into a document, replace your name and town with a competitor's, and read it again. If every sentence is still true, it's generic.
2. Read it out loud. Mark anything you'd never say to a customer standing in their driveway. The federal plain language guidelines make the same point in one line: use simple words and phrases.
3. Search for stock phrases. Press Ctrl+F (Command+F on a Mac) and look for “trusted,” “excellence,” “solutions,” “needs” and “pride.” Each hit is a candidate for a rewrite.
4. Check the first 150 words. They should answer the question that brought someone to the page and name the place you serve. A welcome and a list of services doesn't count.
5. Look for people, jobs and opinions. Circle every named person, described job and recommendation. The page with the fewest circles gets rewritten first.
6. Count “we.” Copy in third person, like “ABC Roofing provides,” reads like a brochure. Rewrite it the way you'd explain it on the phone.

You rewrite a generic paragraph by replacing each claim with the fact behind it. “Quality workmanship” is a claim. The fact behind it might be a step your crew never skips, along with the reason. Here's a before and after for a made-up roofing company, so treat every detail as a placeholder for your own.

Before: “At ABC Roofing, we pride ourselves on delivering quality roofing solutions with unmatched customer service. Our team of experts is committed to excellence and will work with you every step of the way to meet all your roofing needs.”

After: “Most leak calls we get in Carmel after a spring storm turn out to be flashing around a chimney or a vent, and the shingles are fine. Mike, who owns ABC Roofing, climbs every roof himself before we write a quote, and he'll text you photos of what he found. If a repair will hold, we'll tell you, even when a full replacement would be the bigger job for us.”

The after version names a town, a person, a common problem, a step in the process and a stance on repair versus replacement. None of it would stay true if a competitor pasted it onto their site.

Where to find the specifics

You already have this material. It's just sitting in places most owners never think of as copy:

• The questions customers ask on the phone before they book, in their words.
• What your crew finds once a job starts that the customer didn't expect.
• The shortcut other companies take that you won't, and why.
• Recent jobs, with the neighborhood, the problem and what you did about it.
• What happens after someone calls, and how soon they hear back.

Proof works the same way, and adding proof without inflating claims covers how to show reviews and credentials honestly. To collect those phone questions as they come in, see turning real project questions into search content.

Using a chat tool for the rewrite

A chat model is fine for drafting, as long as the facts come from you. Paste in your notes, the phone questions and a job story, ask for a draft in your voice, then read it out loud and cut every line you wouldn't say. Jev doesn't write copy at all. TypeSafe's model notes say it isn't trained to generate text, so Site Scan points at the generic sections and the writing happens elsewhere, a split covered in what Jev is. Whoever drafts it, a person should read the last version of anything a customer sees, the rule laid out in human review for AI marketing.

Start with the page that brings in the most calls, or the one you most want calls from. Run the swap test, rewrite the opening so it answers the searcher's question with a place and a next step, and add one real job story. Then move to the next page.

For a second opinion first, run a free Site Scan on your website. You get 3 free scans a day with no account. It follows your robots.txt rules, stops at bot checks and builds the report in your browser as a PDF and a CSV, with each finding labeled Measured or AI judgment. For technical HTML checks like titles, headings and schema, the free website audit is the better fit. Site Scan is built by Trojan Digital Marketing, an Indianapolis based agency that works with businesses across central Indiana and the United States.