This AI Watermark Issue & My Google Ads Blog

Stepping Away, Coming Back, and Thinking About AI Watermarks

I haven’t been writing on my blog as much this last part of the summer, and part of that is simply my mental space. I traveled a ton. I created a ton of content. But somewhere in all of that movement, I felt a disconnect from the blog and writing.

But I have always preached about not writing for the algorithm so…this one is for the humans.

It wasn’t that the blog wasn’t on my mind. I actually felt badly not showing up. It was more that my brain was struggling the past few months, and writing, the kind of writing I do here on my Google Ads blog, requires a certain clarity I didn’t have.

But I’m ready to be back.

And of course, right as I’m coming back, the whole conversation about Claude adding (or soon adding) a watermark to all AI content shows up and scares everyone (including me) to death.

It made me pause and rethink my own process, because my workflow on this blog has always been some version of:

• Dictating my raw thoughts into a Google Doc

• Asking AI to refine and give structure

• Pasting the structured output into the blog

• Rewriting what was lost

• Adding back my voice, my emphasis, my details

And if I’m being really honest, I’ve always felt AI was stripping something human out of my writing. It would remove a point I cared about. It would deemphasize a line I wanted to highlight. Or there was just something I couldn’t quite pinpoint going on, a lost texture, a tone shift, or something that I felt was missing in the final AI draft.

So pretty much everything post‑AI was never fully me.

Now, with the news I’m reading, it sounds like we can’t do this cleanup anymore without risking fingerprinting our blog posts. And that brings up a handful of questions I’ve been sitting with.

Questions I’m Still Working Through

So here are the questions don’t have neat answers

And these are the kind that live in the margins of modern writing in an AI world.

They’re not panic-driven. They’re just honest curiosities about what it means to write in a world where AI is both a tool and a tension and maybe even a judgement for some people.

I keep wondering: if I’m writing for humans, why should I care about any of this watermark discourse at all?

Humans want clarity, resonance, and something that feels alive on the page. And as a subject matter expert and someone who is always in the weeds. I am not always great at that.

But my readers (the human readers) don’t care whether a sentence was typed by my hand or refined by a model especially when being dyslexic means I genuinely need help with structure.

Humans care whether the post lands. Also, isn’t AI serving most of my content anyway?

And yet, the question lingers: will Google penalize me? Will my content stop ranking? Will it stop being surfaced in AI answers (should I even care)?

It’s hard to tell whether any dip in traffic is because of AI, because of the algorithm, or because I’m still evolving my voice in public. Or again because AI shoved it in the top of an answer.

Another question I keep circling: am I already being penalized? Just for existing? I am half kidding. But seriously, I dont’ think anyone working in marketing feels un-punished today.

But maybe my writing already lost texture because I let AI over-shape it. Or maybe Google already knows I use AI in some of my content and I am on the naughty list.

I mean we know there is a difference between using AI as a scalpel and letting it become the architect. And I try to let it be the scalpel but sometimes my brain gets tangled.

And the last question I have, the one that matters more than I want to admit is whether I should let any of this stop me.

Since December 8th of 2025 I have put this blog first.

Because of this blog, I’ve had more clients this year than in any of the three years I’ve been in business.

I am finally training people to run their own Google Ads, doing Google Ads coaching and taking a second look at Google Ads accounts and verifying they are working.

I should NOT let the fear of being “detected” or “penalized” interrupt the very real practice of writing, refining, and showing up on this blog that has given me a record number of clients this year.

So yeah…my honest answer is no. (Especially because you’re reading this post.)

But these questions are worth asking, but they’re not worth surrendering to, at least not for me right now.

They’re simply part of the landscape now, part of what I need to think about as a business owner who has built her pipeline through good old-fashioned blogging.

Concerns About Google Getting This Technology

I also read that Claude is open to giving this watermarking information to Google, and that Google could use what’s embedded to apply penalties to AI content.

I actually believe this is likely coming.

But I don’t see it as a bad thing necessarily. Google has stated in their terms that content should be high-quality, people-first, and original. If anything, this pushes all of us toward more intentional writing.

Will AI Impact Google Ads?

The next question is whether this detection could impact Google Ads. It’s easy to assume it wouldn’t apply on the paid side, but I’ll be watching Quality Score closely.

Google uses crawlers to determine landing page quality. If a landing page looks thin, low-value, or spammy, the landing page experience score drops. So yes — I’m paying attention.

What I Tell My Clients

You don’t need to avoid AI at all costs. I certainly won’t. But I’m going to be very careful about how I use it.

It sounds like my dictations and grammar cleanup might need to be as light as I can possible make them.

It might be inconvenient, but I won’t stop writing. I won’t stop showing up here. This blog has been too important to my business, my creativity, and my identity as a Google Ads practitioner.

This is just the next chapter — not the end.