When Google Search Team member Danny Sullivan spoke at a Google Search Central event in Toronto, he revealed something that has become increasingly apparent in the roofing SEO space over the past decade: Google is done with commodity content.
As the founder of Roofing Webmasters, an SEO agency for local roofing companies, I’ve been adapting to this reality for years, going so far as to produce proprietary software that publishes Non-commodity content based on companies’ real-world roofing jobs.
Sullivan’s tips for AI search success were very precise:
- Follow SEO fundamentals
- Make use of structured data
- Have a great page experience
- More than anything else, unique, authentic, non-commodity content
What Roofing SEO Fundamentals Are Left?
I work with roofing contractors, and their tolerance for industry jargon is very low. That’s why terms like fundamentals are often vague enough for marketing agencies to exploit in their sales pitches.
For many agencies, fundamentals can include blogging, mass-producing doorway city pages, and paying for high-risk, low-relevance backlinks.
In less extreme cases, fundamentals can be presented as publishing 2-3 new pieces of content per week, a concept popularized in the 2010s but unfounded in the modern search era.
From my experience with SEO for roofers, these are the fundamentals:
- Crawling and indexing
- Site structure and hierarchy
- Consistent contact information
- Entity building: Google Business Profile, directory listings, social media activity
What Our Roofing SEO Agency’s Data Says About Commodity Content
The results collected across client campaigns tell a consistent story: roofers who publish documentation of real jobs outperform roofers who publish generic content, and they do it faster than most agencies would have you believe.
Here is what the data actually looks like.
Brothers Roofing
Launched a brand new domain in a city of over 20,000 people, which is one of the harder SEO starting positions a contractor can face. Using DataPins alongside our standard SEO buildout, their website traffic increased 578.6% in the first 60 days.
Within three months, they held the #1 position in both the Google Map 3-Pack and organic results for emergency roof repair, with their organic listing earning a featured snippet.
Over 100 pins in under six months gave Google enough branded signaling to index the site approximately 10 times faster than comparable new domains.
Duluth Roofing Company
Launched its new website in late October 2025 and recorded just five organic visits that month. In November, organic visits climbed to 120, a 2,300% increase in a single month.
Within that same window, the company ranked #1 in both organic and map results for 34 distinct keywords, with Google Business Profile impressions clearing 100 per month.
The 80+ pins dropped in month one gave Google a clear picture of the company’s work, location, and service breadth before most campaigns would have even started.
Centennial Roofing
Accumulated over 1,300 pins in under six months, with a portion of those converted from historical job data rather than live check-ins. In the 90 days following launch, their website traffic increased 336.6%, reaching 1,200 total visits.
Their 600+ Google reviews and BBB accreditation helped them clear Google’s E-E-A-T threshold, and their site was subsequently cited in Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT for roofing queries in the Nashville metro.
Force Field Roofing
Shows what consistent DataPins usage looks like at scale over a longer campaign. After joining in August 2019, their traffic increased 3,450.5% over a 12-month period, reaching 3,400 visits.
A single pin documenting a 29-gauge classic rib roof installation on a new construction barn, a query most keyword tools would never flag as a target, produced a #1 organic ranking for that specialty term.
Over 50% of organic clicks in most roofing campaigns come from long-tail and hidden terms. That pin is a working example of why.
SCC Commercial and Metal Roofing
Documents the commercial side of what happens when jobsite content meets AI search. Their DataPins check-ins generated over 1,000 long-tail keywords and search visibility across 40+ Kentucky cities.
One check-in documenting a Flexion XL single-ply membrane installation in Falmouth, KY, produced a Google AI Overview that includes a dedicated “Local Context” section attributing the project directly to SCC by name.
A second check-in documenting a church roof repair in Vanceburg, KY, a market no standard keyword research tool would surface, produced both a Google AI Overview citation and the #1 organic ranking for that query.
SCC also ranks in the Map Pack for commercial roof coatings in Lexington, KY, a city roughly 65 miles from their headquarters, with Google’s own justification reading: “Their website mentions roof coatings.”
That last data point deserves a closer look. Google is not just ranking these companies for the keywords their agencies targeted.
It is reading their jobsite documentation and generating citations from it. The signal that drove SCC’s Lexington Map Pack appearance was not a doorway page or a backlink; it was content about real work, published at the time of the job.
This is what Sullivan meant by unique, authentic, non-commodity content. Agencies still mass-producing city pages and recycled blog posts are optimizing for a version of Google that no longer exists.
Commodity Content vs. Non-Commodity Content for Roofers
“Downloaded or AI-generated image of generic rooftop.
“7 ways to winterize your roof”
“We use quality shingles and are insured.”
“Hail is widely known to damage your roof.”
A tight shot of a critically flashed chimney or complex valley transition before shingles cover it.
“3 layers of old shingles hid rotted decking. We replaced 4 sheets of plywood and upgraded underlayment.”
“Local code requires 4 nails, so we used 6 on this high-wind ridge to ensure the warranty holds.”
“Found a high-water mark behind the skylight with no saddle installed. Here’s how we rerouted it.”
Google’s Long-Standing Effort to Devalue Commodity Content
The 2022 Helpful Content Update is where most SEOs mark the turning point, but Google’s dissatisfaction with commodity content started earlier.
The 2018 Medic Update introduced widespread E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, Trust) discussions across the industry and quietly signaled that not all content would be treated equally going forward.
The problem was that the signal was vague enough for agencies to work around it. “Add an author bio” became the standard response, and the content mills kept running.
Introduced E-A-T discussions industry-wide. First signal that not all content would be treated equally but vague enough for agencies to sidestep with author bios.
Signal: discount low-expertise contentFirst time Google named the problem directly. Introduced a site-wide classifier, a pattern of low-quality content could suppress the entire domain, not just individual pages.
Signal: site-wide suppression beginsHelpful Content folded into core ranking. Google added “Experience” to E-A-T. Expertise means knowing a topic, Experience means doing it. Reddit began outranking polished agency blogs.
Signal: first-hand experience now rankedThe biggest inflection point. Explicitly targeted scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and parasite SEO, followed by mass deindexing. The message shifted from discounting to removing.
Signal: mass deindexing of commodity contentChanged the economics of commodity content permanently. Generic content is summarized by AI with no attribution. Only pages with information AI can’t synthesize elsewhere earn clicks and citations.
Signal: generic content earns zero clicksClosing the remaining loopholes. The industry has run out of workarounds. What Danny Sullivan said in Toronto is not a new direction, it’s the conclusion of a decade-long process.
Signal: no workarounds remainHelpful Content Update (2022)
The Helpful Content Update was the first time Google named the problem directly. It targeted content written for search engines rather than people, introduced a site-wide classifier, meaning a pattern of low-quality content could suppress an entire domain, not just an individual page.
The update explicitly called out unoriginal summaries, mass-produced articles, and content lacking first-hand experience. For the first time, commodity content was a documented liability rather than a vague concern.
Refinements and Reinforcement (2023)
Google spent 2023 tightening the screws. The Helpful Content system was folded into core ranking rather than operating as a standalone signal, and Google added the first “E” to what became E-E-A-T: Experience.
The distinction matters. Expertise means you know about a topic. Experience means you have done it. A roofing agency writing generic shingle installation guides has expertise in the same way a Wikipedia editor does. A roofer documenting an actual job has experience. Google was telling the industry it could tell the difference.
Core Updates Emphasizing Experience (2023–2024)
The pattern that emerged across the 2023 core updates confirmed it: templated, thin, and scaled content started losing ground to forums, user-generated content, and real first-person accounts.
Reddit outranking polished agency blog posts was not an algorithm glitch. It was the algorithm working as intended.
March 2024 Core + Spam Updates
The March 2024 Core and Spam Updates were the biggest inflection point. Google explicitly targeted scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and parasite SEO, then followed through with mass deindexing of affiliate content farms and repurposed authority domains.
The message shifted from “we are discounting commodity content” to “we are removing it.”
AI Overviews Expansion
The AI Overviews expansion in late 2024 changed the economics of commodity content permanently. When Google’s AI summarizes a generic blog post and presents the answer directly in search results, the page that wrote the post stops receiving clicks.
Generic content is now consumed by AI and passed along without attribution. The only pages that earn clicks and citations from AI systems are the ones containing information the AI cannot synthesize from other sources: specific jobs, specific locations, specific materials, real documented work.
2025–2026 Spam Updates
The 2025 and 2026 spam updates have continued closing the remaining loopholes. At this point, the industry has run out of workarounds. What Sullivan said in Toronto is not a new direction for Google. It is the conclusion of a process that has been underway for nearly a decade.
What This Means for Your Roofer SEO Strategy
Google’s recent statements are an example of saying the quiet part out loud regarding SEO.
As we’ve outlined, their actions have indicated a clear, repeated philosophical shift toward valuing unique content based on demonstrated first-hand experience, and away from commodity blog posts such as “7 tips to winterize your roof.”
While it remains a challenge to convince local roofing companies of this shift, our internal data speaks for itself. From thousands of new indexed keywords to 2,300% increases in organic traffic, shifting away from commodity content toward unique, original, first-hand content is driving SEO success.
By combining the fundamentals with structured data, great page experiences, and the brand of content that Google is publicly and explicitly asking for, you position your local roofing business to thrive in the new era of SEO.
