Meredith's husband: 0:24

Recently, we, you and I both or actually I found it, but I sent it to you and we both watched some videos on YouTube which we thought were really great, because they talked about something that is of a lot of interest to us right now, and the videos were basically just or at least I thought they were snippets taken from a speech that a very well-known psychologist was giving. I won't name the person, it doesn't really matter. In watching the video, it seemed to me and one of the skills actually, I won't call it a skill, because a skill implies that it was developed but a weird ability that I seem to have is to recognize voices.

Meredith: 1:05

Yeah, you are incredible with voices.

Meredith's husband: 1:08

Has provided absolutely no value in my life at all, but I seem to be really good at it.

Meredith: 1:14

You're really good at it.

Meredith's husband: 1:15

And so in watching this video, I could tell that this person I know this person. I don't follow them, but I know them well enough to know their voice.

Meredith: 1:23

Yeah, I should say I don't know them at all Right, but I have listened to them enough to know their voice. You are familiar with their voice. Yes, I know their voice.

Meredith's husband: 1:31

This was their voice, as far as I could tell, but it sounded like it was speeded up somehow. It sounded like the pauses had been removed, so he was just straight talking for like 30 minutes. And it's best to note that the video was a still image with some, you know, like a little bit of stuff going on over it yeah, which is which you're right is kind of a red flag but, also not totally uncommon.

Meredith: 1:57

Not necessarily.

Meredith's husband: 1:58

Yeah, but anyway. So I did a little bit of research because I wanted to see where that was coming from, because I thought it had. I thought maybe what was happening was either it was sped up just to make it seem more exciting, which people do Sometimes. I know this as a podcaster. This is not sped up.

Meredith: 2:16

Oh no, Although there is One listener who does listen to it at 1.25.

Meredith's husband: 2:20

Yeah, I have been. No, it's 1.21. I've been told that I can be listened to at speed 1.21 exactly, and it doesn't sound like I have been sped up. But, our episodes are like 10 minutes long. I know Really.

Meredith: 2:34

Yes, yes, yes, people need to do whatever they need to do.

Meredith's husband: 2:38

Anyway, I thought that this had been sped up. I did a little bit of research on it because I thought it was taken from an actual speech that this person gave, and so it turns out no, completely fake, completely false. This person has never, ever, talked about the subject that we listened to, which was surprising, because it was really good, yeah, and it really sounded like the arguments that he would use to me. Like I said, I've listened to him before and it was like, yeah, that's totally what he would say or what I would expect.

Meredith: 3:13

He would say but no, do you know what's interesting Is? I Googled this person and the subject they were talking about. Yes, so did I, and I couldn't find anything.

Meredith's husband: 3:23

Right, right, you've nailed the point today.

Meredith: 3:26

I did yet again.

Meredith's husband: 3:28

So for Google, there is an incentive to not put fake results in their results. For social, there is no incentive for that. In fact, it's almost the opposite they're just creating more views and people are spending more time. It's almost the opposite they're just creating more views and people are spending more time. And I read a really interesting article about this a few years ago. How you know social media platforms like Instagram, facebook, youtube, all these things they have rules that say you know, you're not supposed to put up, you're not supposed to create fake accounts.

Meredith: 3:57

Right.

Meredith's husband: 3:57

Tons and tons of people do, and this I think it cited some people who used to work at one of those platforms and they have absolutely zero incentive to crack down on that. It's just a rule they put up for, like to make you know, to say like hey, to make people peep. To make people peep To make people peel safe. Yes, exactly.

Meredith: 4:19

And that they're not wasting their time on false information.

Meredith's husband: 4:23

Right, yeah, so social media, including YouTube, which is owned by Google, but it's still social media there isn't really no incentive. There is incentive for Google, like I said In fact, that's how I did my research is, I went to Google, same with you. We went to Google and we found out all that stuff was fake. I found tons of other of those similar videos Really Tons of them. Several different channels all doing the was fake. I found tons of other of those similar videos really tons of them, several different channels all doing the same thing.

Meredith: 4:46

And the thing that tripped me was I thought it sounded a little it just there was something that was off. But at one point the speaker said what's important is to live Like you you know, and he mispronounced live. And then, yeah, it was live. Yeah, and I thought and similarly there he.

Meredith's husband: 5:07

In some point during the video he referenced carl jung yes and he said john, I'm like well, as a, as a psychologist, he's gonna know how to pronounce young. Yeah, um, and that was that's. That's kind of why I then went and did the research. In doing that research, I went a little deeper after finding out that this was false and like how easy is it to create stuff like that? Well, it turns out it's very easy. It is extremely easy. So there are websites that you just go to and you can pick a celebrity, a huge list of celebrities, and they'll say anything that you want. And even for free you can do like a one minute or something, get out. But if you sign up, okay, and there were a lot of them.

Meredith: 5:52

Because Mel Robbins also has one where you see her voice and I swear it's AI. Yeah, I mean you hear her voice and you just see a static picture.

Meredith's husband: 6:03

Yes, and I thought I would be able to tell with my weird voice ability. I used to be able to, but with these ones that I did just as a test on these websites, I couldn't tell Wow, I couldn't tell they're really good, they're really easy, they're really cheap, and so my expectation is that content like this is going to just explode.

Meredith's husband: 6:28

I mean, it is already the fact that there's any of it, but like this, the channel that I looked up, as I said, they had probably at least 50 different videos across three, four different channels, getting I don't know how many views, but probably millions.

Meredith: 6:45

And they monetize that.

Meredith's husband: 6:46

Yes, and so they monetize it and there's no. So I'll talk a little bit about, I guess, what some other giveaways might be. When you see a channel like that, if there are no links to a website, there are no links at all in the show notes, or there are no show notes, or it just links back to the YouTube channel and that's it, that is also kind of, I think, a red flag.

Meredith: 7:07

It's self-contained.

Meredith's husband: 7:09

And I'll tell you why, and this is also why this is going to be important and what people can take away from this and what you can do to your own website.

Meredith's husband: 7:18

So something that is really important to Google and it really always has been, but even more so now in this age of AI-generated content is what they call EAT, eat, e-a-t. It's an acronym, it stands for well, actually now it's E-E-A-T. It used to be E-A-T and it stood for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Oh, wow. And recently in, I think within the last two years-ish.

Meredith: 7:46

Electronic.

Meredith's husband: 7:48

No Experience, because experience, I guess, is a little bit different than expertise. I kind of don't know why they did that, because if you have expertise, it seems like you certainly are going to have experience.

Meredith: 8:00

You certainly are going to have some experience.

Meredith's husband: 8:02

I certainly have experience. You certainly are going to have some experience. I certainly have experience I certainly hope.

Meredith's husband: 8:05

So that is, and there's a little bit of controversy around this, because people are always talking about what are the ranking factors for Google? What does Google look at to determine its ranking? And eat is a very important one, but it's not a specific thing that you can do. It's not like improving your title tags. It's more of a conceptual thing. It's more of, I would call it, the goal of Google. So it's important, but how you do it? There is some controversy, like what exactly does it mean? And what Google has said about it is that the best way that you can think about it is if you are a user, a visitor to a website, what would make you trust that website? What would make you think that the person or the company speaking has expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness? Authoritativeness and trustworthiness whatever you come up with, whatever would improve your trust in that company, that website. That's what it is.

Meredith's husband: 9:09

So that's been the answer. So it's kind of a vague kind of circular, kind of argument.

Meredith's husband: 9:14

It's kind of a half rule that has many loopholes, but it is very important, especially with the rise of AI content, and the reason that they, I think, started talking about this in the first place was when evaluating and trying to rank websites that had to do with health, financial advice, like things that could really really impact a person's life. Like if a website is going to give you false information about health or your finances which there are websites that do this but Google essentially they don't want to promote those websites, obviously, so this EAT it was EAT then was really important for those types of sites. Eat for my money is going to become increasingly important nowadays also yeah, but how are they going to differentiate?

Meredith's husband: 10:01

So the question that most people have about this is what does that mean? What can you do? Now, it differs for like my clients versus a small business owner like yourself. Yeah, Okay. So for clients it could be things like links to external articles that people have published, or university alumni or awards, accreditations. There are things for a small business owner. Typically you're not going to have those same options, but along those lines you can think about something as simple as testimonials. Testimonials are certainly a sign of trustworthiness and experience.

Meredith's husband: 10:44

Now you can fake testimonials, but take the same approach. Could you link to your Google review page? You can't fake that, something like that. So, like I said, you kind of have to use your creativity in how you are going to show this. Something else, a very detailed or not very detailed, but your about page is an opportunity. Do you have articles you have published somewhere else? Do you have anything like that Along the same lines, an author page? So you have a blog.

Meredith's husband: 11:16

Whenever you write a blog, on any platform, it's going to keep track of the authors of individual blog articles, right, and usually it will link to the author of a blog. It will be separate from your about page, like this happens on WordPress Squarespace. I would have also an author page and in the author page, you know, can you list it? Can you list where you went to school or where you learned photography, or do you have any awards or anything? So it's good to have an author page. I think, in addition to your about page, you can get links, like a link from a. I will link to your site from this podcast. A link from a podcast is very valuable Really. Yes, because think about it, of course, in order to have a link from a podcast. You got to have a podcast, so you got to be somewhat serious about whatever you're doing. Yeah, if you're in, that reminds me there are. I didn't know this, but there are tons and tons and tons and tons of podcasts with only one episode.

Meredith's husband: 12:17

Oh, yeah, and and probably some of those at least, was you wanted to get a link from a podcast, because when you do a podcast you have a link on Spotify, on Apple, on all these different podcast platforms.

Meredith: 12:29

I thought you were going to say a lot of podcasts are AI.

Meredith's husband: 12:34

Oh, not yet.

Meredith: 12:35

They will be. How much do you want to bet?

Meredith's husband: 12:40

So a link from a podcast would be great. Links to and from places where you volunteer those would be hard to fake. Link from your Google business profile to your social media sites that's another giveaway is fake content like that. They're not going to link to probably a whole bunch of social media sites. That just means because their whole goal is to just set up something and monetize it on YouTube. They don't want to also have to create a realistic looking profile on other sites.

Meredith: 13:12

So I'm also wondering whose speech was that AI saying?

Meredith's husband: 13:18

Well, it was probably based on stuff that that person had actually said. That's actually relatively easy to do Really.

Meredith: 13:27

Yes, they didn't just plug in somebody's other, someone else's speech and have it said in their voice.

Meredith's husband: 13:35

I don't think so, because then, well, we could test that we could take some of the speech and then paste that into Google and figure it out. I don't think that was the case, though, because I'm just interested in it.

Meredith's husband: 13:48

Because some. I'll tell you why. Because because I checked, because I thought the same thing there are, there are several different videos that are identical in what they are saying, but the words are all different. So I think it was. It is based on something, and I will tell you. There are AI tools where you can just feed in a bunch of anyone's podcast, including this one, and say, okay, build a model around the contents of everything this person has said.

Meredith: 14:14

And have it be voiced by Keanu.

Meredith's husband: 14:17

Yeah, no-transcript, but the tools that are doing this so far are either in beta and only released to like really big influencers, podcasters, or they're pretty expensive, so they're not or they're not, or or they're not expensive and they're also not very good. So, yeah, anyway. So I thought that, like this EAT concept is probably worth a fuller, like a full episode of things you might want to do to help prepare you for the onslaught of AI content, but I'm curious what people would think, so I'm going to put a link below to an Instagram post. It's not fake, it's generated by me, and if you do want to hear a fuller episode about how to improve your EAT, then just like that post. So I know at least if nobody likes it.

Meredith: 15:38

I'm not going to do it. No, I'm not going to waste our time.

Meredith's husband: 15:41

I hope that helps. Does that help yeah?