Google’s Original Name Backrub

Meredith's Husband 0:33

Do you know what Google was called before it was called Google? Oh, I I did once and now Yeah, because I've probably mentioned it in a previous episode, but it's not something I would expect you or anyone to remember. It was called Backrub. What? Yeah, backrub.

Meredith 0:49

No, I don't remember that.

Meredith's Husband 0:50

Backrub was the name of Google before it was called.

Meredith 0:53

Get out.

Meredith's Husband 0:54

Yeah, pretty terrible, huh?

Meredith 0:55

Back like that's one of the worst.

Meredith's Husband 0:58

Yeah. Because it was all built on backlinks. So we've talked about how important links are to SEO and to Google, and how another word for links is backlinks. The way websites link to each other is called backlinks. I don't know.

Meredith 1:14

That's just gross.

Meredith's Husband 1:16

But that is what the two guys who founded Google called it. And it was only when they got a CEO that the CEO was like, okay, priority number one, we gotta change the name.

Meredith 1:27

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 1:27

And then that became Google.

Meredith 1:29

I don't think Google would be Google if it was called Backrub.

Meredith's Husband 1:33

Can you imagine if they had kept that instead of saying, oh, you can Google it? We could say, oh, just back rub it.

Meredith 1:38

Oh God, no. No, no. No, I cannot. And I do not wish to.

Meredith's Husband 1:43

Yeah. Right.

Meredith 1:45

Wow.

Terms Updates And AI Liability

Meredith's Husband 1:45

Have you been getting those emails about updated terms and service recently?

Meredith 1:50

Every day.

Meredith's Husband 1:52

I have been getting a whole bunch of them recently.

Meredith 1:54

And updated terms too, right?

Meredith's Husband 1:57

Yeah. And like I got three of them yesterday from pretty pretty big companies. And I looked at the, I just read them, and to me, they're all saying exactly the same thing.

Meredith 2:05

I haven't even read them. What are they doing?

Meredith's Husband 2:11

They're saying you could you can't sue us because of AI generated content on our platforms. That's what I that's what I think is behind all this. You know, they put a whole bunch of flowery legal language around it. So it's kind of who knows, but I think that's what's happening.

Meredith 2:28

Yeah, people are are starting to plant seeds of protection, and we don't have anything to do with this, and our hands are clean.

Meredith's Husband 2:36

Yeah.

Tagging AI Generated Profiles

Meredith's Husband 2:36

And and uh the one another reason why I think this is because also there's been a lot of news from the social media platforms that they are gonna have to tag AI generated profiles.

Meredith 2:51

Oh, they're gonna tag them.

Meredith's Husband 2:53

Profiles. So there are entire profiles that are just an AI generated character, person, an entity. And so they they need to be designated as such. Okay,

Watermarks And Hidden Text Fingerprints

Meredith's Husband 3:05

that's new. Also, I think what you were saying is they also now are going to be watermarking images generated by AI. So the actual tools that generate these things are not the social media platforms, but also also the text.

Meredith 3:21

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 3:21

They are what they call watermarking the text.

Meredith 3:24

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 3:25

So that when it when text is generated by AI, there is a fingerprint in there that human that we could never detect, but that other AIs students. Yeah. Now, Google has already done this. They've already implemented.

Meredith 3:39

Um Claude did it.

Meredith's Husband 3:41

Anthropic has announced this, and it's not completely live yet. And OpenAI has initially said, Yeah, we're gonna do it too, and then they very quietly said no, we're not. Oh motherfuckers. Which is what they always seem to do.

Meredith 3:53

Right? Slimes.

Meredith's Husband 3:55

Yeah. But anyway, I was thinking about this.

Meredith 3:58

Yes.

Why Generic AI Blogs Stand Out

Meredith's Husband 3:59

And I was thinking, well, it's going to be now even more important when you are creating blogs and you're having AI help you create blogs. Yeah. If you just give AI a simple prompt and have it create a blog for you, that's going to be very identifiable as AI generated content in the not too distant future.

Meredith 4:15

I was just saying this.

Meredith's Husband 4:16

And that's not necessarily bad. Right. Like most of what is ranking on Google is, I would say, partially, probably more than 50-50 AI generated, but not completely AI generated.

Meredith 4:31

Uh-huh. Do you think people can just easily like copy what they have from Claude, put it in notes, rewrite it, retype it out, and then they're like, ah, see, suckers.

Meredith's Husband 4:43

Yeah, but we don't know what I mean, first that could be a lot of work. And then we don't know what the fingerprint is. Like, there's a very good chance you could do all that, and then the the fingerprint is still there.

Meredith 4:54

Yeah, true.

Google Indexing Gets More Strict

Meredith's Husband 4:55

And then also separately, I have also been noticing it's this firsthand experience of watching what pages get indexed on Google from people's websites, they are becoming more and more strict about what even gets into the index.

Meredith 5:11

Wow.

Meredith's Husband 5:11

Now I don't even I don't mean like what ranks well and what does not rank well. I mean what is even included in Google. A lot a lot of things are not being included. And this did not used to be the case. No. Now I have I have to think this is all kind of a result of the same thing and the explosion of AI generated content.

Meredith 5:32

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 5:32

To me, that's my read on the situation. And

Planning Content Without AI Shortcuts

Meredith's Husband 5:35

what I th I think this is important again for small business owners, if you have a blog, you got to do more work on your own, at least in planning your content.

Meredith 5:46

Right.

Meredith's Husband 5:46

Okay. Be very specific in, you know, like I like I said, we don't know what the fingerprint is.

Meredith 5:52

No.

Meredith's Husband 5:52

So I don't I can't I can't really tell you how to avoid it or whatever. Right. But make sure make sure you're not just having AI content generated for you. Because there's a there's an increasingly good chance it will never even get into Google.

Meredith 6:06

Yeah, I think that alone is a good first step.

Meredith's Husband 6:12

Yeah. And this is still like Early Days. This is like hot off the press type. Like this story, I essentially I would say is essentially still developing. Like I don't really know where it's going, and so I I can't give you a whole lot of specifics into what to do and how to use this information, but just be aware of it.

Meredith 6:30

I think everything that you've been saying all along has been stay authentic to you, write for clients, not Google.

Meredith's Husband 6:38

Yeah, know your audience right from your own perspective. That's that's like the big takeaway. Right from your perspective, what experience can you add? What information? Anytime you can add

Add Specific Facts Only You Know

Meredith's Husband 6:50

to your content facts and figures, names, dates, uh specifics, that's going to be really good because AI doesn't, or at least it's not supposed to generate that sort of stuff on its own. But just the more concrete factual stuff you can include, the better.

Meredith 7:06

Good to know. Thank you.

Meredith's Husband 7:07

And start all your videos by saying, hi, I'm a human.