So last week one of my teeth decided to rebrand, which has been pretty unchill.
And whenever I’m at the dentist… I practice escapism.
I can be an anxious apricot and for that reason I’m most vulnerable in a bib, under what always registers as a UFO search light, and with my mouth open wide enough it could swallow a small island.
This time, with Google’s latest quality update blowing up my feed, I had a lot on my mind.
So escape came pretty easily—even as my tooth went through a narrative workshop.
-
For those of you that don’t know, Google announced that it's cracking down on AI-generated, low-quality content.
The Search Engine Journal predicts that 40% of content will be de-ranked.
40%?
That’s a lot of content.
This is objectively a “win” for Copycat (and for all creatives striving for excellence), but despite this, there’s something in it that’s left me rather aggravated.
How many businesses will get that month-end report, only to see that their SEO rankings plummeted?
How many of those businesses hired SEO teams, entrusting them with a dwindling cash reserve to lead a “promising, new content strategy,” only to end up at the Fyre Festival.
How many didn’t (or still don’t) know?
-
And beyond that, to what end?
What does that say about this industry? The zeitgeist?
Turnkey marketers, AI content SEO teams, “spray and pray” publishing tactics… it’s like there’s a virus deep in the system that’s started to look like normal code.
I was talking to Kevin Lisowski about this phenomenon, and he dressed a sentiment as a question... it registered like an uppercut:
If an agency (or individual) is selling low effort, quick grab AI content, what long-term good are they providing? What public good are they providing?
The only private “good” is in the hyper-local sense where —for a quarter —shareholders are happy with results. Then it’s off to the next exploitative tactic to keep growth propped up with more unsustainable strategies that slowly kills the grass around us.
It feels a lot like screaming at Anakin in Revenge of the Sith (Episode III).
“Please Anny, make it make sense!”
-
You know, this dentist might be deleting my molar…
But he’s leaving my mouth better than he found it.
And at Copycat, that’s what we want to do…
We want to leave the internet a bit more resourceful by improving content quality, validating consumers’ intellect, and helping brands illustrate their most authentic story.
So anyhow, I think of Google’s update a lot like basic human decency.
I forget that it bears repeating.
Chief Executive Officer at Rellify
3moSuch a great reflection of the hard work and dedication of an extraordinary team with a great vision for the best approach to AI, executed step by step, with unwavering focus and passion!