The train line that doesn't exist
Platapode
The Google Ads account belonged to a specialist surgeon on the other side of the bridge.
The ads sent people to a landing page the SEO side also looked after. The page kept changing. A paragraph here, new URLs there, old ones deleted, indexing requested on empty pages the ads were sending traffic to. None of it was ever mentioned.
It wasn't the only account like that.
The business profiles were another story. Imagine being a credible podiatrist with several clinics across some of Sydney's best locations, and finding your business name changed to “Sydney Warts”.
How to get here, apparently
A “How to get here” section appeared on the surgeon's page, written for patients coming from across the bridge, or anywhere else. People only cross that bridge if they have to. Surgery, apparently, counts.
It told them to catch a train service that doesn't exist.
Read it twice... Has to have been AI.
The person updating the page lived in Melbourne, so fair enough. He wouldn't necessarily know Sydney's trains. Half of Sydney doesn't... an innocent mistake.
A wart on purpose, a train by accident
The “Sydney Warts” change was deliberate. Someone decided a keyword was worth putting a wart on a perfectly good foot.
It wasn't a great decision, but at least someone had made it. You knew who to pull up on it.
The train line was different.
Nobody had decided to put it there. Nobody had checked it either.
Did it matter whether AI wrote it?
Not really.
AI or a guess from Melbourne, a patient following those directions would be just as lost.
With AI or without it, the useful question is who checked it.
- Maya
