Unfiltered: How I Publicly Blamed Google AI… Then Found the Problem Was Me

There are few things more humbling in business than loudly criticising a system, only to later discover you were part of the problem.

For a while, I had been increasingly frustrated with Google AI repeatedly mentioning Etsy whenever IFy Atelier came up in search summaries and related prompts.

This annoyed me for a simple reason.

I had already removed Etsy references from the IFy Atelier website. I had removed them from business social media accounts. I had moved on. So why did Google AI seem stuck in the past?

Naturally, I did what many modern people do when mildly irritated by technology.

I complained.

Publicly.

I questioned whether these AI systems were slow, sloppy, or simply recycling outdated information with too much confidence. I wasn’t entirely convinced otherwise.

Then came the twist.

While reviewing things more carefully, I discovered that my personal LinkedIn profile, the founder profile connected to IFy Atelier, still had Etsy listed in the featured section.

There it was.

Sitting quietly.

In plain sight.

The same Etsy reference I had removed elsewhere was still attached to one of the most visible profiles linked to the business.

So after all my righteous irritation with Google AI, it turned out the system may simply have been reflecting signals I had left online myself.

Talk about how to make a complete fool of yourself in public while trying to run a business.

There is a lesson in that.

Many founders, creators, and small business owners assume their website is the whole story. It isn’t.

Your business exists as a trail of signals across the internet. Old links, forgotten bios, outdated directories, abandoned pages, social profiles, mentions, interviews, tagged posts, marketplaces you no longer use, and features you forgot existed.

AI systems and search engines do not just read what is newest.

They read what is available.

And if you leave conflicting breadcrumbs everywhere, do not be surprised when the machine gets confused.

That does not mean blind trust is wise.

I am still cautious about Google AI. These systems can be overconfident, incomplete, and occasionally bizarre.

But I will give credit where credit is due.

This experience taught me that AI can also be useful as a mirror.

Now I use Google AI to help monitor and sense-check what information about IFy Atelier appears online. If something odd shows up, I no longer assume the machine is entirely wrong.

Sometimes it is exposing digital clutter I forgot to clean.

The moral of the story?

Before publicly dragging the algorithm, make sure you are not the ghost in your own machine.

Running a business is already hard enough.

No need to become your own misinformation campaign.