AI and SEO: How We’re Adapting to Google’s Search Shift (ft. Patrick Scully)

Sean
Have you ever done a Google search and gotten the answer without clicking on a website? That’s not a glitch. That is AI trying to rewrite how we do search. If you’re an SEO, if you’re a contractor and you use SEO to drive leads, the game is changing and tools like ChatGPT and Google are shifting attention away from traditional websites. If you’re not paying attention, if you’re not prepared, you’re going to see a drop. Today I am joined once again by Patrick, our SEO specialist. And we’re going to be talking about what AI search can actually do right now, why Bing and ChatGPT are more important than you think, and how you can build a content strategy that still gets you found. So Patrick, let’s dive right into it. Let’s talk about what can Google Search AI search do right now? 

Patrick
Yeah, it’s moving pretty rapidly. Kind of new features almost come out daily or weekly at this point. It started with AI overviews showing at the top of Google searches, pushing kind of traditional blue links down the page, even map sections and things of that nature. And has moved on to their new AI mode search, which is similar to a ChatGPT experience where you can kind of ask follow up questions and get an instant answer directly on Google search page, oftentimes without having to click out to another website or. Yeah, that kind of thing. 

Sean
So yeah, and that’s moving quick. And the mode that you can switch to, it’s a conversational search rather than exactly a question and answer, I guess. 

Patrick
Yep, that’s right. The standard would be called standard search. It would just be kind of a traditional search where you’re putting in kind of shorter keyword, kind of exact match queries that you want to find out about versus now people moving to more of a question style search oftentimes literally with a question mark, you know, a full sentence, which again introduces more intricacies into ranking for that. Because people ask questions in all different ways and their words vary and it’s almost like this infinite amount of queries now because people are just saying a different word here, a different word there, which seems to kind of change the results that you might get. 

Sean
Cool. So how is that going to change things now? That’s conversational. 

Patrick
Yeah, I mean as far as SEO goes, the biggest change right now is essentially moving from a full page algorithm to more of a chunk algorithm or a passages. So it’s something that’s looking for even a paragraph, a couple sentences in let’s say a blog post or an article. That you’ve written on your site versus saying, is this full page the best answer to this person’s search? That’s kind of how it’s always been. Google ranks web pages, not websites. So they kind of put up 10 links of, hey, these are the best web pages. You may find your answer one of these pages. Now it’s looking for a few concise sentences or a paragraph or a list of bullet points or a table of data in your content and pulling that out. 

Patrick
And the answer could involve a mix of content or these kind of chunks of content from several different websites. So you want to be included in that, but it’s not always just going to be kind of your content that’s showing anymore. So that’s kind of. We’re optimizing content to really be, again, very concise. Answer the question. Whereas you used to kind of write in a more storytelling fashion of getting people into the post. And then maybe about halfway through, you know, get into the meat of it and really teach people what, you know, they came to that article for. Now it’s more, get the question on the page, answer that question concisely. And then below that you can go into a little bit more in depth, you know, like storytelling or whatever, you know, other information you want to share. 

Patrick
But getting that, trying to get that snippet either onto, you know, an AI overview at the top of a Google search or in another kind of AI mode search that you may be doing. 

Sean
So, yeah, that was gonna be my next question was, you know, because story still has to be important. Because, I mean, if people are on your site, you still want to give them an experience, right? Because if you’re on their site, if they’re on your site and they get the answer and they bounce away, that’s still gonna show up bad, right? Do those rules still. Are those rules still going to apply? 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
It’S kind of building that brand trust and, you know, especially in the kind of design build space where people are starting their searches with trends and ideas and brainstorming and getting inspiration for their project and seeing what’s in right now. So that can be, you know, 20, 30 questions. They search on Google or ChatGPT or something like that before they actually search, you know, remodeler near me or something like that. So just being that brand that’s featured in those searches and saying, okay, I may not get the click through to my website, but I want to be that, you know, trusted name in my area that’s providing the answer to these Questions, it’s accepting that’s kind of how search is moving and adapting to that kind of new way of, hey, I’m going to probably provide answer. 

Patrick
I may not get the click to my website right now, but I’m building kind of long term investing in that brand trust through this style of content. 

Sean
Okay, now should people be worried? Like people have been building their content for years in a certain way for search. Like you were just saying, the way we’re creating information on the website is we’re getting straight to the answer. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So that we get the snippet at least and then building, you know, the story after that. People who have content that is old but ranks well now, should they be considering going back and changing that or. 

Patrick
Yeah, there’s definitely some things you can go back and kind of update to make sure that we call it AI ready. So your content is ready and available for when ChatGPT comes and wants to scrape answer. It’s able to be found easily for you. I suspect, like with any kind of big change in the search marketing world, a lot of it’s going to be kind of based on user experience and user testing and what these big companies like Google and OpenAI see out of their users. Are people liking the answers they’re getting? Are they clicking on links? Are they searching again really quickly to get another answer? 

Patrick
And so we may optimize for these concise answers and we may see it kind of drift back into, hey, now people are getting on sites and all they’re getting are these really concise, like there’s no storytelling, it’s just these quick answers. And we may shift a little bit back into like what people want to read. But for now what we’re doing is going back into that content, making sure it’s accurate. Because you know, if you wrote a piece of four or five years ago, there’s been updates, there’s new stuff, there’s new data that you can probably introduce. Making sure if you linked out to any like external websites or external sources, those links are still working, they’re still valid, they’re still, you know, that data isn’t outdated. 

Patrick
So updating your external links that you’re pointing out to give your kind of readers, you know, more information is important and then introducing kind of long style questions, making sure those questions are in your content. Whereas you used to maybe have like a keyword matched, let’s say a H2 heading to on your webpage, you may have just had that exact keyword that you think people are searching for to rank that page. Now you’re trying to get that answer below that heading into a AI generated answer. So shifting those headings into more like long questions is something that we’re seeing a lot of results from right now. 

Sean
And so H2, for those who aren’t too familiar, that would be like the title of like the blog post, right? 

Patrick
It would be more of like if you were writing an essay, it would be like the headings of your different sections of that essay. So it wouldn’t be the title of it would be. 

Sean
That’s H1. 

Patrick
Yeah, exactly. 

Sean
And so that’s important to search because that’s. Google will see those and categorize them so that it knows where to put that information. 

Patrick
Right. So if one of the, if it’s a question that people are actually asking and then directly below that is a nice concise, factual answer to that question, that’s the best format right now for these systems to go out and like, find these answers. So the last thing they want to do is provide like untrustworthy answers because then people won’t use ChatGPT if, you know the information they’re getting isn’t good. 

Sean
Right. 

Patrick
So. 

Sean
And sometimes that’s still the case. 

Patrick
It is, it’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a new technology. It’s always going to be, you know, improving and getting better and they will make mistakes. But the, but for publishers, what we can do is make sure that we are providing accurate content because that’s what they really want to find and provide to their users. 

Sean
So, yeah, I remember it was a big issue like a year ago. And that’s a long time in AI. 

Patrick
World right now for sure. 

Sean
A year ago, 80% of what you got from Chat GPT, which just incorrect information. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
And now it doesn’t happen as much, but it’s still, you definitely need to double check, you know, what you get from them and not just copy and paste. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So I have a very hot button question right now. 

Patrick
All right. 

Sean
If you’re on LinkedIn and you’re looking at any of the content on LinkedIn right now, it’s all about this question and it’s, is ChatGPT replacing Google for me? 

Patrick
No. 

Sean
What about for the rest of the world? 

Patrick
For, for everybody probably has a different opinion on this. 

Sean
It’s very, it’s a very hot button question right now. 

Patrick
The SEO world has always been a little, I don’t want to say scare tactics, but, you know, when the new thing comes out, the old thing is suddenly dead or dying. And it never seems to be that way. It’s really just like evolving. 

Sean
That’s what I hear. See, everywhere Google is dead. Google search is dead. 

Patrick
Yeah, Google’s search has been dead for the last 15 years. So every year it seems to do better and better. And they’re, you know, stock prices go up, so I think they’re doing okay. What they have is about 25, close to 30 years of search experience that OpenAI doesn’t have. Their algorithms have been tweaked and worked on and improved. And, you know, Google search became really kind of good. It didn’t like, just like ChatGPT, it wasn’t always good, especially in local SEO where you know, it wasn’t always the best businesses shown on Google Maps. It was sometimes a little bit more random than that as they worked on their algorithm and their system. So that’s something that they have an advantage of over OpenAI. And actually they know that OpenAI knows that. 

Patrick
I don’t really think it’s their goal to eradicate Google or Bing or search engines. They’re more of a additional tool that you can use. So I don’t think Google’s dead. I don’t think Google’s going anywhere again. Huge, massive company, lots of money in the bank. 

Sean
One of the largest companies in the. 

Patrick
World over, you know, hundreds and hundreds of PhDs working at Google every day, working on their search product. So they’re going to come up with something, they’re going to pivot, they’re going to do what they need to do to stay ahead of the game, because that’s their, you know, they don’t want to lose that ad revenue money and all that kind of stuff. So it’s in their best interest to continue to evolve and make their products better. And at the end of the day, they do have to kind of rely on publishers like small businesses, writing blogs, bloggers, news websites, things of that nature, to provide updated content. Because if they’re just giving generated answers, not based on new content, then it’s going to quickly get outdated. Yeah. 

Patrick
So it’s going to be a race to see who can come up with the best features. And I see it as a, the way that I’m searching now is I may use ChatGPT for inspiration ideas. Hey, I want to do this. What are the possibilities here? And then once I learn that, go over to Google and maybe search for a business near me or something like that. So I’m using It in a blended way. And I kind of see that as what most people are kind of doing these days. 

Sean
Yeah. As someone who uses a lot of AI tools, I’m obsessed. I love AI and that’s kind of how I use a lot of the tools too. It’s all blended. You know, I used to see a lot of this fear mongering when image generators first came out and then video generators. And me being a visual, you know, my career is all in visual medium. Everyone’s very worried like, oh, our jobs are dead. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
And people would post a photo of a dog skydiving and it was like, oh, look at what AI can do. It’s like there are no, there’s no use for someone who is a photo manipulator or an illustrator because I can do it. It’s like, sure, I can do a dog skydiving. But when you want something specific. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
You want something very niche, it’s very difficult still to get. And so what I found was what my tools that I would use a lot is I needed a little bit from this tool added to this tool and a little bit from that to this. And like it was a blending of all the tools. And so you’re saying it’s very similar in the SEO world where it is a blend of a lot of the tools currently? 

Patrick
Yeah, from what I’m seeing, definitely. Yes. And again, it changes based on what industry you may be in. You know, of course, if you’re E commerce, you know, people are still using Google search and ads may be great for you still. And the, you know, the shopping tabs and all that kind of stuff. Local service area businesses, you know, are more reliant on local maps. And like I said, in that design build kind of remodeling or world, it’s a lot of research first. It’s a lot of that stuff. So I think using the AI tools for research is great. And then popping over and still using Google Maps to find reviews and that kind of thing. That’s that blend I think that people are using right now. 

Sean
Yeah. Now you said that Google has like 30 years experience and that’s great. And they’re also a large company and they have a lot of PhDs, but sometimes it’s not about that, in my opinion. You know, ChatGPT got a heads up like they were one of the first ones out there and sometimes that’s all it is. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So what if Google, even though they have all the money, like they still can’t catch up to ChatGPT what then? 

Patrick
Well, then search will continue to shift and OpenAI will have to really make sure that they’re providing, you know, good results. Not just a long answer to a research question. But also if they’re going to get in the local search game, their local search has to be good. Right now it’s not right now it’s really no competition to what Google has. So if they continue to evolve and Google says, hey, I’m into other stuff maybe, but I just don’t really see that happening. I think they’re outside of their cloud services and things of that nature. Their ads, revenue from search is kind of their number one driver of business. 

Sean
So, yeah. 

Patrick
I really just see them improving, coming out with new features. You know, they’re already doing even more stuff with searching by image. You know, you can be in a store and just take a picture of the product you want and bring up reviews. So they’re going to continue moving in that kind of multimodal. If people want to search by video, I’m sure, you know, at some point it’s going to be easy to just kind of shoot aisle of a store and it’ll tell you what product to buy or something of that nature, so. 

Sean
Or where it’s located on that product on that aisle and stuff. Yeah, I’ve been seeing that a lot of apps too, where it’s like Home Depot or whatever. It’s, you know, it’s on this aisle in this section specifically. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
I don’t know if the glasses are going to take off very well, but they’ve kind of always been trying that. But I don’t think people are going to really be wearing glasses like that. 

Sean
I remember when Google Goggles first was announced and I was so psyched for it. Y and that only lasted like a year. They gave up on that very quickly. 

Patrick
Yeah, but that kind of sentiment of being able to just quickly get answers from wherever you are. I mean, the phone changed search, you know, back when it came out. So it’s going to continue to kind of be a blend of, hey, I can pop this thing out of my pocket, literally get a whole answer on what I’m wondering about, then open Google and find some businesses that might be able to help me out with the answers. I just found, like, that’s a lot of power in your pocket. 

Sean
So I remember this is random, but I remember I worked at a retail store before and people used to bring in like printed out sheets of the products that they wanted. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
And like, that was before the phone and now you just have it on your phone at any point in time. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
Before you had to do your research prior. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
And walk into the store with it. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
If there’s something that you didn’t notice in your research, you’re like, oh, well, how do I know about this? Like, how do I know about this product? 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
That’s one of the new kind of cool things I think about the instant answers is it kind of, it teaches you like you don’t know what you don’t know type of thing. Like you don’t know what you don’t know. So when you search, you’re not always maybe searching the right things or like you want inspiration, like it can pop out things that you just hadn’t even thought of before. So I think that’s one of the cool things. 

Sean
Yeah, I agree with you. That’s something I see a lot in my. When I do conversational, like searching is like, I can have a conversation with this thing. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
And it give me like, hey, what did I not think of right? Or what am I missing in this? Like I can give it. 

Patrick
Follow up questions are huge. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
It’s massive. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
I can give it like everything I’ve got. Like, here’s a paragraph of all the research I’ve done. What am I missing out of this? What am I not seeing? Possibly. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
Yeah. So that’s a really great thing that I do. Really like about it. Tell me a little bit about the limitations of AI search. Currently. 

Patrick
For us, the biggest limitations I think that we’re seeing are in that local search area. So, you know, people might start using ChatGPT to, you know, find businesses near me and all that kind of stuff. And they’re trying to provide results. Right now what they’re doing is basically pulling results from Bing using additional data that they have access to kind of augment that results and then give those results in there to the user. But they’ve kind of reordered them in their own way. It’s not like it’s not the exact order that you’d find on Bing Maps. The kind of new technology that has come out for tools like ChatGPT is this retrieval augmentation system where all those tools are trained on a specific set of Data. 

Patrick
So like ChatGPT, the latest model, is trained up until 2024 on a huge, you know, billions and billions of books and pages of web pages and all that kind of stuff now to make sure that the answer it gives is still accurate. Now that we’re in 2025, they’re able to go out and retrieve additional data to kind of make the answer they’re giving more accurate. Essentially it’s a little bit more important for the research style queries where they can go out and just not be citing old data. But for the local search stuff, it’s going out and looking at, you know, Houzz and Angie and BBB and other websites. So it’s not just hey, is my Bing listing perfectly optimized? Do I have some reviews on it? It’s is that all true? Plus I’m able to be found on other sites. 

Patrick
And if ChatGPT goes out and looks on Angie and Houzz and tries to find reviews on other sites, am I there as well too? So I think their local search will get better. Users right now are probably using it and being very disappointed in the results are getting. We’re seeing some crazy stuff like. 

Patrick
You. 

Patrick
Know, being the listed business that’s, you know, you’re the number one business listed but the name that they gave your business is wrong. But you’re the just, you know, in the little description of the business, it’s all about you. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
Or it’s your phone number but it’s not your website. So people CL on the website and they go to a dead non existent website. 

Sean
Oh yeah, that’s problematic. 

Patrick
But your phone number was correct. So it sounds like they’re synthesizing the data in some way that’s just not really good right now. And I think people are taking notice of that. So they’re either going to improve it for their users or they’re going to say which really they have in the past. Like Google is the local search king. We’re not sure if we really even want to compete in that arena right now. We’re the information people. We want to be really good at this one thing. Actually a lot of things because they’re into healthcare and finance and like all these use cases for ChatGPT outside of local search, they may not really want to pursue that because like I said, I don’t think their goal is really putting Google out of business. 

Sean
Sure. 

Patrick
They have enough use cases to grow a massive business without doing that. 

Sean
Yeah. I remember when you had told me that the latest data is trained on is 2024. I remember when first came out it was 2021, it was the latest and I hadn’t, I didn’t keep up with that. But they do have a button on there that is activate like search. So searches the web. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So if you select that is up to date data, right? 

Patrick
Yeah, that’s that retrieval augmented system that they have. And it also, it, yeah, it provides kind of updated kind of. It didn’t always have Internet connection. And that’s kind of what they had to add to it was this ability to. Now, okay, let me first get some context about what the person’s asking. Let me look in my train data for information about this and put together an initial answer. Next, let me go out and use this retrieval system to pull in some fresh data to make sure that the answer I’m giving is accurate. And now I’m going to present that answer to the user. So that kind of new augmentated system is really what kind of has improved their answers. They’ve called it kind of web grounded searches versus just relying on trained data. 

Sean
So now me personally, I have used it a few times for search specifically, have not been very happy with it myself yet. And the same thing is when they came out with where you can make ChatGPT your search browser. Now, I did that the first day. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
And gave up after like three searches. Because after that I was like, it’s just not as sophisticated as Google is. Like, even when I would try to like, we’ve all become accustomed now to Google Chrome being our browser. Well, most people. Right. And so like when I type in something into the address bar, it’s already also a Google search. So I could either go to the website or I can do a Google search straight from the address bar. And, and that automatically threw me off because it’s no longer Google search, it’s now ChatGPT search. And the, the results I got from that were just not great. It would give me like I would search something and give me the entire history of that company or something instead of me, instead of just taking me to their website. 

Patrick
Right. 

Sean
Or giving me like the schedule of whatever was going on from that company itself. 

Patrick
Yeah, there’s still a lot of use cases. Like I use short searches on Google all the time. Not everything I search is some long question. I mean, I know it’s, that’s trending and that’s getting more popular, but a lot of times you just want to find a business or a product or something of that nature without having to read, you know, an essay on, you know, what you’re trying to learn about. So it’s again, it’s evolving so quickly that new features are coming out there. Google is the king at putting out a feature, testing it. They own Chrome, they own Google Analytics, they own all these things that are sending back user data to their systems. So they’re able to say, okay, we put out this new feature, it got 37% more clicks than when we didn’t have it. 

Patrick
So we’re going to keep this one didn’t. We’re going to try to improve this one in a new way or. These searches always bring up lots of images, but people don’t seem to be wanting to click on an image when they do that type of search. So we’re going to bring up videos instead or something like that. They just keep tweaking the experience to make sure again, they keep users on Google. That’s their number one goal. 

Sean
So, yeah, and it is definitely something that it is easily easy to forget about, especially when you’re kind of in this world every day of how new AI really is to the public. Right. Obviously it’s been around, it’s been on our phones for a while. But to be usable for our everyday stuff. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
I mean, we’re talking three years maybe. Right. I was talking to somebody just last week and I was, I made a comment about, yeah, I did that in the early days of Mid Journey and he was like, early days, what was that two years ago? And I was like, you know, I guess it was, you know, two years ago. And so it’s crazy to see how quickly this is moving. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
Because I looked at that specific image that I did on Mid Journey and it was how difficult it was to get that, to capture that. 

Patrick
Oh, yeah. 

Patrick
I mean, the image generating AI stuff outside of search is. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
I mean, the same rapid pace. It’s just getting better and new features and, you know, you can create realistic videos and it’s just. 

Sean
Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. And so that’s why it’s even more important. Like it’s moving so quickly and we’re become, we’ve already become so used to how quickly it’s moving that you have to make sure that you’re on this now. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
Because before you know it’s the same thing that happened with like when content marketing became a thing. If you became a business in like 2020 and you did not have an Internet presence. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
I mean, obviously the pandemic didn’t help. But if you did not have that, you were late. 

Patrick
Oh, yeah. 

Sean
You know, companies started doing it 2012, 2015. And if you were not doing content marketing, like you found out you were, you’re already behind, you know, so it’s the same thing if you’re not staying up to date with this AI stuff and setting up your information the right way, which is, you know, your website and your social media and your Google business profile. If you’re not doing that right now, it’s going to be too late very soon. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
If not already, you know, it was. 

Patrick
Similar to when the featured snippet came out on Google, which is kind of like a, you know, nice big text. You get it at the top of the page. The people that really jumped on that trend quickly took advantage of it and did really well. And people that were like, that’s a new thing, I may think about it later, whatever, they didn’t get that same benefit from it. So it’s, you know, with every new feature Google puts out, you have to seriously consider it and what a strategy shift might be to take advantage of it. Not all of them last. They close products all the time that they don’t think are performing well. But our job is to monitor what the search engine page looks like today and optimize for that. 

Patrick
So it’s just shifting a little bit more to, you know, not so much, hey, what are my rankings? How many keywords do I have ranked and how many pages are ranked to how many times was the answer that I provided to the general public used in one of these overviews or instant answers? So it’s a shift in strategy for us just in terms of like what we’re monitoring and what’s important as a, you know, KPI, a key performance indicator going, you know, less from maybe, you know, clicks are going to drop because a lot of people are getting the answer they want right from search. Yeah, we know that it’s not a, you know, we’re doing a, you know, SEO isn’t working anymore. So our clicks are dropping. It’s related to what’s going on. 

Patrick
So we’re making sure that we’re tracking, hey, the clicks may have dropped, but you’ve been cited in answers across the board and your brand searches are going up, trying to create some correlations there. So there’s just based on what the new kind of search experience is. 

Sean
Yeah. So we’re just going to have new KPIs to focus on. And as we all know, clicks aren’t always like the end all, be all KPI to watch for. 

Patrick
Right. 

Sean
So it’s just gonna be new stuff that we need to, when it arises, we need to be on top of that. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
I mean, it’s kind of cool in a sense because Google Search, traditional search was almost starting to be monopolized by these huge companies that have been doing SEO for 25 years. You know, like Amazons and Reddit’s and all these sites that like were getting shown on page one because they have massive authority and they’ve just been around. 

Sean
Forever and now it’s all being shooken up. 

Patrick
If your answer’s better, it doesn’t matter if your webpage doesn’t have as much authority as a big guy, if your little three sentence snippet that you wrote is the best answer for someone’s question, you’re going to be in that A over. You still want to focus on traditional SEO. We don’t lose that because if the answer you wrote on your page is ranked 1,000,000th on Google, chances are chatbots or these other systems may not ever crawl it or find it. So you still need to kind of be in that. We’re seeing right now like the top two pages. So you still need to be there. But if you’re there, you don’t need to now battle for another couple years to now be on page one because you’re going up against huge companies. 

Patrick
Now if you’re providing that correct answer, you can be included in that, you know, instant overview answer. So it’s giving people a little bit more visibility and opportunity I think. And if you kind of take advantage of it, you can really do better than some of these other companies that are not focusing on it. 

Sean
So yeah, this is quite literally a brand new era and you, I mean everyone’s starting off as zero, right. For the most part. So like there’s still there is a chance for you, like you were just saying, to really just skyrocket if you do it the right way. 

Patrick
Yep. Yeah. 

Sean
So before we transition into our next segment, you know, think about this. Are your answers on your website, are they actually directly answering the question that people are asking? So you might need to go back and look at your website and if you’re listening right now, find out if they are because if they’re not, maybe you need to change them because that is what AI sounds like AI is really looking for right now in search. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So Patrick, the next thing I want to talk about is Search engine or Search everywhere optimization. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
So tell me why Bing Places is more important right now. You brought up Bing, you brought up things like Yelp. So it’s literally everywhere is important. It’s not just being on Google Everywhere is important. Why is that? 

Patrick
Yeah, our shift is really kind of meeting the user where they’re at. So no matter what someone prefers, you know, person A still loves Google search. They’re not into chatgpt, it’s too much of a buzzword and they just love their traditional Google search. That person we’re going to optimize for. Person B loves new ChatGPT, their early adopter of technology. They love that kind of stuff and they want to use that more. So people are going to be using all these different tools. So we want to make sure that we’re found in those spots where the, where people are searching, not just saying, hey, everyone’s using Google. That’s all we’re focused on. We want to get you found on Google. It’s more about getting found anywhere that someone’s any tool that they’re using. And that often includes implementing different strategies like creating the concise answers. 

Patrick
Sure, that’s fine. But a blog post of a question and then a concise answer and then a question and a concise answer probably won’t rank very well on traditional Google search as well. We want to have more content and images and all that kind of stuff. So it’s accepting that people aren’t just searching on Google anymore, monitoring these new tools for new features that are coming out and whether the search is even any good. Are people using IT Tools like Perplexity goes out and does Google searches and uses fresh data. So people are using that as a primary search engine. And I know that Apple and Perplexity are even I think in conversations to potentially replace Google as the kind of built in search engine on Apple devices. So there’s definitely a shift towards using those types of tools. 

Patrick
And we want to just make sure we don’t care what tool you like to use, we’re gonna be there when you’re searching. 

Sean
So yeah, and now this goes for like getting reviews as well because before it was kind of like you had to just get reviews on Google and that was the big thing. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So now you’re saying we have to go to more places and get reviews. 

Patrick
Yeah, it goes back to that kind of retrieval system that they have. You know, when you did a search on Google Maps, Google was using all of their built in data that they have, their reviews, their, you know, traffic that they’ve monitored on Google, you know, listings and all that kind of stuff, click throughs and you know, bounce rates on your website and they kind of use all that as a kind of ecosystem of delivering these search results. Now if you do a search on Chat cbt, they may use Google reviews They may also go out and look for some Bing reviews. They may go out and look for. 

Sean
They do have a partnership with Microsoft. 

Patrick
Yep. And, you know, they, there’s sites that list, you know, certifications and, you know, you were the 2022 house, you know, landscape designer of the year. You know, there’s different articles out there that they’re now going out and finding to again augment their understanding of what this person’s looking for. And you know, right now, sometimes the results aren’t very good because they’re. The data isn’t as good as what Google just has. Like, again, they’ve been collecting this stuff for 25 years now. Chapter is kind of like putting the puzzle together a little bit. In that time, you know, someone just did a search. Now in real time, they’re trying to piece together, okay, they’re looking for the best remodeler in their area that also has great prices, like whatever that long search was. 

Patrick
They kind of do this thing called query fanning where they break that long question up into possibly hundreds of searches. So now they’re going out and doing all these searches and then synthesizing the data together and then presenting that as a response. So as that is getting better and better, it’s not always right now going to be the best results, but that’s why we’re looking at things like Bing and making sure that, you know, if you got 500 reviews on Google, let’s maybe try to push some people towards some other platforms so that we can get some reviews on Angie or your Facebook page or things of that nature. 

Sean
So, so does that mean if someone is just focusing on Google, they can’t be successful? 

Patrick
I think they still can be successful right now. But if, is that the same in, gosh, six months, you know, a year? Maybe not. Probably not. So just right now is the right time to just start. It’s not panic time. It’s not saying, oh, you know, I’m not showing up on ChatGPT, what’s going on? It’s more of, hey, people are starting to use ChatGPT. We’ve been thinking about only Google for a long time. Let’s now expand our horizons on where we’re focusing on getting found. It’s right. Right now is the time to start thinking about it, understanding it. And the strategies for showing up there are changing kind of quickly as again, new features are coming out and all that. 

Patrick
So it’s not like really implementing a true, you know, what anyone can say is the real right strategy for ranking in LLMs but it’s having it on your mind. It’s having, you know, starting to think about it and starting to implement at least these things that should be true, like making sure your content is accurate, making sure it’s updated, making sure it can be scanned quickly by these tools. Whereas you might have had a long, chunky paragraph in the past. Is that content easier to scan and understand if it was maybe bullet points or a table of data versus a paragraph of text? So those things are true and they work. And as these tools evolve, our strategies will evolve and probably get a little bit more in depth. 

Sean
Are there any current, like, strategies that you are focusing on, like the, a big one that you’re focusing on right now, like transitioning. 

Patrick
It’s mostly updating past content that was written more in that kind of traditional search engine way. You know, hook the reader in. In the first paragraph and maybe like tell a little story and then get into you know, infographic style, listicle style, you know, below that. Now it’s, you know, updating those to again, give those answers up front. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
And then getting that stuff. So it’s, you know, that first paragraph is less of like a hook and more of, hey, here’s the answer to what you asked. And below that we’ll go more in depth if you want to. 

Sean
Gotcha. 

Patrick
So it’s about. And that’s great for users, I think, because a user wants that, like, information up front. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
It’s almost like going to like a recipe website and having to read the person’s, you know, story about their grandmother and the dog and. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
So everybody just scrolls down to the bottom. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
That’s actually one of the first things I started using ChatGPT for was give me this recipe. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
Because I got so going to those websites and you’d have to scroll down for an hour through all these ads in the story. They did that specifically because it was an SEO play. 

Patrick
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it keeps the reader kind of interested and they can include more internal links to all their other places and all that kind of stuff. 

Sean
So that thing to me that kills the experience. Like, if I know you’re only like, I want your information. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
But if I know you’re playing the system. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
And I’m suffering for it right now. I’m no longer coming to your site. 

Patrick
Yeah, right. 

Patrick
Yeah. The smart ones, I feel like, started to move the recipe to the top. You get the recipe and if you want to read the story about it. Read the story about it. 

Sean
Yes. 

Patrick
So that is the biggest shift I think that we’re kind of seeing and that we’re implementing and then different things like making sure that, you know, if, you know that people are always asking about pricing questions. Be the website that provides excellent upfront. It doesn’t always have to be, you know, this is the definite pricing. Like, you know, it can definitely be how we do pricing and how we think about pricing and what our pricing models are and you know, calculator tools to help customers just get a ballpark of, you know, are they even in the right range to work with you? 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
All that type of content can then provide these tools like ChatGPT with the answers they need when people are searching for, hey, who’s the best remodeler in my town that also has great pricing and at least 20 years of experience. You know, are you, do you have a great about us page with your company story? You know, do you have pricing pages or pricing information on the website? That’s that retrieval system that ChatGPT will use. It’s going to start with its trained data. It knows about your company. Hopefully if you were around before 2024, end of 2024, and then it’s going to go out and search these websites it has access to that, you know, can help it understand a little bit better. 

Sean
So yeah, and that’s, I mean, that’s content marketing one one right now where it’s, I mean, if you’re not adding your prices in, that’s like the number, that’s the number one question people are searching for when they’re looking for your, your service definitely seems to. 

Patrick
Be the thing that’s top of mind. People are just much more, you know, budget conscious right now and they’re looking for not only the best person, but they want to get the best deal as well. So yeah, so that’s in many searches that we’re seeing for, yeah, it’s 2025. 

Sean
If you’re still hiding your prices or, and I got to understand, some of them are kind of like, well, we can’t give a direct price because it depends on the job. Give us a range. Right, you know. Yeah, because like, I guarantee you, if I don’t know what your range is, I’m not calling you. Yeah, and that’s the same thing with other people. And they’re going to find someone who does have their price somewhere. 

Patrick
And on the flip side of that too, you know, the leads coming in may be more qualified for you because they’ve seen your pricing and then they reached out, so at least they’re in the right range. It’s not someone that’s like, oh, whoa, I wasn’t even thinking that much. So no, I can’t do that. 

Sean
Yeah. If I call someone for a kitchen and their kitchen start at 120. Oh, dude, that’s like outside of what. 

Patrick
You’Re looking for, right? 

Sean
Way outside. I’m not looking for 120k kitchen. You just mentioned something interesting that I don’t think we’ve touched on is what if their business is new and it wasn’t around in 2024 when ChatGPT, you know, is trained, what do you do then? 

Patrick
Yep. 

Patrick
So this is where, you know, making sure you’re starting to get out there on all these platforms. That’s the number one thing you can do. Like, get out there, make sure your Google profile is complete. Making sure you’re on these other websites. I mean, that’s the first step. You can’t get shown on these websites without claiming your profile on these websites. So it takes a little bit of work to do it. And, you know, you may still be able to be the one. You know, ChatGPT is using Bing Local places, so make sure you’re. You have a listing on there. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
And, you know, they get their training data updated probably a couple times a year. I’m not really sure exactly on the schedule. I would imagine it’s getting more and more frequent, so the next time that happens, you can definitely be there. But in these searches, again, it’s already using fresh data. So making sure you’re on these other websites and starting to get reviews and your website is. You don’t just start out with a couple pages. Make sure you’re filling out the information on your site. You know, you know that a pricing page is important. Start off with a pricing page, like get the website built in a way that you get all the pages that you know you need. Instead of saying, six months down the line, oh, all these people are searching for pricing stuff, let me add that information to my website. 

Patrick
So if you’re just getting started, make sure the website’s got all these kind of pages and information clearly marked, clearly shown. If it’s a pricing page, it’s a nice pricing table or it’s a calculator with slider tools and it’s, you know, interactive. That’s all the best way that you can get started. And sooner or later you’re going to find yourself getting some traffic from these different tools. 

Sean
So. So of those pages, I know we do a lot of local pages for our contractors. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
Are those still really important? 

Patrick
Yes. 

Sean
I mean, are they more important? Now you’re saying that, I mean, Chad, GPT is still struggling with like local search, but Google’s not. Yeah, but I mean, what do we, where is that? 

Patrick
Like the local pages are important for the work that for the most part we do with service area businesses that don’t actually have like a location that you go to. So it’s not a restaurant that’s in one spot and you know, people in the 10 minute drive, 15 minute drive in that area are going to go to that restaurant. Yeah, our clients have, you know, customers and a few miles away, 10 miles away in this town, they want to cover a fairly large kind of radius of service and that’s where those local pages come into play so we can provide more in depth information about that town, that area. Search engines and these big tools love something called an entity, which is really just like a noun. So person, place or thing. 

Patrick
So if we’re talking about, you know, your remodeling service in a town, you know, a few towns away from you, we don’t have that local presence or an address there. So how we add relevance to let Google know about your business being in that town is talking about, hey, we worked on Main street or the corner of 6th and you know, Berry street or you know, talking about famous landmarks in that town, why the town might be historic. Is there a historic section? Is there regulations on what you can do to a property in that town? Using information like that helps kind of spread your radius of where you’re found. 

Patrick
Mostly for Google search right now, but definitely those pages, I mean the feature project pages that we create are huge I think for ChatGPT searches because we’re going into more depth on timelines and specific, you know, color choices that were made and why and material. We went with this over this or you know, this was the issue before with our outdated bathroom and we chose, you know, updated fixtures. So really getting into depth on more than just, hey, we do this service in this area. Going into depth on it is what’s going to kind of make that success on these, you know, new search tools that are coming out. 

Sean
So gotcha. So with video, I mean, obviously I’m a visual guy, I love video, but video seems to be the content that people consume the most or is becoming that. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
Do we need to be focused on like YouTube for contractors? 

Patrick
I think. Well, number one, YouTube’s the number two searched website in the World. 

Sean
Yeah, again, obviously it’s on. 

Patrick
Google owns it. So all that data is indexed and known. Your YouTube transcript is in their systems and is able to be searched. They index every frame of your video as an image. And now with their new kind of multimodal capabilities, they’re able to see what’s in that image. That’s where things like staging, you know, if you’re walking through a finished build, having it staged really helps out with that because now they have more visual cues that they can start building out that profile of like what this video might be about. So versus having like a blank wall behind you, having some pictures hung or something like that shows a finished, completed project door open, door closed, you know, anything to anything like that you can kind of help show more visual clues. Definitely helps on YouTube. 

Patrick
And then we’re seeing like in a, you know, if you use tools like Deep research or some of these, you know, when you turn on the search functionality in ChatGPT, I’ll see all the time some of the sources are YouTube videos. So it’s going out and either I. 

Sean
See that all the time too, transcribing. 

Patrick
The audio or looking at the transcript, however it’s getting that content, it’s definitely important to be on all these. That’s kind of goes back to that search Everywhere optimization is like YouTube is one of those everywhere places. So yeah, let’s be there too. 

Sean
Yeah, absolutely. So before we transition into our very last segment, which is talking about a little bit more in depth on content strategy that people can be doing, I’m just going to ask the listener, are your reviews spread out? Are you just on Google? If you are, maybe you should start thinking about places like Bing Houzz or Angie’s List. So make sure that you’re knowing where your reviews are and you’re spread out everywhere for this new AI age. So let’s break into a little bit more specific on content strategy. So what tools can our contractors use to start, you know, getting ready for this and start building their stuff? Now. 

Patrick
The first, what I would say is get on ChatGPT and act like a potential customer of yours and do some searches and get on Google AI mode and see what the follow up questions are and just get an idea of what type of response. You know, if you do a search for, you know, painters in your area and the results that you get from ChatGPT, the local businesses that recommends aren’t very good. Know in your head that a customer is going to find those results too and not like those results either, so knowing that. But then again, if you search for, you know, some living room inspiration ideas on colors or modern trends in design and you get a great response from ChatGPT, like know that they’re going to get that as well too. 

Patrick
So getting in the head of your customer and then understanding what that user experience is across all these tools, seeing who’s showing up, who is, who are the companies that these answers are getting sourced from, Just trying to get an idea like in your local area, it’s not just, hey, this person has more reviews than me. So they’ve been ranking on Google Maps longer than me. They’re my competition now. It’s like, whose websites are providing these answers? Because they’re also my competition now too. So it’s kind of shifted from that race to get more reviews and get more links and create more pages. Like it’s just been more and more now it’s quality, quality and being like the accurate trusted person in your area. 

Sean
So gotcha. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So in the last episode we had talked about, you know, we focused mainly on like the basics of like traditional SEO. On this one were talking a little bit more about like AI SEO and like the new world of what, how SEO is fitting into that. Are we completely giving up on traditional SEO or like, are we, like you said, we’re doing a bit of a blend earlier. But like, what exactly have we, like what are we still focusing on from traditional. That’s still important. 

Patrick
Yeah, so we’re definitely still focused on traditional SEO. I don’t like all the hype that’s, you know, Google is dead and all that kind of stuff. It’s, it’s more of like things are changing as they should. Me personally, I like all the changes that happen to search engines because it kind of weeds out the people that are just manipulating the system and it leaves the true good content that’s out there. So we’re definitely not doing any fear mongering or hype. Google is still a huge part of local lead generation. That’s not changing anytime soon. So we still want to do all those things. We still want to make sure our sites are secure and fast and we have, you know, keywords in the right spots. Still matters. We’re still doing link building, we’re still, you know, publishing blog posts now. 

Patrick
That was a good strategy for SEO and it’s a good strategy for this new kind of age of answer engine optimization or, you know, whatever people are. There’s lots of names getting thrown around of what it’s going to be called. 

Sean
I kind of like that answer. 

Patrick
Yeah. Yeah, that’s kind of cool. There’s a geo to Generative Engine Optimization. I don’t like that as much. 

Sean
It doesn’t have as good of a ring, but it makes sense. 

Patrick
Yeah, right. 

Patrick
Yeah. So it’s. Well, we’ll probably land one at some point. That’s why we kind of like that search everywhere optimization term, because it kind of answers all those things. It gets us on Google, it gets us on ChatGPT, it gets us where we need to be. So we’re still focused on all that kind of stuff. And then we’ve added to our strategy. We know all this stuff is new and changing, so we’re not locked into any specific strategy at the moment. We’re using our years of experience and SEO knowledge to make educated guesses at what will work. And those things are like what we talked about, making sure we’re given concise answers and we’re creating formats that are easy both for people to scan and use. And these kind of new tools, bullet points, tables, structured content like that, all that stuff’s still important. 

Patrick
And so we’ve just kind of expanded our strategy versus saying, okay, we’re done with Google. We’re only focusing on ChatGPT. Hopefully some other people are doing that and they kind of give up a little bit on Google because we’ll definitely scoop in and take that opportunity for sure. 

Sean
Sure. Definitely. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So we talked about optimizing other types of content. What other things can contractors be optimizing on their website to help with searching on LLMs? 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
So two things that we’re kind of looking at right now, and a more serious, you know, we’ve always been very serious about your images, but even more so now that Google is able to really scan and understand images. That’s a number one thing. Making sure you have great professionally taken photographs of your work. Like I said earlier, staged is even better because it’s just more visual cues that someone can, you know, get into a photo. The better, you know, is it cups and plates in the cupboard in the kitchen, you know, that indicates a kitchen versus like the shapes of countertop. So Google is again trying to analyze these images. So that’s number one, making sure your pages are great with images. If you are lucky enough to get that click from Google. 

Patrick
Again, those images are what really keeps people there because they’re looking for great remodels and great landscape shots and things of that nature. 

Sean
It’s a very visual medium. 

Patrick
Yep, for sure. So that’s number one. Number two, it’s a little bit more on the technical side, but we’re focused on implementing a little bit more of what’s called schema. We talked about it in the last episode a little bit. It’s really just kind of a behind the scenes code that gives search engines a little bit more clarity on your content so you can actually label. So for example, for the user, if you have an FAQ section on a page, couple questions, it would probably look something like a heading question below that. An answer, a question and answer. You know it because as a smart human, you’re able to look at it and say, okay, this is a question and answer section. It’s got a heading that says FAQs, it’s got a bold question, it’s got a little bit of content below that. 

Patrick
That’s clearly answer. Like you know that a search engine doesn’t really know that to them it’s just text on a page. 

Sean
Sure. 

Patrick
So what schema allows you to do is actually indicate the question. I’m going to say this is the question and then write what the question is. So you’ve now told Google the user can’t see this, but Google can. You’ve indicated this is a question, this is answer, this is an image, this is a video you can add. Like for video schema, you can add the length of the video, timestamps in it, different pieces of information that you don’t necessarily want to have like the timestamp on the page, you just want to show the video to the user. So behind the scenes that schema code just gives a little bit more context. And tools like ChatGPT and others are starting to use that to kind of again, easily scan your content, understand it and make sure that you’re the answer out there. 

Sean
So yeah, that kind of goes with everything with AI, there’s a new language out there, you know, and you know, you got to be able to prompt these AI, each engine, each AI understands language differently. Like I know big one that I use is Runway. It’s a video generator. And the way that it understands communication is different than the way that chatbots or mid journey. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
And honestly, right now it’s kind of annoying. I do think eventually we’ll get to a point where it all funnels into one similar language. But it is a new language. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
And it sounds like formatting is very important. The same way as you’re just explaining that schema is important, that it’s all a format that the LLM, the is it large language model, can understand what you’re trying to display. 

Patrick
Right. 

Patrick
And like I kind of mentioned earlier, like, there’s an infinite number of ways that people can ask these questions. Did they use the word best? Did they use the word reviews? Did they use the word. You know, what order of the words? It’s almost like you could write the same question a couple of different times, the exact same question that you’re asking. But the results you’re going to get are probably going to be different just based on, like, how you worded that question. So there’s that. The, like, intent that Google’s so good at, they got so good at understanding intent that you could search for this keyword and I could search for this keyword. We’re really searching for the same thing. Google’s figured out a way to, like, know that and we both get similar results. 

Patrick
ChatGPT and other tools right now aren’t really doing that. So, like, the results really change based on how you say the question or what words you may have used that someone else didn’t. 

Sean
And so, yeah, that’s definitely all generative. Right. When you do video prompting, it’s very important. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
The structure that you put those words in. 

Patrick
Right. I can imagine. 

Sean
Yeah. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
Well, this all seems like a whole lot of stuff. A lot of changing, possibly a bit of frustration, little bit of, you know, fear of, like, hey, I don’t know what, how to do all of this, like, schema. How do I mess with my schema? 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Sean
Well, the good news is that CGN does it all for you. Right. We’re here for you. So if you are listening and you have any questions you’re worried about, you know, whether your website ranks or stays up to the AI challenge, reach out to us, Leave a question down below, we can answer that for you. Or give us a call, go to our website contract growthnetwork.com so AI isn’t going to replace search, it’s always just going to change it. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
So you just got to make sure that you’re adapting to that change and you’re prepared for it. 

Patrick
Yeah. 

Patrick
Get excited about it because the tools are cool. The search is going to get, you know, better for the user at the end user. And, you know, while there’s definitely some frustrations that can, you know, when you see your clicks drop or your traffic might drop, just realize that the more excited you get, the more you can kind of take advantage of this stuff early, the better you’re going to do kind of in the long run as it kind of matures and kind of, you know, stops changing so rapidly. 

Sean
So, yeah, eventually it will slow down. 

Patrick
We’ll. 

Sean
We’ll. We’ll reach a point where it’s, like, kind of where Google searches right now. 

Patrick
Yep. 

Sean
Right. Well, perfect. Patrick, thank you for coming on again. 

Patrick
Yeah, it was fun. 

Sean
Yeah. Awesome. Cool.