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March 20, 2026 48 mins

We trace the fast shift from link-based search to AI-generated answers and show how that change reshapes content, measurement, and strategy. Connor Kimball of Cairrot shares data on LLM traffic surges, concrete AEO tactics, and how unified analytics reveals brand lift beyond referral clicks.

• AI search replacing link lists with answers
• AEO as the method, LLM visibility as the metric
• Informational traffic down, transactional content up
• Comparison and battle-card pages driving citations
• GA4 and GSC integration for unified insights
• Measuring halo effects across direct and organic
• E‑E‑A‑T signals across site and profiles
• Partner ecosystems and regulated-industry expertise
• From LLM visibility to multimodal AI visibility
• Agents and automated reporting speeding decisions

Guest Contact Information: 

Website: connorkimball.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/connor-kimball

Instagram: instagram.com/connorkimball

Facebook: facebook.com/connor.kimball

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With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online. 

Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability. 

Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve. 

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Episode Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 (00:03):
This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing.
Your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential.
Let's get started.

SPEAKER_02 (00:17):
Howdy.
Welcome back to another Funfoldepisode of The Unknown Secrets
of Internet Marketing.
I am your host, Matt Bertram,and I definitely have another
intro.
I keep saying it.
Thank you for the patience,everybody.
We just got to get it swappedout.
There's a lot of things that aremoving.
There's a this industry's movingso fast right now.
I know you're listening to a lotof other podcasts and keeping up

(00:39):
to date with everything that'shappening, like LinkedIn's
blowing up, like all over theplace.
Something new is coming up.
The malt bot, claud bot, um uh,you know, agent.
This is the year of the agent.
So there's there's a lot ofthings going on, and we're
really in the thick of it, inthe middle of it.
And that's why I I wanted to dothis episode.
I wanted to bring in somebody,one of our own, Connor Kemble.

(01:01):
Welcome to the show.
I am so excited that you're hereand we can really talk uh the
ins and outs of LM visibility.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09):
Thanks for having me, Matt.
It's great to be here and uhlong time fan of the podcast
before I started working here,and uh it's great, great to be
on my first episode.

SPEAKER_02 (01:18):
Awesome.
Well, just to set everybody upof where things are going is AI
search is growing by leaps andbounds.
There's a lot of uh new like AIinterpretation.
Uh, these search engines, in myview, are completely different
than the search systems of likethe Google, the Bing, that sort
of thing.

(01:38):
It's a completely new technologythat gets to the answer a
different way.
It presents you the answerversus having to do all the
research or like the librariantelling you, go check this out,
check this, check, check thisout.
And I'll I'll let you kind oftee it up, but this is the nexus
for some offshoots of thingsthat uh people that are are in

(02:00):
our community and our partnernetworks are doing.
And and you recently uh actuallygot involved in an accelerator
program for something thatyou're building.

SPEAKER_01 (02:10):
That's right, yeah.
So we launched an AI visibilitytool called Carrot in the last
uh couple months here at the endright at the end of 2025.
We cost some traction rightaway, thanks to partnerships
with agencies like EWR, and wehad a foothold in the door with
quite a few agencies and gotthem set up and reporting on

(02:31):
metrics that were really hardfor traditional SEOs to report
on.
So, how are websites actuallyshowing up, ranking and being
interpreted by LLMs?
We saw a gap in the market.
Obviously, you and I tested afew tools together that we
thought were fine, but mostlyvibe coded, and more than
anything, it was just the pricepeople were trying to charge for

(02:55):
these subparp tools.
So we saw a gap in the market.
We we went after it.
Carrot has been that AIanalytics platform for agencies
now, and uh growth is good.
We got accepted into ARC Investuh program out in St.
Petersburg, Florida, through uhthe Tampa Bay and St.
Petersburg Innovation Center orInnovation Districts that um is

(03:18):
technically through a buildingcalled Spark Labs here.
But if you uh any any of my St.
Petersburg people know, if youdrive through town, you'll see
the big ARC Invest or Arc Investuh Innovation Hub there, and
that's uh that's where we arelearning and growing every day
now.

SPEAKER_02 (03:34):
So I I love that and I am super excited.
Let's back up and talk aboutthere is currently a debate
right now that I think is kindof ridiculous, to be perfectly
honest, about what is the nameof SEO?
Is it GEO?
Is it AEO?
Is it AI SEO?
I mean, I just was like, look,I'm trying to get visibility in

(03:56):
these LLMs.
Like, I'm gonna plant the flaghere.
I don't care what anybody elsedoes.
Like LOM visibility is what I'mlooking to create uh for for the
brand reputation and what we'redoing.
And you know, that was that wasover 18 months ago that we were
just like, this is what we'redoing.
And and now I feel like themarket's starting to catch up,
but there's this argument thatit's the same thing as uh

(04:20):
traditional SEO.
I'm curious, uh, you know, maybesome of our conversations we've
had offline to bring those intolight and share those with some
of the audience, I think wouldbe useful of kind of where the
market is today.

SPEAKER_01 (04:33):
Yeah, so as far as acronyms go, I think every
marketer's heard now AEO, AIO,LLMO, L L M SEO, GEO, etc.
Um I am making a strategic beton AEO as the new SEO term.
And I think LLM visibility isgoing to be the catch-all term

(04:57):
that essentially refers tomarketing analytics or SEO
analytics or um, you know, paidmedia analytics.
The as far as is it the same asSEO?
Most of us would agree it'sprobably about 80% of the pie is
is of AEO is SEO, but you'rebasically you're doing SEO to do

(05:22):
AEO.
If you're trying to really crushit at AEO, is a is a very
specific way you're going to doyour SEO.
And it's kind of the way thatwe've been advising people to do
it for years, which is focus onhigh intent actions, do things
that will build your revenuebase first, and then focus on
some of the higher level fluffstuff.

(05:44):
But uh, you know, it's yeah, theLLMs are are really seeking
towards high intent content,buyer specific content, and
there's some specific contenttactics that we can go into that
you know are have been known toSEOs but not so favored.
But now they're probably myfavorite content tactics to do
on new websites because they'regetting picked up by LLMs so

(06:06):
fast.

SPEAKER_02 (06:06):
Okay, so alphabet soup there, everyone.
There's all these differentnames, it's hard to follow it.
This is where the debate is, andand really the debate is around
is whatever this is new the sameas what was existing?
And uh where I'm falling on itis these are foundational basics

(06:30):
that the search engines used,but the technology wasn't around
four years ago.
Okay, it's a brand newtechnology, so it can be no way
be the same thing.
They might be similar tactics,and there is like a Venn diagram
overlay of what those thingsare, but it's something new.
And the trend is more and morepeople are gonna use these LOM

(06:53):
tools and get comfortable withthem, and that's where the
market's going.
So you're either gonna be onlike this kind of road to
nowhere, um, or you're gonnahave to take a left turn
somewhere.
And and if you listen toprevious podcasts, um, I I am
kind of uh recapturing some ofthe thoughts of thought leaders
that have shared that kind ofviewpoint in the past, and it

(07:15):
falls in line with what we'redoing and where we're going.
There's a foundation.
So I think traditional SEO anddoing SEO the right way is a
foundation, and there's sometech debt of people that haven't
done SEO or haven't viewed itproperly going through the
digital transformation.
They're getting caught up ofwhat they needed to do to lay

(07:36):
that foundation and get that umtheir data integrity kind of
cleaned up.
Um, I think there's data hygieneissues that are happening, and
that's what SEO is doing.
It's categorizing, it's puttingin the right category.
And then now you got thismachine layer that you want to
add onto the top of it.
Oh, by the way, I did justlaunch a book, L invisibility

(07:57):
guys.
Go check it out.
Shameless plug, I'm sorry.
Um, but what I can tell you isyou have to do that stuff to do
this other stuff because if youdo this other stuff, the the AI
systems are not gonna know whatthis stuff is.
So, I mean, what are some of thethings in the data points,
Connor, that that you're seeing?

(08:19):
You're really deep in a lot ofdifferent accounts.
Uh Carrot is the officialpartner of of EWR for all our
enterprise accounts.
It's where we're tracking ourvisibility.
Um, and we're getting somereally interesting heat maps and
data points.
And it would be interesting toshare, you know, there's a lot
of talk of like the market keepschanging, we're discovering new

(08:42):
things.
What are you seeing in theclickstream data?
What are you seeing uh uh whenyou get into the granular uh
data uh and analytics of thesedifferent sites and what's
happening?

SPEAKER_01 (08:54):
Well, I think probably the most notable trend
for if you're in marketing oryou're just a business leader
trying to think of your or youknow concerned about your
overall marketing strategy andare you moving in the right
direction?
We all know AI search isgrowing, but a stat that might
put that in perspective is we'velooked at many websites that had

(09:17):
flat organic traffic year overyear, and we looked at their LLM
traffic year over year.
And even websites that have flattraffic, so 0% growth, still saw
10x LLM traffic in one year.
So even without clearly, ifthey're not growing SEO, they're

(09:38):
not focused on that expansiongrowth strategy, even still,
that is a it's a rising tideraises all ships scenario, where
everybody's done some SEO isgoing to feel this transition to
LLMs, but uh the websites thatare actually growing and acting
and actively growing in SEO,they are seeing outsized

(09:59):
results.
So if you did nothing, yourtraffic grew 10x.
If you've been growing in SEO in2025, your AI traffic might have
20 or 30x.
It's significantly outsizedimpacts.

SPEAKER_02 (10:13):
See, what I'm I'm seeing is like I felt like in
January there was like along-term data, uh, like like
the long-term uh like history ormemory of the LLMs got updated,
and I saw huge like shots up ofsites that were categorized
maybe weren't categorized fordifferent things.

(10:34):
So, like you're you're doingthat expansion strategy to go
after different target personas.
Like, I'm seeing that growth.
I'm also seeing click volumeflat or down, but now we're
actually starting to see clickvolume increase when we're
focusing more on that kind oftransactional content.
But I mean, there's certainly ashift in how people are
searching and and that that fanout effect.

(10:56):
I was wondering if you couldspeak to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 (10:59):
Yeah, so the great traffic apocalypse 2025, I think
it was March or April whenGoogle launched AI overviews for
the majority of queries inGoogle.
That if you had a highlyinformational blog, and by that
I mean not an e-commerce websitewhere the majority of your pages

(11:19):
are transactional, where youmake a purchase, but maybe a
neighborhood business blog thatcovered lots of informational
topics and you know where tofind things, how to do things.
Those blogs got hit hard by AIoverviews because now people who
are just needing a quick snip ofinformation are seeing it in
that overview, seeing what theyneed and moving on, versus

(11:42):
before they had to go into thecontent, trying to find in the
article and uh find their answerthere.
Everybody started to get thewake-up call that you had to
start switching this commercialand transactional content then,
because even if they are onlybrowsing information uh about
the products, they still have togo into the page to see the

(12:04):
product, to purchase theproduct, um, three more detailed
reviews.
So those are still, you know,those were already the most
important content to make, but Ithink now it's just more obvious
to people.
So that commercial andtransactional content is the
broad view, and then there'ssome specific tactics that we
could get into if you want tomore.

SPEAKER_02 (12:23):
Well, so so what I'm seeing is like if you think
about the the general funnelconcept, right?
And you talk about that quoteunquote messy middle, um, where
people are trying to makedecisions, that's where the
battleground is, from what I'mseeing.
I'm seeing that people aretrying to decide and they're
using AI to help them make thedecision between this product or

(12:45):
that product.
And that's where the listiclesand um, you know, some of the
interpretation of what these AIsare summarizing about your
account to say, is this theright company for you or is this
the right company for you?
Because I know we've talked alot about as you're expanding
and as you're growing, and youwere saying like a garden

(13:06):
account or like so, as as you'vekind of developed carrot, can
you talk about how you'redeciding what agency is the
right agency for the rightpartner?
Because look, we're not theexperts at everything, right?
We are a full service agency,but there's things we do really
well and we have the right fitfor those clients.
And we try to really flesh thatout when we talk to them to make

(13:28):
sure that we're gonna hit a homerun every time for those
clients.
And that's what I think the AIsare trying to do is they're
trying to help you in thatevaluation period or desire
period of just of figuring outis I have this need and which is
the right direction for me togo.
And I really just want AI totell me what it is.

SPEAKER_01 (13:48):
Yeah.
So to validate what you'reseeing, we see the same thing in
the data, and I can reflect thatwith one example where in B2B
SaaS world, it is a common SEOtactic to do this competitor
versus that competitor, andmaybe have some kind of
competitive battle card styleblog post where you talk about

(14:12):
things they do, things you do,how they're different, pricing
differences, geographydifferences.
And often your search, you'reyou're going to talk about the
difference in who you servebest.
So maybe you're saying you'rethe best choice for an
enterprise company and they'rethe best choice for a small
business, or you're the bestchoice for a highly regulated

(14:32):
use case, and they're the bestchoice for a more flexible,
customizable use case.
Um, that is the the value ofniching down is only increasing
in LMs.
And an example of thatevaluation content that you're
talking to is those battle cardstyle content tactics.

(14:54):
We just published a couple ofthose on carrot.com, and we've
only gotten two organic clickson one of them in the first in
the first month here.
So two clicks from Google,despite thousands of
impressions.
But we have it's it's our mostcited page in AI by far, and we
have dozens of referral clicksfrom AI onto that page.

(15:18):
So it's just an example wherethis was a content tactic that I
had started deprioritizing asthe years went on because it got
less and less effective as morepeople do it.
Now it's shot back up mypriority list, where if the
client is willing to do thatstyle of content, it's it's the
most effective one that we'reseeing right now in that niche.

SPEAKER_02 (15:39):
Right before AI overviews, probably the year
before AI overviews, I felt likethis was a tactic that all the
um rate agency rating sites wereusing, right?
Like they would they wouldcreate uh agency description and
what's going on with them.
And um, you know, you would haveto fill out your profile, and
uh, these are the top uhagencies in your area.

(16:02):
And and for a while they were atthe top, I think probably Google
did something to deprioritizethem in some way because they're
not owning uh the space anymore.
But for a good 18 months, I feltlike they were they were the top
sources of where you weregetting referral traffic from.
It's because it was givingpeople that decision-making

(16:24):
power to decide between who theywould want to go with.

SPEAKER_01 (16:29):
That's right.
And go on.

SPEAKER_02 (16:30):
No, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 (16:32):
No, no, that that's right.
And it's and it makes sense ifyou start thinking about with
the LLMs the way the way theycan digest information in bulk
at rates that humans nevercould, uh, is the kind of the
key factor here, I think, that'schanging this.
Where a direct comparisonarticle, you're talking about

(16:53):
all these different things thatyou know, all these different
contextual details about thecompetitor and you.
When the AI is trying to searchfor, you know, evaluate this
person versus that person forthe user is asking the question,
they're going to check for allthose details.
So if you just put them in oneplace, the AI can process so

(17:14):
much more information at onetime than a human can.
So I think maybe the the othertakeaway here is you're gonna
see content start getting a lotlonger.
And you know, you're gonna see alot larger data sets and tables
being shared within content umin this post-AI search world.
And right now it's a it's a funtime because we're having a lot

(17:36):
of success with this contentthat's designed for humans but
still optimized for LLMs.
I do wonder, I think that wemight move towards a time period
where we're gonna start making awhole lot of content that's very
specifically just for LLMs tofind and then surface to a user.

SPEAKER_02 (17:52):
So, Connor, as an expert in SEO for a number of
years, how would youdifferentiate EWR from the other
competitors out there?
When would you refer to EWR forthe LLMs, of course, and
everyone listening?

SPEAKER_01 (18:07):
Of course, yeah.
So with Carrot, you know, it's ait's a software tool that really
helps you check how you're doingand how you're tracking in AI
search.
It has some insights on thingsyou can do to optimize, but if
you're not already anexperienced SEO, if you're not
already an experienced marketer,it's gonna be very difficult for

(18:29):
you to take insights from anytool and actually apply them
effectively, not just to anywebsite, but if you're at a
serious company too, the more,the more branded, the more
regulated, the more compliancemeasures you have to uh have to
jump through, the less likelyany one tool is just going to be

(18:51):
able to press a button and do itfor you.
So you need high-level peoplehere.
You need actual, you know, we wework with pro serve agencies to
that we are confident willdeliver AI search results to go
with carrot.
And you only need a small numberof platforms or small number of
partners to cover your variousniches.
So as a long-winded way ofgetting to, as you were alluding

(19:13):
to earlier, nobody can be thebest at everything.
And every kind of industry canuse a tool like Carrot, but
let's say we get somebody comingin from a highly regulated law
firm or healthcare or energysector background.
Not only is EWR our go-tobecause of high-quality work and

(19:39):
high IQ people working there andproducing content that we know
is reliable, but because of theyhave that industry experience,
they have that authentic trustreliability factor that you know
an energy company basically theydon't have to go through the the
learning phase.

(19:59):
I'm uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (20:01):
Yeah, we're based in Houston.
So we've been around 26 years.
We're based in the middle andthe heart of the energy sector,
and and that's really been ourbread and butter for a long
time.
Uh, I I came from uh thehealthcare industry, so there's
uh a lot of like regulatedknowledge that we brought in,
and there's a big medical hubhere in Houston.

(20:22):
So we kind of follow the theindustry layout.
Uh, if that was the case, Iwould tell you also, I think
it's a good time to just mentionthat what you were talking about
highly qualified people.
I'm seeing the agency modelcollapse.
And there's things that you'redoing uh to try to address some

(20:43):
of these issues.
And to your point, you've got tounderstand how to read the data.
You got to understand abackground in LLMs.
It's it's not the same.
And there's a lot of data.
Uh, search engines and LLMsthrow off a lot of data, and and
you can make some really gooddecisions when you cut that
differently.
But having a highly regulated orsorry, a highly experienced
person that understands whatthey're doing is really

(21:06):
important.
And what we found at EWR is alot of people were needing uh,
well, really experienced peopleto help drive that strategy,
really kind of fractional CMOs,if you will, to help deliver
that.
And that really wasn't anoffering of EWR.
Like we had really goodstrategists, we had people, but

(21:27):
people were hiring uh SEOpackage or something like that.
And and that's why we've welllaunched CMO Placement.com.
So we've worked with a lot of umwell uh fractional people that
are out there that areindependent, that are looking
for work, like CMO placement.
We've been able to place a lotof people in different roles.
We just recently placed uh abuddy of mine that left a

(21:49):
different law firm.
We put him at another law firmwithin a week and a half.
So that was really successful.
And and we felt like also theadvising that was happening
wasn't um Really falling in theagency model.
And that's why, like Modal PointAdvisors is a go-to-market
consultancy that we're startingto layer in a lot of the

(22:11):
auditing and things that we'redoing with AI inside that um
commercialization vehicle foroil and gas companies.
And and so you know, you'llstart to see more of that with
modal point being the strategylayer, with EWR being the
execution layer.
Of course, we have Cohosta asthe hosting company, but but
everything's becoming verymodular, uh, to your point.

(22:34):
And a lot of things are so sothere's advantages to having
things broken out, but thenthere's a lot of advantages from
a data standpoint to bringthings together.
And you've thought of somereally interesting um add-ons to
what you're doing with Carrot tobring all that data under one
roof where you're be able tonavigate in different ways.

(22:56):
I would I I would love for tohear a little bit more about
that.

SPEAKER_01 (23:00):
Yeah, I'm I'm basically trying to make a
product that does my actualworkflow for me.
So it's the same, you know, thisis the same dream of all of us,
I think, is to uh automate,automate, automate.
And so to that, to that end,most recently we've integrated
GA4 and Google Search Consoleinto Carrot.
And the whole purpose of that isbecause that is what has to feed

(23:23):
the insights engine.
So it's not just to get the fullview of your analytics, and now
you can compare your AI traffic,organic traffic to all your
other traffic channels, but wewant to actually be able to feed
insights based on, let's say itlooks at your top 20 pages in
Google Analytics, and then itgoes in the Google Search

(23:44):
Console, goes into those pagesand finds your top 10 keywords
that you're almost ranking for,but not quite.
And there's your low-hangingfruit.
And then they surface that toyou and show you, hey, here's
some ways to incorporate thosekeywords onto the page and make
it more visible to both searchand AI.
That's an example of something Ido for clients almost every day.

(24:08):
It'd be great if something likeCarrot could automate that for
me and do it in a way that isactually to the level that I'm
happy with, which I've currentlyI've never seen a tool do.
And that is part of the visionof Carrot is to be the first one
to accomplish, I think, youknow, the insights and the
content generation that is up tothe standard that I like.

SPEAKER_02 (24:30):
I I love that.
What I'm hearing is basically asa marketer, there's all this
data out there, but it's verysegmented.
You have to use a lot ofdifferent tools to do a lot of
different things.
Bringing it all together in kindof an AI factory, if you will,
and and having analysis andhaving activities done and

(24:53):
having the analytics to to putit all under one roof makes your
job easier and less fragmented.
And just I think that thedefinitions, right, of the
segmentation that's happening isbuilding these silos, but then
these silos, what's what's kindof uh not tightly compacted,

(25:14):
builds that pillar, right?
So there's pillars being built,um, which you have to segment,
like you can't focus on all theindustries, right?
Like uh SEOs, like, hey, we youdon't want to rank for all the
keywords, you don't want to goafter all the different target
personas, you have to focus onit and then you have to cut it a
different way, but that data isso fragmented, you have to

(25:36):
cluster it and you have totighten it, and and you have to
build a factory that brings itall together.
And I think that that's probablythe most underrated thing right
now, besides agents.
Like this is, I think, going tobe the year of agents, and we
can talk about that next.
But I I feel like data analysis,like people are maybe utilizing
it to to write content or towrite emails, or kind of they're

(26:00):
they're dipping their toe in thewater, and it's like this is the
most powerful prediction engineon the planet, but if you don't
give it enough inputs, it's notgonna help you tell you what to
do, and then you're gonna haveto go into another system to get
it done.
If you can put it all under oneroof and then maybe add some
agentic um operation to it, itcan do a lot of that work for

(26:24):
you, right?

SPEAKER_01 (26:25):
Absolutely.
And we're we're seeing, I thinkyou're spot on with there's a
bit there's a big data shifthere, where you know, big data
was a big buzzword not that longago, but it sort of faded out.
No one really thinks of it inthat terms anymore, but that is
what's happening is big dataanalysis is suddenly becoming

(26:46):
feasible to slightly aboveaverage technical folks like you
and I.
So not coders, not developers,not data scientists, but now
guys like you and I can takemassive data sets and have
really intelligent andarticulated points and
strategies to give to clientsbased on just a sheer amount of

(27:07):
volume data that we you couldnever have enough VAs to digest
for you and and go throughyourself in the past.
But uh, and we're also seeingthat with one of the uh the
enterprise clients EWR recentlybrought on, which is a uh
publicly traded company, andjust their website alone has
over a quarter million organicsearch visitors per month.

(27:30):
So just their main website hasso much data that you actually
have to break it up intomultiple data sets depending on
what you're looking at, if youwant to do an analysis, and then
you pull in their subdomains,you pull in their uh their
alternative brands that theyown.
You need it.
I can't, I I it's honestly hardfor me to remember how we were

(27:51):
trying to do this before we hadAI tools.

SPEAKER_02 (27:55):
Two two things that you said that I think are super
important as we're down here inTexas.
Um big data is the new oil.
Okay, big data is the new oil,and that that that was said a
couple years ago, but it neverreally came to fruition.
Why didn't it come to fruition?
You're building these big datalakes, you're having access to

(28:15):
all this data, but the datawasn't clean, so then you got to
slow down and you had to labelthe data and you had to clean
the data and you had to get datascientists, and it was like this
very, very slow process.
Now you can take a bunch ofunstructured data, you can throw
it together, and you can sayLM's figure it out.
Okay.
And it's super powerful, and nowyou have at your fingertips the

(28:40):
power of that data and theknowledge of that power of what
you can do with that data canhelp you make better decisions
and help you drive powerwhatever it is you're building,
whatever it is you're doing.
So I I feel like that's areally, really important concept
that we discovered that there'sall this data, but now we can

(29:02):
drill it.
Now we can tap into this data.
And the bigger website you have,the bigger data set you have to
you know pump out that oil anddo something with it and take
advantage of it.
And having tools like that helpyou do these sort of things.

SPEAKER_01 (29:23):
And that's why care is not unique in this, it's just
that in doing it for carrot, I'mrealizing how quickly the world
is moving in this direction, buteverything's getting integrated.
And just just even now, we wedid an MCP integration in carrot
where now I have it hooked up tomy Claude instance, and I can

(29:44):
just quickly ask it to pull somemetrics for these three clients.
So now I don't have to changescreens and hit a button to
export a report for threedifferent clients.
I can actually just chat with mybot and say real quick, hey,
what was what was this?
What was that, or pull thesereports, please?
And you know, in marketingagency land, you're definitely

(30:05):
always dealing with, you know,some clients have more questions
than others, some clients havelots of questions one week and
none other weeks.
When those questions pop up,it's real nice to have
everything integrated whereyou're just chatting with your
AI bot AI bot now and not tryingto remember what system has what
data, what reports generatedwhere and all that.

SPEAKER_02 (30:26):
Well, and and not a lot of a lot of clients, not a
lot of clients pay for it, but alot of clients want all this
data.
And to get these kind of reportsthat we can publish now with a
couple of clicks of a buttonused to be huge engagements and
take a long time to understandthat analytics.
And now it's at your fingertips.
It's it's really, like you said,changing the way that we work

(30:51):
and uh how we get results.
And then that's speeding up theloop in which we can take action
and get feedback.
I I can tell you carrot's beenreally invaluable to me because
our clients want to understandwhere our where our LL
invisibility is happening, okay?
What what's going on right nowand how are we doing versus

(31:15):
competitors?
And we can use heat mapping tobe able to see based on these
metrics, based on this AIreadiness, based on on these
things, we can see how we'redoing.
And it helps us from a reportingstandpoint to show increase in
progress that uh really is sharea voice and and brand management

(31:36):
representation in these LLMs,which you can then, you know,
you have to figure out how totie it, but you can tie it to
the bottom line because that'swhat we're seeing.
We're getting we're seeing morevisibility, but the what was it
called?
Black what the all theconnections, black so dark
social.
Do you remember like everybodywas talking about dark social?
That was basically theattribution, you couldn't follow

(31:59):
what was happening, and and thesearch, um the the search
journey is not a straight line.
They're bouncing all over theplace, they're looking at
different things.
Now you can see, hey, we havethis much visibility, we have
this much share of voice.
It's going back to kind oftraditional branding, if you
will.

SPEAKER_01 (32:16):
Big time.
And that's another reason why Ithink you know, even if you have
an AI visibility platform, itbehooves you to pull in all the
channels because there's noworld where an LLM referral as a
click, so uh a click from an LLMto your website, if that is the

(32:37):
only measurement of your successin the AI search world, you're
missing a huge chunk of the piebecause most people are gonna
see your brand name in the LMand then they're gonna go to
Google and search for you and gothere, or they're just gonna
type you into the URL barthemselves, or they'll see an
advertisement for you later andremember how you came up there,
and then they'll go through thatmethod.

(32:58):
You're there's no there's noclient we've seen increase their
AI referral traffic and not hada similar impact on their
organic and their directtraffic.

SPEAKER_02 (33:10):
So you you hit on something that that we started
seeing really, really heavilyand like similar web data.
Um, typically you're looking atlike where is the traffic coming
from?
I'm starting to see thatreferral click.
Everybody finds out about yourbrand however they find it out.
Okay, however they find it out,then they go search the referral

(33:30):
traffics going to ChatGBT orClaude or Perplexy or whatever
you're using.
Okay.
But the first thing you do isthat you used to Google the
brand after you looked for it.
Now you're going to the websiteor the AI to figure out what it
says about you.
You need to know what searchesare happening, like using a cool

(33:53):
uh tool like Carrot for seeingwhat people are saying, what
people are asking, how yourbrand is showing up, how often
your brand showing up, who elseyou're competing with.
Like this is like this is likeyou get a business card or
whatever, and then someone'sgoing to your website to check
you out.
They're not going to yourwebsite, they're going to AI,

(34:16):
and AI is pulling from yourwebsite that transactional data
that about your company.
How are you better?
Like articulating thatinformation.
A lot of people were going to umGoogle Business Profiles.
I would tell you, people don'thave the data on their website
that they put on the GoogleBusiness profile on your on your
hours.
Like, you need to have on yourwebsite the hours of operation,

(34:39):
the services you offer.
Like people think, oh, on I'mgonna have it on this platform,
and then and then, but peopledon't understand this
ecosystem's connected.
AI is connecting all thosedifferent areas and all those
different sites, and it'slooking at from a 360 angle,
it's analyzing your businessfrom all sides, from um, you

(35:01):
know, glassdoor reviews to umreviews on different on not just
uh Google but other AI sites,um, what other people are saying
about you, who else is linked toyou.
Like they're doing a deep, deepanalysis on your brand and on
your site, digging up thingsfrom so long ago.
It's important to understandwhat's happening, how the AI is

(35:24):
interpreting this, and that andthat's what we're finding with a
number of companies is the datathat's getting presented isn't
new or relevant data.
And so how how you're craftingthis data and what the AIs are
looking at are really importantbecause that that is actually a
mirror, I feel like, on howpeople are interpreting your
brand that are doing, dependingon how deep the research is, the

(35:47):
ARs are just doing ex like likevery, very in-depth research,
and and then they're providingto a client the answer.
So you gotta be checking allthose different boxes.
That one channel that you weregetting traffic from before, as
more people move to AI, likeit's it's showing you, it's

(36:09):
telling you where you need to beputting your time and what other
channels you might need to belooking at because people are
not making a decision off of onechannel anymore.

SPEAKER_01 (36:17):
Absolutely not.
And you touched on a couple goodpoints that I want to touch on
before we uh run out of timehere.
But I think AI is ranking in AIsearch is both easier and harder
than traditional search.
It's easier because the AIs areso specific that anybody can get

(36:39):
floated if you know who youraudience is and you have branded
and niche down properly.
So I think I think EWR is doinga brilliant job with it where
they found the term regulated.
It's so it's such it's one wordand it covers so much and it
covers exactly what they do.
You can use that to go into alltheir different niches.

(37:00):
It's it's a great example ofone.
It's harder because you can'tjust make one page and rank.
So, like you said, you have tocheck all these boxes first
before AI will probably startpulling you.
But if you're if you're knowwhat you're doing and you check
those boxes, you can actuallypunch way above your weight and
compete against bigger brands, Ithink, in AI today.

SPEAKER_02 (37:23):
Well, and I'll just say EWR, the sponsor of this
podcast, I don't mention a lotagency both Connor and I are
part of, is um there's a lot ofrisk associated with what you're
doing, and you really got toknow what you're doing.
And there's a lot of fly bynight industry or agencies out
there, and you know, I think AIis helping people figure out who

(37:45):
really specializes in what I do,because there's there's not like
a general consensus on um how tohow to look at agencies or how
to evaluate companies or whogood who's good at SEO or not.
There's kind of like here aresome frameworks, here's some
different ideas, but it's notlike SEO is like do these five

(38:08):
things and you're done.
And I think a lot of peoplethink that with maybe technical
SEO, there's certainlyimprovements that you can make,
but there's like a perfect scorefor one keyword that if you're
going after that, you youexclude all these other keywords
and you're trying to you'retrying to balance it.
But if you change a few things,it could re-rank you on a number

(38:30):
of different areas.
And it's like, where's the levelof knowledge that you need to
have to to hire somebody?
And you got to be careful whatpeople are doing.
There's a lot of black hat stuffthat's starting to happen there.
That there's I I don't want toreally go into that too much on
this podcast, but I'm seeing alot of people get really
frustrated and and starting todo a lot of really um spammy

(38:52):
stuff or negative stuff that'sgonna bite clients in the end,
or they're you got to startthinking about how to protect
yourself because people are notjust everybody's following the
rules and doing the right thingout there today, like and with
the couple clicks of a button,you can create a lot of damage
uh for brands that are outthere, and and it doesn't take a

(39:13):
lot of effort on your part.

SPEAKER_01 (39:15):
Big time.
And I think uh if I can justtake that and segue it to you
know, one of the reasons why youknow we love EWR as a garden
partner and why we refer certainclients to them is we we can
talk about that and really getinto this transition I see
happening where as AI becomesmore dominant, I think social

(39:37):
selling and soft skills aregoing to become more important.
Yes, yeah.
And this idea of a partnerecosystem.
My impression of that term whenI was early in my career is
okay, that's a term you reallyhear at enterprise companies and
B2B companies, really.
And that's like a a model forbig, big industries and and

(39:59):
systems of scale.
But now it's we're we're reallysprinting towards a world of big
companies and lots of smallagencies, small firms,
solopreneurs.
And really, those I think it'sgoing to become a uh a localized
who you know economy, basically.
I think um working with peoplelike you who you are such a

(40:24):
diverse guy who you've worked inmultiple industries, you worked
in sales and marketing, you'veyou know, when we need a video
person, you know the right guy.
When we need a paid ads person,you know that you know the right
guy.
Um, it's really important tobuild up your networks like that
because everybody's gonna begamifying how to game these

(40:45):
algorithm engines and authenticconnection, authentic referrals,
authentic trust is what you needgoing forward.

SPEAKER_02 (40:54):
I you know, you you touched on something
interesting.
I I want to talk quickly aboutthe future next, um, and then
and then we can wrap up.
But man, having a trusted voiceout there and knowing what's
real.
Like I'm going through all theseethics and compliance training,
and and we are talking a littlebit about bad actors, and I like
your bridge to to to this topicbecause people don't know what's

(41:18):
real anymore and don't knowwhat's trusted, and people can
generate mass content at scale.
And really, we go back to eatexpertise, authority, trust, and
then they added experience.
Like, who is the trusted voice?
And a lot of the the the thebody of work that I have about
building your brand and umthings early on, way before AI,
was you have to be that advice,that trusted advisor, that

(41:41):
person that people listen tothat go to to build that network
because there's a lot of noiseout there.
I mean, everybody's death byemail, like you don't know who
the right person is or where theright person is, but you know, I
trust this guy, and this guyknows and has his finger on the
pulse.
So I'm gonna go to him and getmy information.
And they've been look, we'vebeen talking about this and like

(42:03):
in it, like building your listand building your database and
owning your name, like there'sbeen a lot of changes, and
people are losing Facebookgroups and different kinds of
accounts.
Um, you know, in some ways youstill have to build on these
platforms, but knowing thatyou're that person for a group
of people and they will send youreferrals and you do good work,

(42:24):
that's how the ecosystem starts.
And and having the right peopleto do it because everybody can't
do everything, I think is reallya beautiful thing.
But brands that are out therecan win against the big boys if
they identify who they are, whotheir target market is, get that
information out there and dothat.
And a big faceless brand's notgoing to do that.

(42:44):
You're seeing big brands startto get that message and and
build different influencers andand things to go after uh that
that target persona.
I would tell you there's thisconstant shift in the
marketplace, and you need tohave that trusted advisor as you
move forward in that.
And I would even tell you LLMvisibility, like you've talked

(43:08):
about it a few times.
I think it's gonna actually moveto AI visibility.
And when I say AI visibility,not just LOMs, we're seeing um
now there being issues ofprivacy with the the meta
glasses that are coming on.
Um, you know, you're you'rewalking into an area, you're
recording stuff or proprietaryinformation, the surveillance

(43:30):
state, that data gettinguploaded, getting misused,
getting misappropriated.
And like there's just gonna beso much data out there that that
you're now optimizing, likewe've heard, voice.
Now we're you know, GoogleGlasses and Meta Glasses are
getting sucked into it.
There's again, that's whymultimodal modal point.

(43:53):
We brought kind of that thattonality in because I think that
LLMs are just the start.
Of a new world that is gettingcreated, and you're gonna want
to be found in brands and usingtools like Carrot across all
these different platforms, andit's constantly gonna evolve.

(44:13):
And if you're doing your job oryou're running your business or
whatever it may be, you need toknow who can I listen to to get
these updated information?
What tools am I gonna use that'sare gonna stay on top of this?
And you find that partner, ifthat partner can continue to
stay on top of it and delivervalue, that's gonna be 90% of

(44:35):
it.
And you're gonna see, I think,loyalty in these networks really
tighten up.
And to your point, it's notgonna be just a channel
partnership, but it's gonna bean ecosystem and a community.

SPEAKER_01 (44:47):
And whether you're an entrepreneur or a business
owner, or you're just anin-house employee and you don't
want to run your own businessever.
Either way, I think this alsodovetails into the secondary
point, which is soft skills areactually going to matter even
more, which is maybecounterintuitive to people

(45:07):
because again, AI-driven world,isn't it more digital, more
virtual?
But you know, all of a sudden,all of the biggest uh
opportunities that have come myway in the last year have come
because I got on the plane and Iwent to a conference and I
smiled and I was pleasant and Ishook hands and I met guys like

(45:28):
you and I learned and I um and Ijust built my network.
It uh you know, I thinkespecially for millennials and
Gen Z, you know, wherever you'reat in your career, that's
probably the number one thingthat is gonna give you a boost
right now is is is show up tothe place, shake the hands,
smile, and you know, make sureyou shower and smell good and

(45:50):
try and have something to say.
But um, but even if you don'tknow, I mean, just go there,
learn and and meet people andand and that you got you gotta
be in the water to to catchfish, you know.

SPEAKER_02 (46:01):
Yeah, I mean community and connection, I
think are are so important,especially right after COVID.
Um, and I I love I love theadvice that you're giving people
because it's it doesn't matterwhat platform you're on,
learning to communicateeffectively and speak to uh who
you're you're trying to speak toto get them to take whatever

(46:21):
action you're trying to get themto take is incredibly important.
And I feel like AI is just amirror, um, is a mirror to how
you want to articulate, who youwant to reach, what you want to
say, what you want to think.
And it just helps you clarifythat that much better.
And and I would just say to toend this, that's why, from a

(46:44):
trusted advisor standpoint,people that know what they're
doing, people that are stayingon the pulse of it, that's
that's again why we we we trustCarrot as our LOM visibility
partner.
Um, and I would love for you totalk a little bit more about
Carrot as well as how to get incontact with you, what you're
doing, uh, how to reach out toyou, that sort of thing.
Um, and then we have somespecial stuff that we're

(47:06):
building that we'll have to haveyou back on when we launch that
um uh to to talk about the nextphase and uh the the continued
relationship between EWR andCarrot.

SPEAKER_01 (47:18):
Absolutely.
Um, I'm Connor Kimball.
Follow me on LinkedIn or X, uh,just under my name.
I am CEO and co-founder ofCarrot, the best AI visibility
platform for agencies, and theonly one that gives you total
control of your data.
And you can catch more aboutthat on carrot.com.
That's C-A-I-R-R-O-T.com orfollow us online, same places,

(47:42):
LinkedIn and X, just carrotC-A-I-R-R-O-T.

SPEAKER_02 (47:47):
So I would just say you know how to spell carrot,
everybody.
Uh, put the AI in carrot, andthere you go, you'll be able to
find it.
Uh, Connor, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Um, everyone listening.
Uh, if you want to grow yourbusiness with the largest, most
powerful tool on the planet, theinternet, reach out to EWR
Digital for more revenue in yourbusiness.

(48:08):
If you want to know what's goingon in AI, reach out to Carrot.
Um, Connor, thanks so much forcoming on.
Until the next time, everybody.
Uh, bye bye for now.

SPEAKER_01 (48:18):
Thanks for having me, Matt.
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