April 7, 2025 • 28 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
The search landscape has dramatically transformed. With traffic plummeting by 50-90% for many brands, SEO professionals are scrambling to understand how AI is reshaping organic strategy. In this eye-opening conversation, Jason White, head of SEO at PolicyGenius, shares cutting-edge insights about navigating this new reality.
White reveals that server logs have become an unexpected superpower in measuring AI visibility. While no analytics platforms exist for tools like ChatGPT, examining server logs shows which AI bots visit your site, what content they access, and how frequently they return. This data forms the foundation of understanding your "share of AI voice" – a metric that's rapidly replacing traditional ranking factors.
The conversation takes a startling turn when White points out that "ChatGPT has already consumed all of your website. They consumed it before you started worrying about it." This sobering reality means brands are already behind in the AI optimization race, but understanding how and when AI platforms refresh their knowledge can help marketers regain ground.
Despite the challenges, there's a silver lining: while traffic volume has decreased dramatically, the quality of remaining traffic tends to be higher, with improved conversion rates. White encourages marketers to approach AI with curiosity rather than fear, comparing the current moment to the early days of social media when no established playbooks existed and experimentation reigned supreme.
Whether you're witnessing alarming traffic drops or simply preparing for the inevitable shifts in search behavior, this conversation provides practical strategies for maintaining visibility in an increasingly AI-mediated digital landscape. The rules of search have fundamentally changed – are you ready to adapt your approach?
You can connect with Jason at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaylwhite/
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech
Marketing Rewired.
I don't know about you, butI've seen search traffic fall
off a cliff and AI just might bethe reason.
I had the good fortune to sitdown with Jason White, who's the
head of SEO at PolicyGenius andreally one of the sharpest
voices I've talked to in search.
Tim talked about how generativeAI is reshaping his organic
strategy, why server logs mightbe your new superpower and what
(00:21):
B2B marketers need to do rightnow to stay visible.
So if you care about the futureof search, this one is
definitely a must watch.
Let's dive in.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason White (00:38):
Hey, thank you so much.
I'm excited to be here.
Kevin Kerner (00:41):
Yeah, I'm so glad to have you.
I think maybe we'll just startby Jason.
Just explain a little bit aboutyour background and then what
you do at Policy Genius.
Jason White (00:48):
Sure.
So before I get started, I workwith a variety of different
people within our Policy Geniusorganization.
One of them are lawyers and wehave to do corporate good deeds
and disclaimers and stuff likethat.
So before we get started, Iwant to make it clear that I'm
speaking solely in my personalcapacity today and that the
opinions and views I share areentirely my own and do not
(01:10):
represent or reflect that ofPolicy Genius, my company.
Now that we got that out of theway, I got into search marketing
and SEO.
Specifically, about 20 yearsago I was working at a bike shop
and was selling a lot of accessto inventory on eBay.
I was working at a bike shopand was selling a lot of access
to inventory on eBay.
Ebay was like a really popularsite back in the day.
Craigslist was like a thing,myspace was definitely a thing
(01:31):
and like did really well with it.
I was able to make rent acouple of times and realized
there was acronyms behind a lotof things that I was doing on
eBay and got into like a littlebit more research and
understanding that there waslike this thing called local
search and there was this thingcalled SEO and really just
started learning all theacronyms, that kind of like
built out from eBay.
In understanding there was likedigital marketing.
(01:53):
I was going to school at thetime for phys ed and that's kind
of where everything took like ahard right turn.
I thought paid was way coolerthan SEO and content marketing
Wanted to get into like anagency of some sort, and so I
was trying to target a localagency where I was living in
upstate New York at the time,couldn't get an interview on the
pay team, but I got aninterview on the SEO team and it
(02:14):
like accidentally how it allwent.
I've worked with really largebrands.
I led SEO efforts at Hertz,dollar, thrifty, the Car and
Thrill brands and I worked atboutique agencies where I got my
start.
I've also worked at reallylarge global agencies servicing
just dream clients that youwould want to work with Kohler,
(02:34):
ralph Lauren, tory Burch, motel6, tiktok for Business was a
cool blog that I helped launchand so in my current capacity
now I'm back in-house andfocusing more on just like
understanding, like the depth ofthe business and how we can
parlay digital marketing toachieve our goals, and a lot of
it includes AI right now.
Kevin Kerner (02:56):
It's just I mean you and I talked about a month
ago or so and it's just likesince then I've been thinking
about all the disruption insideof the search space.
And since then I've beenthinking about all the
disruption inside of the searchspace.
I mean some of the research Ifound.
They say between like anywherefrom and who knows what the
number is like anywhere from 20to 60% drop off in terms of the
volume that some companies aregetting, and you have, like the
(03:17):
HubSpot example and you know howReddit's doing really well and
all these other.
I'm just really curious, like,what's your experience?
What are you seeing, either inyour business or across the
industry?
Jason White (03:30):
Like what's actually happening on the ground
.
20% sounds pretty good.
I would love to be 20% downright now.
I haven't really heard ofanybody less than like 50% loss
of traffic in the last 18 monthsto two years.
I know a lot of brands thathave lost 80% of their traffic,
90% of their traffic.
I think the glimmer of hope isthat the quality of the traffic
(03:52):
that is coming to websites seemsto be highly qualified.
A lot of the people that I'vetalked to, a lot of the sites
that I have access to,conversion has increased quite a
bit and so, even though we'renot sending as much traffic, the
traffic does seem to be there,or the quality traffic does seem
to be there.
It's been just a wild, wildsearch or shift in search in the
(04:12):
last 18 months.
There really has not beenanything like it and I think
that it really kind oforiginated with the pandemic and
it's a little bit of acorrection that's kind of come
out of the pandemic and ourshift towards AI has definitely
changed Google searches,definitely changed search.
Kevin Kerner (04:28):
Whether it's for the better or not could be
argued, but but what's yourguess on why the why the volume
is dropping off?
Jason White (04:37):
AIOs yeah, the AI overviews that Google is putting
on the pages.
They're driving the cost perclicks up quite a bit.
It makes the competition forfor the real estate really
increase and to have like anorganic link anymore, like it
used to be when I started, theydon't exist.
If you're not on page one, youdon't exist at all, and even
(04:59):
being like outside of the topthree, you're going to see very
little traffic from that, and sothe search ecosystem is kind of
you know, I think a lot ofpeople want to say that like SEO
is dead right now, but it's notnecessarily dead.
I think that there's like a lotthat can still be gained.
It's just a shift in strategy,and I think that a lot of people
kind of had too many eggs inthe Google basket and haven't
(05:20):
differentiated where they'regetting their traffic from, and
those are the brands that arereally getting caught out right
now and are hurting the most.
I think in last year I think itwas about March there was a big
code release.
Somebody within Google dumpedall the Google secrets, and this
was the second time in twoyears that we've gotten some
view into the algorithm.
(05:41):
I think the first time wasactually Yandex, which is the
Russian search engine, and itlooks like they largely copied
the Google search engine.
But I think that that dumpreally showed what a bad
relationship Google has towardsSEOs and it's a little bit like
we are abused by Google and wecontinue to come back and think
(06:03):
that things are going to change.
We trust what Google is tellingus and is saying to us.
In some cases we arecommunicating a lot of this
stuff to clients and then Googleburns us time and time again
and does something differentthan what they've said before.
So the environment that they'vekind of created with a lot of
these updates in the last year,in the last 18 months and
definitely in the last fourthese updates in the last year
(06:25):
in the last 18 months anddefinitely in, like the last
four.
Yeah with AI, with AI, aianswers yeah, it's really made
it hard to make good, soundbusiness decisions based off of,
like, how Google approaches thepeople that or the sites that
want to be on Google search.
Kevin Kerner (06:37):
Yeah, it's the thing that we talked about a
month ago or so, where it waslike hey, you know, our site
needs some optimization in theseareas.
Should we invest money in theMighty and True site and making
it better?
And I thought you had a reallyinteresting answer of how much
investment you put into the oldschool site optimization.
Is it worth putting any moneyinto your site in terms of
(07:00):
technical SEO anymore?
Jason White (07:02):
It depends on your goals.
It depends on what you'retrying to achieve.
Usability is always going towin.
Good SEO focuses on usability,and so if you are positioning
SEO so that it can lift up allchannels paid, crm, social the
content piece is still important.
I feel it's important to spreadall of that out on social media
, whether it's paid ororganically.
(07:22):
But SEO can be that catch-all.
And SEO can help raise theother ships, and that's kind of
how I'm pivoting it within myorganization so that it can
really be maximized and beenabled to connect the different
pieces of the organization.
Marketing always sits betweensales and development.
We're always trying to explainmultiple different languages to
(07:44):
multiple different stakeholders,and so there's a lot of value
in that and we can raise allshifts to the people that we
work with around us, and I stillthink the SEO is super valuable
.
The focus really should be on,like clean indexation and making
sure that you're giving thebest experience to the search
bot when it comes, but also theuser when they come.
Kevin Kerner (08:07):
Interesting.
Yeah, cause especially now withAI, cause you really want to be
cleanly indexed with AI, causeit's got to read the, it's got
to read the site in a clean way.
So now let's say you have tooptimize now for this new
generative search thing.
What types of things are youdoing to try to exploit this new
environment?
Jason White (08:26):
I don't know that.
I'm trying to exploit it yet.
I'm trying to really understandit.
I'm really trying to understandwhat drives it.
I think it also originates atthe goal of what you're trying
to achieve.
If you're trying to get morevisibility on some of these AI
platforms, if you want to beseen more on ChatGPT, there
aren't tools available to showyou your visibility.
There's no analytics forChatGPT, and so how do you go
(08:51):
back to the source or like, howdo you understand what success
looks like in gaining morevisibility on an AI platform?
For me, it started with theserver logs.
It started with understandingwhat type of AI bots were coming
to the websites that I getvisibility into, what kind of
calls were they making, whatkind of files were they
downloading, how often were theydownloading those files?
(09:13):
It also came with a lot of justlike leaning into ChatGPT and
asking it why.
It gave me certain answers, andso when I'm looking for a
recommendation, I'll oftenfollow it up with a why did you
recommend XY brand?
And understanding what piecesof authority AI is using versus
what pieces of authority Googlehas historically used.
(09:35):
They're different.
I think that Wikipedia is areally valuable piece of real
estate.
To this day.
Google places emphasis onWikipedia.
Google places emphasis on yourdomain authority.
They might refute it.
They don't have.
They haven't published thatmetric in 13 years or something
crazy, but like that still holdstrue.
(09:56):
We saw that in the code leaklast year.
But understanding whatauthority means to the platforms
can be different on eachplatform, and so if you have a
target demographic that's usingperplexity and not ChachiPT, I
think that all it all matters.
There.
You're not going to see muchtraffic.
There's all kinds of dashboards.
I think Sierra is doing a greatjob at publishing a lot of AI
(10:19):
data thoughts and, like you know, looker Studio dashboards are
really helpful so you can seehow much traffic you're getting.
It's not super impressive.
It's not beating out Google.
Yet Understanding the serverlogs are giving you more of a
metric of your share of voice.
How often are you being shownon a chat GPT or within a
perplexity, and so that is abranding piece, and that is
(10:42):
where SEO needs to shift.
Rankings are always just kindof like a bad metric for success
.
Share of voice matters in aworld of chat GPT.
If you're not being seen or youdon't understand how often
you're being shown, that is acore problem that kind of needs
to get addressed, and that'samazing I would have never
(11:04):
thought to to go to the serverlogs, but that's, you're right,
like that's where it'll show up.
Kevin Kerner (11:08):
That's the place where you and I think share of
ai voice in some ways got reallyinteresting.
Stat, like what channel are youin, like where are people
finding you?
And there is no tool right nowto do that.
There's no analytics, not thatI'm aware of.
Jason White (11:22):
I will probably wish I didn't say this, but I
would love to get bombarded withLinkedIn messages about tools
available to me and ChatGPT thatactually do what they say.
But yeah, I think server logshave always been a magical place
to go.
They're always like the mostaccurate piece of data that you
can gather.
(11:43):
It's a record of an actual ping, of an actual handshake between
one server and another server.
A lot of our tools we justthink that they're really
accurate and they're not at all.
Google Analytics is not anaccurate tool.
That's just the reality of thesituation.
Server logs have so much to them.
They can really help you unpackand uncover and view your site
(12:04):
in a different way, and I foundthat a lot of people just don't
want to take the risk.
The best part of the time thatwe're living in right now is
that ChatGPT can tell you andshow you how to do the research
on server logs, on how to do theresearch on ChatGPT and how
you're going to find it.
It can give you the code to usein BigQuery.
(12:26):
So the barrier to entry onserver logs is so low right now
and it really takes a curiousperson that just wants to go
after it and answer somequestions and learn something
new, make some mistakes, butthere's all kinds of intelligent
things and insights that comeout of server log analysis.
Kevin Kerner (12:38):
Yeah, it's amazing you wonder.
And insights that come out ofserver log analysis?
Yeah, it's amazing you wonder,like you think, about those
different channels people go to.
So you have your search, youhave your Chrome window that
gives you the AI's answer, haveyou?
I don't know if you've tried?
Have you tried the ChatGPTsearch function?
Jason White (12:55):
That's all I used.
I replaced it on my Chrome bar.
Kevin Kerner (12:58):
Really interesting .
Jason White (12:59):
I don't know what usability is.
Kevin Kerner (13:00):
I don't know what usability is.
I don't know what adoption isof that yet, but I wonder which
one will win out or they'll getintegrated somehow.
Actually, personally me, Idon't find the ChatGPT search as
useful as the AI answer thatcomes up, yet.
Jason White (13:16):
Yeah, I don't think it is.
From a discovery standpoint.
From an information standpoint,I think ChatGPT wins out.
I must rather would go to thenative environment than do it in
my search bar.
I feel like the answer isdifferent or better when I'm in
the native versus in my searchbar.
Mostly, I just want to immersemyself in it, and so that's why
(13:37):
I made the change.
I've heard for two years thatnobody loves their Google
results.
I've hated Google results foryears They've been awful.
And so, as, like a user, I justwant something different.
I want something that is goingto give me a way to learn, as
I'm doing my daily stuff anyway.
I don't think that it'snecessarily a better answer.
I question kind of like theelectricity usage of it and like
(13:58):
I'm being a bad human and likepromoting global warming by
using chat GPT more often thanGoogle search.
I'm sure that Google searchused a hell of a lot of energy
in the early years.
Kevin Kerner (14:11):
Google has a lot of data centers too.
Jason White (14:13):
Yeah, so I don't know like what, to quite compare
it to but I don't know if thisis the answer.
I don't know where it's going.
I think that this chat, gpt andAI in general is going to take
such a leap in the next threeyears that people aren't ready
for it.
People aren't understanding itright now.
They're really going to getleft behind in this next
(14:33):
iteration and this next big leapthat we take in the next three
to five years, and so I justwant to give myself every
opportunity.
Now is where the playing fieldis, even for everybody.
There's no analytics, nobodyknows what they're doing.
We're all just figuring thisout and exploring, and so now is
the best opportunity to getafter it and just try to figure
out what your spot is.
I mean, I've heard for how manyyears that AI is coming for my
(14:55):
job, and so I just startedleaning into that more and more,
and like I had to call me bigfella, I call it my robot and it
responds with some big fella,so we can have some fun with it
too nice.
Kevin Kerner (15:07):
So from looking at these server logs and then
querying inside of chat gpt,have you, have you tried any
experiments where you're saying,huh, that that actually worked,
like if you are you doinganything site side or content
side, where that that is showingyou glimpses of, hmm, this
might be working?
Jason White (15:25):
I haven't done to the depth and level of some of
the ideas that I have and I want.
Mainly, I've been trying tofigure out how often it comes to
my site and updates it and howI can display title tag
information or metadatainformation in ways to make it
more visible on chat GPT.
On perplexity, right Time toindexation is something that
(15:46):
I've been trying to understandmostly.
We made an update on the page.
How long does it take beforechat GPT recognizes it?
And I don't know.
I don't quite know orunderstand it, but sometimes
I'll ask it like how many daysago was October 1st or how many
days ago was the election, andit will hallucinate and give me
(16:09):
like 15 days, like a date from15 days previous, and so I'll
recognize that and I'll say norobot like you did a bad thing.
That's not the actual thing.
So it reruns it and I feel likethe date that it's been giving
me is the date of the refresh ofwhatever data that I've been
looking at.
I haven't been able to provethat out yet, but it's a weird
loophole or anomaly that I'vekind of scene.
(16:33):
So I've just been focused onclean indexation and timed
indexation and understanding howquickly these models are coming
back and updating.
Kevin Kerner (16:42):
That's mind-blowing because you're
right, there will be an indextime for probably each
individual AI platform.
That's completely differentthan anything that we know now.
Is it a second?
Is it 10 minutes?
Is it five days?
Is it a month, whatever Right?
Minutes, is it five days?
Is it a month, whatever Right?
And that really is when youthink about people coming back
to your site.
The mindset is always like howoften is Google indexing?
(17:05):
I don't think many people havereally thought about AI index.
I mean, certainly people atyour level have, but business
leaders.
It's like, wow, that's atotally different concept.
Jason White (17:16):
Yeah, it's like wow , that's a totally different
concept.
Yeah, it's just different.
And the thing that kind of isdifficult to wrap your head
around is it's already happened.
Yeah, chatgpt has alreadyconsumed all of your website.
They consumed it before youstarted worrying about it.
It was already over, and soyou're like starting from a
place of being behind already.
You don't really have a choiceanymore.
(17:37):
You can ask to be removed, youcan block the bot, but they've
already consumed all of theirinformation.
They've already consumed yourdata, and so how do you work
with that process?
Kevin Kerner (17:45):
That's incredibly scary and depressing.
Jason White (17:48):
It is yeah, but what are you going?
Kevin Kerner (17:49):
to do.
What are you going to do?
Well, yeah, you mentioned a lotof the sort of tool side,
server side stuff.
Is there any you know?
You want to know when stuff isgoing to be indexed so you can
and you can tweak the indexingon your side.
You can tweak the structure ofthe site on your site such that
it gets indexed.
What about the role of contenton the site?
And is that?
(18:10):
I don't know if.
Is there any way that contentcan be structured on the site,
way that content can bestructured on the site like
actual written content, suchthat the AI reads it and accepts
it as true?
Or is it just taking all thecontent wholesale?
Jason White (18:25):
and making its own decision.
I think it's taking all thecontent wholesale and making its
own decision.
I think that the data that yousupply is super important and
the freshness of that data.
If they feel like, if you askit, why do you trust this brand,
the brand that I work for yousearch like, why do you trust
this brand?
It comes back with pieces ofinformation.
I think that that's like reallyimportant to know because it's
(18:46):
different for each of the brands, but I think that they're
already consuming all of this,everything that's on your site.
What I see is a lot of likelocalized data points being
highly.
They're just they put a highemphasis on on localized stuff.
It makes me kind of wonder tooabout like current news events
(19:06):
and things that are happening ona day-to-day basis.
Oh, can you feed that to a chat?
Gpt or perplexity, um, andunderstanding like indexation,
and that's kind of where, likethe speed thing comes from.
Kevin Kerner (19:17):
Then does that point to, from a brand
perspective, being on not juston your own site, but on?
Does it put more of an emphasison third-party sites, research
sites, you know, for a lot ofour clients are tech customers
G2, review sites, that type ofstuff.
Jason White (19:32):
Yeah, I think review sites are very important
again.
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Kerner (19:36):
And they always have been, but in a different
way.
As the reader reading thereview site and making your
decision now they're importantas the AI reading the review
site.
Jason White (19:45):
But how is the AI knowing what was like a bought
review versus like a real review, like that's?
what I come back to is like howdoes it, how does it know?
Yeah, I mean a lot of brands.
They use NPS and will querytheir users and NPS scores are
so when I was at Hertz, wefocused on NPS scores.
So so much, that is such ajuicy data point to be giving to
(20:10):
an AI engine, and I think thatleaders and brands should be
looking at, however they'recollecting real world
information and making sure thatit's surfaced and indexable in
a clean way, an efficient wayyeah, regardless of whether it's
on your own side or on, youknow, a third party side or
whatever.
Kevin Kerner (20:30):
Right, what is the ?
Do you have any opinion on thefor a brand on the use of AI
generated content, now that thebots are looking at?
Jason White (20:41):
Do it.
Do whatever is right for yourbrand.
I'm going to sound jaded andold, but I'm just so tired of
listening to Google'srecommendations and them doing
the exact opposite of whateverthey told us and coming back to
just making sound businessdecisions on what's right for
your brand.
I feel like google is dictatingbusiness decisions way too much
(21:02):
and telling brands what theyshould and shouldn't be doing,
and it's the marketplace thatshould be deciding that, not
necessarily google.
And so we are, like everybody'scompetitors are facing the same
challenges that you are facing,and content production and
budgets are big, big,restrictive things.
Yeah, and so if you need to useAI to generate more content,
(21:26):
there are ways to do that.
Where you're not spammy, you'reproviding user benefit.
You are providing a service toa user and not just trying to
convince them of something.
I think that it's totally fine,and people should optimize
wherever there's a search box.
They shouldn't just be focusedon googlecom anymore yeah, it's
incredible.
Kevin Kerner (21:46):
Have you tried I guess you've probably tried deep
research, haven't you?
Jason White (21:49):
yeah, a little bit research.
Kevin Kerner (21:50):
Yeah, it's incredible.
I mean it from a contentperspective, like if you were a
brand trying to create content.
Deep research gives you a realhack to get a lot of data points
in your brain like quickly andit's synthesized.
I think from a contentproduction perspective, it's
just, it's a magic.
It's just a magic tool.
It's maybe not writing thefinal content, but it's.
I mean, who would have beenable to do all that research and
(22:13):
get it to you immediately?
Jason White (22:15):
it's incredible yeah, I think claude does a
little bit better job I've triedthe 3.7, the sonnet yeah yeah,
yeah, I like claude for creativethings and like writing briefs
and things like that.
Um, and I think that, like chat, gpt does better from like a
data aspect or just like amechanical aspect of I get it to
write like regex for me all thetime because I can't remember
or, like you know, dumb thingslike that.
Kevin Kerner (22:37):
I'm relying on it way too much these days, but
it's definitely a speed.
I have this theory that, likeback in the when the Internet
was first started, it was like,ok, it's going to take our jobs,
and now we got our jobs donethat much faster.
But now we're going to geteverything done that would have
taken a day in like five minutes, which means that the work is
(22:58):
going to be in and now we'regoing to have seven hours and
and 55 more out, more hours toactually get work done and the
companies will fill it in.
We'll just be doing a lot morework a lot quicker.
Our productivity is going tojust go through the roof until
the AI takes over everything.
Jason White (23:15):
That's my theory.
I don't know.
I don't know I'm trying to.
Productivity is a hard one I'vehad to.
You work in an agency.
You have to track all yourbillable hours, but you have a
great idea that gives the brandmillions and millions of dollars
of revenue.
Is that really valued in just atrackable hour?
(23:36):
And so this is enabling us todo more.
But do we necessarily should webe doing more like?
Should we be just making surethat we're doing better at the
things?
that we're trying to get donenow.
I'm 40, so I'm in aninteresting spot in my career
like understanding capitalismand what I what I'm willing to
stand for, not stand for, andvery interesting spot with my
(23:57):
views on Google too.
Kevin Kerner (23:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
I think what is like what is anhour, like what is the value of
an hour anymore?
If you can spend five minutesdoing something but you get huge
value out of the thing, doesn'tthat have the value of an hour
the same, or is it a lot less?
Jason White (24:24):
I get great ideas by going and riding my bike or
taking a shower I get, I'm ashower thought person.
Kevin Kerner (24:27):
Yeah, can I bill my shower time.
Jason White (24:27):
It's not like you know, but that's where the idea
came from.
Yeah, that might be hard, sotowards my day, it's, it's weird
.
It's weird.
Kevin Kerner (24:30):
The lines are definitely blurred okay, so
let's, I'm gonna wrap up withyou, because I've taken a lot of
your time.
This has been totally, totallyawesome.
I want to ask you a question,just a couple questions here.
We talk a lot about the futureof this stuff and how crazy it's
going to be.
What's the one thing you'remost excited about, maybe in
your domain, you know, in thenext year?
Jason White (24:49):
I think that I'm like really just kind of amazed
at where it's all going and justvery curious, and like I want
to know the destination butnobody knows that.
Like nobody knows what toprepare for um, and I think that
that's like kind of where I'mat.
It's just understanding how Ican connect it to more data
(25:12):
points to automate more thingsthat matter to me.
I'm tired to figure out how Ican automate it to do some of
the stuff I don't like doing inmy day.
That's, I think, like a greatplace to start and just like
where the curiosity lies.
I have no idea.
It's super interesting how fasteverything is going, how
(25:33):
different products are gettinglaunched, how people are using
different products.
I think that like buildingcommunity around some of this
stuff is super important andbeing able to just share
information, share differentideas, and like that's really
where like the biggest value is,I feel.
Kevin Kerner (25:48):
Yeah, and I think what you're doing, jason, at the
front end of this, it's likeyou're at the.
You know, you're at kind of apivotal point in digital.
If you just take it back todigital and search, like what
you're doing, I agree it's likethere is no playbook for this
stuff, so you just got to go outand try it and what you're the
stuff that you brought up hereis you're just experimenting
because no one is the expert.
Jason White (26:09):
It's fun to be an environment where no one's the
expert yeah it is fun to be anenvironment where nobody's the
expert yeah, right, yeah rightit's similar to when social
launched, you know, or maybewhen the internet launched.
Kevin Kerner (26:20):
You really just you had that unique opportunity
at that point where you could bean expert if you just stayed a
tiny bit ahead of the next guy,because no one, what, no one
knew what was going to happen,and that was a much easier thing
to wrap your head around thanwhat's happening now.
It's really.
It's super exciting that way,but also a little scary it is.
Jason White (26:39):
I think that, like I don't know, it's a joke.
How many once in a lifetimethings have we lived through in
the last 25, 30 years?
Yeah, um, this is definitelyone of those times in search in
general and digital in general,and it's nice to just kind of
lean into it with curiosity, um,and recognize that it's just
wide open space.
What can we do with this wideopen space?
(27:00):
How can we use it to ouradvantage?
And like, just following thatcuriosity.
Kevin Kerner (27:06):
Yeah, this has been awesome.
Jason, I could talk to you alot longer.
We'll have to.
I'll have to be back on inanother year from now, If we're,
if both of both of us are stillworking we could see if the
predictions are correct.
Right, I'll get a little listof notes here of things that we
said and we'll be like no, Ididn't get that right, Didn't
get that right Sounds good.
Jason White (27:23):
I'm here for it.
I'm here for it.
Kevin Kerner (27:24):
If people want to connect with you, how do they
get ahold of you?
Jason White (27:27):
I'm on LinkedIn.
You can find me on LinkedIn,jason White, like my slug or
something like that.
As an seo I'm kind of funny.
I was in like uh, I was aguitarist in green day.
I was a nascar driver for alittle while.
I won, uh, the heisman trophyout of oklahoma.
Kevin Kerner (27:43):
So I'm kind of hard to find but linkedin's the
best yeah that's the way to findjason white you're nowhere else
on the internet with thosecorrects right, I'm a little
buried, it's okay okay, well,great.
Thank you so much, man.
Jason White (27:54):
I appreciate you being on thank you, it was a
pleasure, okay.
Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech
Marketing Rewired.
I don't know about you, butI've seen search traffic fall
off a cliff and AI just might bethe reason.
I had the good fortune to sitdown with Jason White, who's the
head of SEO at PolicyGenius andreally one of the sharpest
voices I've talked to in search.
Tim talked about how generativeAI is reshaping his organic
strategy, why server logs mightbe your new superpower and what
(00:21):
B2B marketers need to do rightnow to stay visible.
So if you care about the futureof search, this one is
definitely a must watch.
Let's dive in.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason White (00:38):
Hey, thank you so much.
I'm excited to be here.
Kevin Kerner (00:41):
Yeah, I'm so glad to have you.
I think maybe we'll just startby Jason.
Just explain a little bit aboutyour background and then what
you do at Policy Genius.
Jason White (00:48):
Sure.
So before I get started, I workwith a variety of different
people within our Policy Geniusorganization.
One of them are lawyers and wehave to do corporate good deeds
and disclaimers and stuff likethat.
So before we get started, Iwant to make it clear that I'm
speaking solely in my personalcapacity today and that the
opinions and views I share areentirely my own and do not
(01:10):
represent or reflect that ofPolicy Genius, my company.
Now that we got that out of theway, I got into search marketing
and SEO.
Specifically, about 20 yearsago I was working at a bike shop
and was selling a lot of accessto inventory on eBay.
I was working at a bike shopand was selling a lot of access
to inventory on eBay.
Ebay was like a really popularsite back in the day.
Craigslist was like a thing,myspace was definitely a thing
(01:31):
and like did really well with it.
I was able to make rent acouple of times and realized
there was acronyms behind a lotof things that I was doing on
eBay and got into like a littlebit more research and
understanding that there waslike this thing called local
search and there was this thingcalled SEO and really just
started learning all theacronyms, that kind of like
built out from eBay.
In understanding there was likedigital marketing.
(01:53):
I was going to school at thetime for phys ed and that's kind
of where everything took like ahard right turn.
I thought paid was way coolerthan SEO and content marketing
Wanted to get into like anagency of some sort, and so I
was trying to target a localagency where I was living in
upstate New York at the time,couldn't get an interview on the
pay team, but I got aninterview on the SEO team and it
(02:14):
like accidentally how it allwent.
I've worked with really largebrands.
I led SEO efforts at Hertz,dollar, thrifty, the Car and
Thrill brands and I worked atboutique agencies where I got my
start.
I've also worked at reallylarge global agencies servicing
just dream clients that youwould want to work with Kohler,
(02:34):
ralph Lauren, tory Burch, motel6, tiktok for Business was a
cool blog that I helped launchand so in my current capacity
now I'm back in-house andfocusing more on just like
understanding, like the depth ofthe business and how we can
parlay digital marketing toachieve our goals, and a lot of
it includes AI right now.
Kevin Kerner (02:56):
It's just I mean you and I talked about a month
ago or so and it's just likesince then I've been thinking
about all the disruption insideof the search space.
And since then I've beenthinking about all the
disruption inside of the searchspace.
I mean some of the research Ifound.
They say between like anywherefrom and who knows what the
number is like anywhere from 20to 60% drop off in terms of the
volume that some companies aregetting, and you have, like the
(03:17):
HubSpot example and you know howReddit's doing really well and
all these other.
I'm just really curious, like,what's your experience?
What are you seeing, either inyour business or across the
industry?
Jason White (03:30):
Like what's actually happening on the ground
.
20% sounds pretty good.
I would love to be 20% downright now.
I haven't really heard ofanybody less than like 50% loss
of traffic in the last 18 monthsto two years.
I know a lot of brands thathave lost 80% of their traffic,
90% of their traffic.
I think the glimmer of hope isthat the quality of the traffic
(03:52):
that is coming to websites seemsto be highly qualified.
A lot of the people that I'vetalked to, a lot of the sites
that I have access to,conversion has increased quite a
bit and so, even though we'renot sending as much traffic, the
traffic does seem to be there,or the quality traffic does seem
to be there.
It's been just a wild, wildsearch or shift in search in the
(04:12):
last 18 months.
There really has not beenanything like it and I think
that it really kind oforiginated with the pandemic and
it's a little bit of acorrection that's kind of come
out of the pandemic and ourshift towards AI has definitely
changed Google searches,definitely changed search.
Kevin Kerner (04:28):
Whether it's for the better or not could be
argued, but but what's yourguess on why the why the volume
is dropping off?
Jason White (04:37):
AIOs yeah, the AI overviews that Google is putting
on the pages.
They're driving the cost perclicks up quite a bit.
It makes the competition forfor the real estate really
increase and to have like anorganic link anymore, like it
used to be when I started, theydon't exist.
If you're not on page one, youdon't exist at all, and even
(04:59):
being like outside of the topthree, you're going to see very
little traffic from that, and sothe search ecosystem is kind of
you know, I think a lot ofpeople want to say that like SEO
is dead right now, but it's notnecessarily dead.
I think that there's like a lotthat can still be gained.
It's just a shift in strategy,and I think that a lot of people
kind of had too many eggs inthe Google basket and haven't
(05:20):
differentiated where they'regetting their traffic from, and
those are the brands that arereally getting caught out right
now and are hurting the most.
I think in last year I think itwas about March there was a big
code release.
Somebody within Google dumpedall the Google secrets, and this
was the second time in twoyears that we've gotten some
view into the algorithm.
(05:41):
I think the first time wasactually Yandex, which is the
Russian search engine, and itlooks like they largely copied
the Google search engine.
But I think that that dumpreally showed what a bad
relationship Google has towardsSEOs and it's a little bit like
we are abused by Google and wecontinue to come back and think
(06:03):
that things are going to change.
We trust what Google is tellingus and is saying to us.
In some cases we arecommunicating a lot of this
stuff to clients and then Googleburns us time and time again
and does something differentthan what they've said before.
So the environment that they'vekind of created with a lot of
these updates in the last year,in the last 18 months and
definitely in the last fourthese updates in the last year
(06:25):
in the last 18 months anddefinitely in, like the last
four.
Yeah with AI, with AI, aianswers yeah, it's really made
it hard to make good, soundbusiness decisions based off of,
like, how Google approaches thepeople that or the sites that
want to be on Google search.
Kevin Kerner (06:37):
Yeah, it's the thing that we talked about a
month ago or so, where it waslike hey, you know, our site
needs some optimization in theseareas.
Should we invest money in theMighty and True site and making
it better?
And I thought you had a reallyinteresting answer of how much
investment you put into the oldschool site optimization.
Is it worth putting any moneyinto your site in terms of
(07:00):
technical SEO anymore?
Jason White (07:02):
It depends on your goals.
It depends on what you'retrying to achieve.
Usability is always going towin.
Good SEO focuses on usability,and so if you are positioning
SEO so that it can lift up allchannels paid, crm, social the
content piece is still important.
I feel it's important to spreadall of that out on social media
, whether it's paid ororganically.
(07:22):
But SEO can be that catch-all.
And SEO can help raise theother ships, and that's kind of
how I'm pivoting it within myorganization so that it can
really be maximized and beenabled to connect the different
pieces of the organization.
Marketing always sits betweensales and development.
We're always trying to explainmultiple different languages to
(07:44):
multiple different stakeholders,and so there's a lot of value
in that and we can raise allshifts to the people that we
work with around us, and I stillthink the SEO is super valuable
.
The focus really should be on,like clean indexation and making
sure that you're giving thebest experience to the search
bot when it comes, but also theuser when they come.
Kevin Kerner (08:07):
Interesting.
Yeah, cause especially now withAI, cause you really want to be
cleanly indexed with AI, causeit's got to read the, it's got
to read the site in a clean way.
So now let's say you have tooptimize now for this new
generative search thing.
What types of things are youdoing to try to exploit this new
environment?
Jason White (08:26):
I don't know that.
I'm trying to exploit it yet.
I'm trying to really understandit.
I'm really trying to understandwhat drives it.
I think it also originates atthe goal of what you're trying
to achieve.
If you're trying to get morevisibility on some of these AI
platforms, if you want to beseen more on ChatGPT, there
aren't tools available to showyou your visibility.
There's no analytics forChatGPT, and so how do you go
(08:51):
back to the source or like, howdo you understand what success
looks like in gaining morevisibility on an AI platform?
For me, it started with theserver logs.
It started with understandingwhat type of AI bots were coming
to the websites that I getvisibility into, what kind of
calls were they making, whatkind of files were they
downloading, how often were theydownloading those files?
(09:13):
It also came with a lot of justlike leaning into ChatGPT and
asking it why.
It gave me certain answers, andso when I'm looking for a
recommendation, I'll oftenfollow it up with a why did you
recommend XY brand?
And understanding what piecesof authority AI is using versus
what pieces of authority Googlehas historically used.
(09:35):
They're different.
I think that Wikipedia is areally valuable piece of real
estate.
To this day.
Google places emphasis onWikipedia.
Google places emphasis on yourdomain authority.
They might refute it.
They don't have.
They haven't published thatmetric in 13 years or something
crazy, but like that still holdstrue.
(09:56):
We saw that in the code leaklast year.
But understanding whatauthority means to the platforms
can be different on eachplatform, and so if you have a
target demographic that's usingperplexity and not ChachiPT, I
think that all it all matters.
There.
You're not going to see muchtraffic.
There's all kinds of dashboards.
I think Sierra is doing a greatjob at publishing a lot of AI
(10:19):
data thoughts and, like you know, looker Studio dashboards are
really helpful so you can seehow much traffic you're getting.
It's not super impressive.
It's not beating out Google.
Yet Understanding the serverlogs are giving you more of a
metric of your share of voice.
How often are you being shownon a chat GPT or within a
perplexity, and so that is abranding piece, and that is
(10:42):
where SEO needs to shift.
Rankings are always just kindof like a bad metric for success
.
Share of voice matters in aworld of chat GPT.
If you're not being seen or youdon't understand how often
you're being shown, that is acore problem that kind of needs
to get addressed, and that'samazing I would have never
(11:04):
thought to to go to the serverlogs, but that's, you're right,
like that's where it'll show up.
Kevin Kerner (11:08):
That's the place where you and I think share of
ai voice in some ways got reallyinteresting.
Stat, like what channel are youin, like where are people
finding you?
And there is no tool right nowto do that.
There's no analytics, not thatI'm aware of.
Jason White (11:22):
I will probably wish I didn't say this, but I
would love to get bombarded withLinkedIn messages about tools
available to me and ChatGPT thatactually do what they say.
But yeah, I think server logshave always been a magical place
to go.
They're always like the mostaccurate piece of data that you
can gather.
(11:43):
It's a record of an actual ping, of an actual handshake between
one server and another server.
A lot of our tools we justthink that they're really
accurate and they're not at all.
Google Analytics is not anaccurate tool.
That's just the reality of thesituation.
Server logs have so much to them.
They can really help you unpackand uncover and view your site
(12:04):
in a different way, and I foundthat a lot of people just don't
want to take the risk.
The best part of the time thatwe're living in right now is
that ChatGPT can tell you andshow you how to do the research
on server logs, on how to do theresearch on ChatGPT and how
you're going to find it.
It can give you the code to usein BigQuery.
(12:26):
So the barrier to entry onserver logs is so low right now
and it really takes a curiousperson that just wants to go
after it and answer somequestions and learn something
new, make some mistakes, butthere's all kinds of intelligent
things and insights that comeout of server log analysis.
Kevin Kerner (12:38):
Yeah, it's amazing you wonder.
And insights that come out ofserver log analysis?
Yeah, it's amazing you wonder,like you think, about those
different channels people go to.
So you have your search, youhave your Chrome window that
gives you the AI's answer, haveyou?
I don't know if you've tried?
Have you tried the ChatGPTsearch function?
Jason White (12:55):
That's all I used.
I replaced it on my Chrome bar.
Kevin Kerner (12:58):
Really interesting .
Jason White (12:59):
I don't know what usability is.
Kevin Kerner (13:00):
I don't know what usability is.
I don't know what adoption isof that yet, but I wonder which
one will win out or they'll getintegrated somehow.
Actually, personally me, Idon't find the ChatGPT search as
useful as the AI answer thatcomes up, yet.
Jason White (13:16):
Yeah, I don't think it is.
From a discovery standpoint.
From an information standpoint,I think ChatGPT wins out.
I must rather would go to thenative environment than do it in
my search bar.
I feel like the answer isdifferent or better when I'm in
the native versus in my searchbar.
Mostly, I just want to immersemyself in it, and so that's why
(13:37):
I made the change.
I've heard for two years thatnobody loves their Google
results.
I've hated Google results foryears They've been awful.
And so, as, like a user, I justwant something different.
I want something that is goingto give me a way to learn, as
I'm doing my daily stuff anyway.
I don't think that it'snecessarily a better answer.
I question kind of like theelectricity usage of it and like
(13:58):
I'm being a bad human and likepromoting global warming by
using chat GPT more often thanGoogle search.
I'm sure that Google searchused a hell of a lot of energy
in the early years.
Kevin Kerner (14:11):
Google has a lot of data centers too.
Jason White (14:13):
Yeah, so I don't know like what, to quite compare
it to but I don't know if thisis the answer.
I don't know where it's going.
I think that this chat, gpt andAI in general is going to take
such a leap in the next threeyears that people aren't ready
for it.
People aren't understanding itright now.
They're really going to getleft behind in this next
(14:33):
iteration and this next big leapthat we take in the next three
to five years, and so I justwant to give myself every
opportunity.
Now is where the playing fieldis, even for everybody.
There's no analytics, nobodyknows what they're doing.
We're all just figuring thisout and exploring, and so now is
the best opportunity to getafter it and just try to figure
out what your spot is.
I mean, I've heard for how manyyears that AI is coming for my
(14:55):
job, and so I just startedleaning into that more and more,
and like I had to call me bigfella, I call it my robot and it
responds with some big fella,so we can have some fun with it
too nice.
Kevin Kerner (15:07):
So from looking at these server logs and then
querying inside of chat gpt,have you, have you tried any
experiments where you're saying,huh, that that actually worked,
like if you are you doinganything site side or content
side, where that that is showingyou glimpses of, hmm, this
might be working?
Jason White (15:25):
I haven't done to the depth and level of some of
the ideas that I have and I want.
Mainly, I've been trying tofigure out how often it comes to
my site and updates it and howI can display title tag
information or metadatainformation in ways to make it
more visible on chat GPT.
On perplexity, right Time toindexation is something that
(15:46):
I've been trying to understandmostly.
We made an update on the page.
How long does it take beforechat GPT recognizes it?
And I don't know.
I don't quite know orunderstand it, but sometimes
I'll ask it like how many daysago was October 1st or how many
days ago was the election, andit will hallucinate and give me
(16:09):
like 15 days, like a date from15 days previous, and so I'll
recognize that and I'll say norobot like you did a bad thing.
That's not the actual thing.
So it reruns it and I feel likethe date that it's been giving
me is the date of the refresh ofwhatever data that I've been
looking at.
I haven't been able to provethat out yet, but it's a weird
loophole or anomaly that I'vekind of scene.
(16:33):
So I've just been focused onclean indexation and timed
indexation and understanding howquickly these models are coming
back and updating.
Kevin Kerner (16:42):
That's mind-blowing because you're
right, there will be an indextime for probably each
individual AI platform.
That's completely differentthan anything that we know now.
Is it a second?
Is it 10 minutes?
Is it five days?
Is it a month, whatever Right?
Minutes, is it five days?
Is it a month, whatever Right?
And that really is when youthink about people coming back
to your site.
The mindset is always like howoften is Google indexing?
(17:05):
I don't think many people havereally thought about AI index.
I mean, certainly people atyour level have, but business
leaders.
It's like, wow, that's atotally different concept.
Jason White (17:16):
Yeah, it's like wow , that's a totally different
concept.
Yeah, it's just different.
And the thing that kind of isdifficult to wrap your head
around is it's already happened.
Yeah, chatgpt has alreadyconsumed all of your website.
They consumed it before youstarted worrying about it.
It was already over, and soyou're like starting from a
place of being behind already.
You don't really have a choiceanymore.
(17:37):
You can ask to be removed, youcan block the bot, but they've
already consumed all of theirinformation.
They've already consumed yourdata, and so how do you work
with that process?
Kevin Kerner (17:45):
That's incredibly scary and depressing.
Jason White (17:48):
It is yeah, but what are you going?
Kevin Kerner (17:49):
to do.
What are you going to do?
Well, yeah, you mentioned a lotof the sort of tool side,
server side stuff.
Is there any you know?
You want to know when stuff isgoing to be indexed so you can
and you can tweak the indexingon your side.
You can tweak the structure ofthe site on your site such that
it gets indexed.
What about the role of contenton the site?
And is that?
(18:10):
I don't know if.
Is there any way that contentcan be structured on the site,
way that content can bestructured on the site like
actual written content, suchthat the AI reads it and accepts
it as true?
Or is it just taking all thecontent wholesale?
Jason White (18:25):
and making its own decision.
I think it's taking all thecontent wholesale and making its
own decision.
I think that the data that yousupply is super important and
the freshness of that data.
If they feel like, if you askit, why do you trust this brand,
the brand that I work for yousearch like, why do you trust
this brand?
It comes back with pieces ofinformation.
I think that that's like reallyimportant to know because it's
(18:46):
different for each of the brands, but I think that they're
already consuming all of this,everything that's on your site.
What I see is a lot of likelocalized data points being
highly.
They're just they put a highemphasis on on localized stuff.
It makes me kind of wonder tooabout like current news events
(19:06):
and things that are happening ona day-to-day basis.
Oh, can you feed that to a chat?
Gpt or perplexity, um, andunderstanding like indexation,
and that's kind of where, likethe speed thing comes from.
Kevin Kerner (19:17):
Then does that point to, from a brand
perspective, being on not juston your own site, but on?
Does it put more of an emphasison third-party sites, research
sites, you know, for a lot ofour clients are tech customers
G2, review sites, that type ofstuff.
Jason White (19:32):
Yeah, I think review sites are very important
again.
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin Kerner (19:36):
And they always have been, but in a different
way.
As the reader reading thereview site and making your
decision now they're importantas the AI reading the review
site.
Jason White (19:45):
But how is the AI knowing what was like a bought
review versus like a real review, like that's?
what I come back to is like howdoes it, how does it know?
Yeah, I mean a lot of brands.
They use NPS and will querytheir users and NPS scores are
so when I was at Hertz, wefocused on NPS scores.
So so much, that is such ajuicy data point to be giving to
(20:10):
an AI engine, and I think thatleaders and brands should be
looking at, however they'recollecting real world
information and making sure thatit's surfaced and indexable in
a clean way, an efficient wayyeah, regardless of whether it's
on your own side or on, youknow, a third party side or
whatever.
Kevin Kerner (20:30):
Right, what is the ?
Do you have any opinion on thefor a brand on the use of AI
generated content, now that thebots are looking at?
Jason White (20:41):
Do it.
Do whatever is right for yourbrand.
I'm going to sound jaded andold, but I'm just so tired of
listening to Google'srecommendations and them doing
the exact opposite of whateverthey told us and coming back to
just making sound businessdecisions on what's right for
your brand.
I feel like google is dictatingbusiness decisions way too much
(21:02):
and telling brands what theyshould and shouldn't be doing,
and it's the marketplace thatshould be deciding that, not
necessarily google.
And so we are, like everybody'scompetitors are facing the same
challenges that you are facing,and content production and
budgets are big, big,restrictive things.
Yeah, and so if you need to useAI to generate more content,
(21:26):
there are ways to do that.
Where you're not spammy, you'reproviding user benefit.
You are providing a service toa user and not just trying to
convince them of something.
I think that it's totally fine,and people should optimize
wherever there's a search box.
They shouldn't just be focusedon googlecom anymore yeah, it's
incredible.
Kevin Kerner (21:46):
Have you tried I guess you've probably tried deep
research, haven't you?
Jason White (21:49):
yeah, a little bit research.
Kevin Kerner (21:50):
Yeah, it's incredible.
I mean it from a contentperspective, like if you were a
brand trying to create content.
Deep research gives you a realhack to get a lot of data points
in your brain like quickly andit's synthesized.
I think from a contentproduction perspective, it's
just, it's a magic.
It's just a magic tool.
It's maybe not writing thefinal content, but it's.
I mean, who would have beenable to do all that research and
(22:13):
get it to you immediately?
Jason White (22:15):
it's incredible yeah, I think claude does a
little bit better job I've triedthe 3.7, the sonnet yeah yeah,
yeah, I like claude for creativethings and like writing briefs
and things like that.
Um, and I think that, like chat, gpt does better from like a
data aspect or just like amechanical aspect of I get it to
write like regex for me all thetime because I can't remember
or, like you know, dumb thingslike that.
Kevin Kerner (22:37):
I'm relying on it way too much these days, but
it's definitely a speed.
I have this theory that, likeback in the when the Internet
was first started, it was like,ok, it's going to take our jobs,
and now we got our jobs donethat much faster.
But now we're going to geteverything done that would have
taken a day in like five minutes, which means that the work is
(22:58):
going to be in and now we'regoing to have seven hours and
and 55 more out, more hours toactually get work done and the
companies will fill it in.
We'll just be doing a lot morework a lot quicker.
Our productivity is going tojust go through the roof until
the AI takes over everything.
Jason White (23:15):
That's my theory.
I don't know.
I don't know I'm trying to.
Productivity is a hard one I'vehad to.
You work in an agency.
You have to track all yourbillable hours, but you have a
great idea that gives the brandmillions and millions of dollars
of revenue.
Is that really valued in just atrackable hour?
(23:36):
And so this is enabling us todo more.
But do we necessarily should webe doing more like?
Should we be just making surethat we're doing better at the
things?
that we're trying to get donenow.
I'm 40, so I'm in aninteresting spot in my career
like understanding capitalismand what I what I'm willing to
stand for, not stand for, andvery interesting spot with my
(23:57):
views on Google too.
Kevin Kerner (23:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
I think what is like what is anhour, like what is the value of
an hour anymore?
If you can spend five minutesdoing something but you get huge
value out of the thing, doesn'tthat have the value of an hour
the same, or is it a lot less?
Jason White (24:24):
I get great ideas by going and riding my bike or
taking a shower I get, I'm ashower thought person.
Kevin Kerner (24:27):
Yeah, can I bill my shower time.
Jason White (24:27):
It's not like you know, but that's where the idea
came from.
Yeah, that might be hard, sotowards my day, it's, it's weird
.
It's weird.
Kevin Kerner (24:30):
The lines are definitely blurred okay, so
let's, I'm gonna wrap up withyou, because I've taken a lot of
your time.
This has been totally, totallyawesome.
I want to ask you a question,just a couple questions here.
We talk a lot about the futureof this stuff and how crazy it's
going to be.
What's the one thing you'remost excited about, maybe in
your domain, you know, in thenext year?
Jason White (24:49):
I think that I'm like really just kind of amazed
at where it's all going and justvery curious, and like I want
to know the destination butnobody knows that.
Like nobody knows what toprepare for um, and I think that
that's like kind of where I'mat.
It's just understanding how Ican connect it to more data
(25:12):
points to automate more thingsthat matter to me.
I'm tired to figure out how Ican automate it to do some of
the stuff I don't like doing inmy day.
That's, I think, like a greatplace to start and just like
where the curiosity lies.
I have no idea.
It's super interesting how fasteverything is going, how
(25:33):
different products are gettinglaunched, how people are using
different products.
I think that like buildingcommunity around some of this
stuff is super important andbeing able to just share
information, share differentideas, and like that's really
where like the biggest value is,I feel.
Kevin Kerner (25:48):
Yeah, and I think what you're doing, jason, at the
front end of this, it's likeyou're at the.
You know, you're at kind of apivotal point in digital.
If you just take it back todigital and search, like what
you're doing, I agree it's likethere is no playbook for this
stuff, so you just got to go outand try it and what you're the
stuff that you brought up hereis you're just experimenting
because no one is the expert.
Jason White (26:09):
It's fun to be an environment where no one's the
expert yeah it is fun to be anenvironment where nobody's the
expert yeah, right, yeah rightit's similar to when social
launched, you know, or maybewhen the internet launched.
Kevin Kerner (26:20):
You really just you had that unique opportunity
at that point where you could bean expert if you just stayed a
tiny bit ahead of the next guy,because no one, what, no one
knew what was going to happen,and that was a much easier thing
to wrap your head around thanwhat's happening now.
It's really.
It's super exciting that way,but also a little scary it is.
Jason White (26:39):
I think that, like I don't know, it's a joke.
How many once in a lifetimethings have we lived through in
the last 25, 30 years?
Yeah, um, this is definitelyone of those times in search in
general and digital in general,and it's nice to just kind of
lean into it with curiosity, um,and recognize that it's just
wide open space.
What can we do with this wideopen space?
(27:00):
How can we use it to ouradvantage?
And like, just following thatcuriosity.
Kevin Kerner (27:06):
Yeah, this has been awesome.
Jason, I could talk to you alot longer.
We'll have to.
I'll have to be back on inanother year from now, If we're,
if both of both of us are stillworking we could see if the
predictions are correct.
Right, I'll get a little listof notes here of things that we
said and we'll be like no, Ididn't get that right, Didn't
get that right Sounds good.
Jason White (27:23):
I'm here for it.
I'm here for it.
Kevin Kerner (27:24):
If people want to connect with you, how do they
get ahold of you?
Jason White (27:27):
I'm on LinkedIn.
You can find me on LinkedIn,jason White, like my slug or
something like that.
As an seo I'm kind of funny.
I was in like uh, I was aguitarist in green day.
I was a nascar driver for alittle while.
I won, uh, the heisman trophyout of oklahoma.
Kevin Kerner (27:43):
So I'm kind of hard to find but linkedin's the
best yeah that's the way to findjason white you're nowhere else
on the internet with thosecorrects right, I'm a little
buried, it's okay okay, well,great.
Thank you so much, man.
Jason White (27:54):
I appreciate you being on thank you, it was a
pleasure, okay.
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