Barry Schwartz on Google’s New I/O Update, How To Optimize For LLMs, and The Future of Search

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey there, and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host Danny Lebrand, andtoday I'm with Barry Schwartz.
If you don't already know Barry,he's one of the top names in all
of SEO. He's the founder and editor of
Search Engine Roundtable, a longtime contributor to Search
Engine Land, and the guy who's been covering every Google
updates, big or small, for over 20 years.
Google, sorry. Barry has published 10s of

(00:22):
thousands of articles, interviewed Google's top search
executives, and helped shape theSEO conversation around the
globe. He's also the founder of Rusty
Brick, a successful web development agency he started
over 30 years ago. Today, we're diving into the
future of SEO and AI's impact onsearch, specifically what's
going on with Google and how it's evolving in real time.

(00:43):
I'm personally super excited forthis one as Barry is the main
person I look to for SEO news. So without further ado, Barry,
welcome to the show. Hey, how are you?
Thanks so much for having me. Of course, man, before we get
into it, could you just give me a little bit of background on
yourself of how you started Rusty Brick and Search Engine
Roundtable and all of that? Sure.
So we started Rusty Brick, my brother with twin brother

(01:05):
Ronnie, who's a big software, you know, geek building software
since the early, early web days.And we were in high school and
he just loved to build like web stuff, like web software and
software applications. And so he kind of named it after
his initials. We used to be called Rusty Brick
Software RBS and then we just got rid of the software label

(01:26):
and we eventually over time as he started playing with stuff, I
went ahead and you know, helped him, you know, basically started
a company and I started selling software to companies based on
what they need from Chinese website, Chinese food website,
restaurant website, websites like website stuff and to like
building any type of software for companies from emergency

(01:47):
room hospital software to party planning software to even pest
control software actually. Interesting.
So we do a lot of software to make companies much more
efficient in what they do. Everything from not really
websites anymore, but more of solike software for, you know,
taxi cabs, like even mobile apps, you do tons and tons of
mobile applications. So that's what we kind of do.

(02:10):
And then I had like a client recommend another client that
says, Barry's the geekiest guy Iknow and they're wondering how
to like rank well on Alta Vista and different search engines
back then. And they said contact Barry.
So I'm like, that's an interesting question.
So I started doing some researchearly in like maybe like late
1900s, early 2000s, and I got really addicted to the search

(02:33):
marketing industry, the search engine forums and so forth.
And I just started covering stuff that people were writing.
And I thought I'll just keep a notebook, I'll make a blog back.
And then it was like, you know, an online blog where I put my
notes. And that's kind of how I started
searching the roundtable way to keep track of what the SEO
industry was saying back in the early days, because it was
really hard to find those conversations because you find

(02:54):
like somebody who posts some really great nugget in a really
detailed thread about something.I don't know anything and it
will be off topic to what the topic the thread was about and
people wouldn't be able to find it.
But I was there. I'm like, oh, I'll just go ahead
and cover some of the more interesting conversations.
So I kind of created the search engine Roundtable to cover that
type of stuff. And I still been doing it for

(03:14):
the past 20 plus years since. So that's really how the
history, you know, evolved. Awesome.
I just wanted to personally commend you.
I mean, I mentioned it a little bit in the introduction, but you
are covering SEO news better than anyone else and it's not
even close. Everyone's like, I think you
took like a 2 day break for maybe it was chavote or sorry,
I'm getting that pronunciation wrong.

(03:36):
But I, I saw Rand fish can he was like Barry, where are you?
I don't see you're like, you're like, dude, I was I was gone for
two days and all this stuff is, you know, going haywire.
But everyone's looking to you for the news and what's going on
in SEO. So I just wanted to personally
thank you for covering anything that's been going on in SEO and
for over 20 years. Dude, I don't like, do you feel
a personal calling to this to tocover the news or what?

(03:58):
Why do you do it? I don't know, I'm very
consistent. So once I start something, I
don't like to stop doing it. So I just keep adding more and
more onto my plate. And this is I, I do find it very
fun. It's I don't consider this a
job. It's definitely a hobby and I
love the search community. So this is my way of giving back
to them. And hopefully some people
appreciate it and some people don't, But you know, I enjoy

(04:20):
doing it. Well, I'll tell you personally,
I, I really appreciate it. And how exactly are you pulling
all of this news? Are, are you doing all of your
research in real time? Are you are you pulling from
other people in in your community?
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of the stuff I do research on my own.
I'm following a lot of discussions across social media
and discussion forums. I have some tools.

(04:41):
I have tons of RSS feeds that I track as well.
Obviously if Google post an interview or post an
announcement or something like that, I will watch that stuff as
well. I'll watch the the events and so
forth. And then obviously people send
me tips as well, like this button turned from red to blue
or something, and I'll decide ifI want to cover it or just put
in the newsletter. So of course, the community is

(05:02):
very, very gracious about sharing stuff with me all the
time. And also I'm just really just
following everything that peopleare saying, even if they don't
send it to me. So I do miss a lot, obviously,
but I try to cover what I can. And I also try not to cover too
much. Like I, I try to not post more
than six times a day on Search engine Roundtable because it

(05:24):
could be overwhelming, not necessarily for me, but for the
people who are reading it. So I try to keep it somewhat not
too much. And sometimes I'll post a little
bit more depending on what's going on, and other times I'll
just hold off on stories to cover to the next day so I don't
overwhelm people. Yeah, definitely.
So one of the major updates, as I'm sure you know, happened

(05:44):
recently. And what I was telling you that
I wanted to talk about a lot here is Google's IO update that
they gave a huge keynote presentation and a ton of things
are changing. They're adding VO and they're
talking about a transition to AImode.
Can you kind of give a a summaryof the the IO presentation what
what you pulled from it? So it's good because the Google

(06:05):
IO events historically have beenvery, very about Android and
everything but search and the past like 2, maybe three years,
Google has gone back to its roots talking about and leading
with search as the most important thing.
Now, of course, you can go back and look at the previous Google
iOS and say, oh, TP us and AI and stuff like that were all

(06:28):
precursors to where search is going.
And of course it was, but they were always showcasing like new
Android features. In fact, this year they actually
made an Android show like the day before today, a week before.
So that's to not, you know, talkabout Android too much at Google
IO. That being said, it Google is
definitely back to its core. They're talking about search and

(06:50):
search obviously is changing a lot.
Their focus was around pretty much AI in search, so they
rolled out Google AI mode to allUS searchers without having to
opt into it. AI Overviews, which is already
rolled out to many countries, has been expanded to even more
regions and more languages across the globe.

(07:12):
And they announced a bunch of cool new lab features in AI mode
as well, like charting and deep search and so forth within and
within AM mode. So they did a lot of
announcements around AI and search and how that's changing.
Even Liz Reid, the the head of Google Search, announced on
stage that this is the future ofGoogle search, meaning AI mode,

(07:34):
which of course gets a lot of people concerned, especially
people who were doing SEO for a long time and they're used to
search results as they are. Change is hard, and we've been
through change before, but this is probably the most drastic
change to Google search since itstarted on day one.
Wow so you can't even debate it?Google is 100% eventually gonna

(07:55):
switch to AI mode? Is there like a timeline for
that or how certain are you there?
Yeah, there is no timeline. Google wouldn't announce and
they usually don't announce whenthings are going to be released.
They only announce it when it's out there.
So I honestly, I don't know if even if a MIAI mode is fully
rolled out, I know John Mueller said that search console data

(08:18):
for AI mode, not you know, it won't be separated, but it'll be
in Google Search Console mixed in with everything else once AI
mode is is fully rolled out in the US.
So maybe it hasn't fully rolled out, but they did announce that
it actually is rolling out that day to everybody.
It's hard to know because I'm a workspace account.
I also have a Gmail account and the Gmail account I'm opted into
AI mode. So it's hard to know what's

(08:40):
what, but they don't give timelines and I'll be like AI
mode's going to roll out in the UK or India On this date.
They, they, they never do that anymore.
They are announcing like features like that new charting
or a deep search or, or stuff like that will roll out in the
next month or by the end of the year.
So they just recently rolled outthat the charting feature just
last week, which actually was announced on Friday, but didn't

(09:03):
really start. People didn't start seeing it
until it's Monday, but Google rarely ever pre announces
rollouts around search features ever.
So I'm not sure when AI mode will launch internationally.
But yeah it is the future. So they'll be testing it big
time in the US and seeing how itgoes, and then as they get more
confident in it, they will go ahead and police in more places.

(09:25):
Yeah, awesome. And how can we optimize for AI
mode? Have you seen anything around
this or do you have any general predictions?
Optimizing for AI mode, there's nothing really to do for AI mode
to optimize for. Basically, it's basically about
building content. Now you could do really well get

(09:46):
your content into AI mode and then just not get traffic,
meaning, as you see with AIO reviews and now in AI mode,
Google has a lot of content in there.
It could be a paragraph, it could be a whole long essay with
many, many sources of links to anywhere from a few links to,

(10:07):
you know, 50-60 seventy plus links to different websites and
different pages on the web. And that all counts as being
position #1 because that's the first result in that AI
overview. So how do you optimize for that?
So sure, Google could go ahead and, you know, use your content
in the AIA overview and AI mode.And the chances of getting a

(10:27):
click from that is very slim because that's this interface.
So people are calling this the great decoupling where if you
look at your Google Search Console report, especially when
AIO reviews continues to expand,you'll see that your impressions
are, you know, about the same, meaning you're getting the same
amount of impressions. Sometimes that's going up
because AIO reviews are now position #1 so you might get

(10:48):
more impressions even though you, let's say you're ranking a
number page #2 now you're ranking in the AIO reviews and
now you're position #1 So you'llsee the impressions either flat
or going up. And then you will go ahead and
see that the clicks are drastically going down.
And you're like, oh, I'm gettingthe same amount of impressions
from Google search. Why are the clicks going down?

(11:08):
Because people are clicking less.
So yes, the optimization techniques are the same in terms
of making sure that you have great content that Google wants
to index and use in Google search and Google AIO reviews
and Google AI mode. But the clicks are getting less.
So people are saying, all right,so now you have to think about
two new things. 1 is about branding.

(11:30):
Make sure your brand is mentioned in the AI overview.
Make sure your brands mentioned Amo.
So somebody's asking for SEO advice.
Maybe they'll say, you know, Danny is an expert in this field
and you know, he says this, thisand this and make sure to learn
about his company. So maybe that's one technique is
a branding thing. And the second thing is about
something called Ngentic, like services, AI agents, where if

(11:56):
you have an e-commerce store or you have a home service business
and you want to get a booking, maybe AI answers will let you
say book a plumber or book a roofer or something like that,
or book a pest control company by, you know, here are three
options. And then that's called A and
gentic integration where you're building services that integrate

(12:18):
with AI that in the back end letpeople book.
Now, there's not much you could do with that right now.
I think Chachi BT is releasing some services around that as
well, and Perplexity and Google's announcing some stuff,
but it's super early. But those are the two
mechanisms, branding and ngenticstuff.
Yeah, OK, awesome. Yeah, I saw with the Google
presentation that they made it easier to book a flight.

(12:40):
You could basically have Google's agent book you a flight
or something similar like that. So yeah, OK, that makes sense.
And then I was also curious, where do you see advertising
with this? So I believe there have been ads
that have been started to get rolled out on AI overviews, but
I don't think they're on AI modeyet.
But where do you see that comingfor AI mode?

(13:01):
Right. So you're right, ads are being
rolled out and still being tested in some areas in AI
Overviews both they always have them on top and on bottom.
So now Google's saying they're also in the middle and they
actually just announced that they're not just in the mobile
version of AI Overviews, but they're also now being rolled
out on the desktop version of AIOverview.
So that's new from IO. So you should see more ads in

(13:25):
AIO reviews in AI mode. Google said they will be testing
them in AI mode, but they're not, you know, doing anything
more than testing. I haven't seen any tests of ads
in AI mode yet, but hopefully I'll see them soon because
Google really if that's the future of Google search, they
have to make sure to get ads in there.
So, and make sure those ads are clickable because if Google is
not, you know, like 80 somethingpercent of their revenue comes

(13:48):
from search ads. They need to make sure that
their revenue doesn't get impacted by putting ads in
something where people don't click on those ads.
They, they have to make sure that it's a good advertiser
experience and so forth. So they have to figure out that,
that from revenue perspective tomake sure their earnings don't
drop. So I'm sure they'll figure out
something when it comes to ads in AI mode, but I haven't seen
any tests on that yet. Here, I'll, I'll stop the

(14:10):
recording. OK, cool.
So we were talking about ads within AI mode.
What exactly will that look likethough?
Will they be super integrated oralmost look just like the
organic results or what will those look like?
Yes. So Google showed some examples
of ads in AI mode. They just basically look like
little like card widgets that are labeled sponsored.

(14:35):
They look like normal ads in AI mode too.
So they're little like cards like you would see either the
top or in the middle of the answers in the AI answers.
And they basically show you clickable links to not just
organic, not just organic results, also sponsor results
and works also well with sponsorlistings like shopping listings.
So if you're looking for like the best, I don't know, bed bug

(14:58):
spray or something for your bedsand you have lots of pests in
your bed, I keep bringing in thepest stuff for you.
You basically show a product listing of different sprays you
can use and you can carousel like shopping ads you would see.
So, yeah. So I think you would see a lot
of that there as well. So they're basically just
carousels and cards and so forthwithin the AI mode results.

(15:22):
I think Google shares some screenshots of that.
I can send you a link that you can embed them into this video
if you want, and maybe it's hardto describe but it basically is
cards or carousels of ads shown in the actual AI mode answer.
Yeah, awesome. I can leave a link to that
below. And next, I wanted to cover just
overall what's going on with LLM.

(15:42):
So we've covered Google pretty deep here, at least to start
out. Now I'd like to cover LLM.
So Chat BT classically came out a few years ago.
Now everyone's using it. But now there are all these
other tools and specifically Gemini and Claude.
Where do you see the LLM market going?
Do you see Gemini taking over Chat BT or Chat BT still being

(16:02):
#1? So, yeah, I mean in terms of
this, so there's two markets, there's search and there's like
these LMS or whatever and Googlesign them.
And some of them are doing a mixbetween them like perplexity and
so forth. And some are doing bug.
You have Google Gemini and that's separate from Google
search and separate from AI mode.
And the leader right now in terms of branding is you think

(16:23):
AI and AI answers, you think about ChatGPT and Google's
something Petri says they want to be the brand for that as
well. They just don't want to be the
verb for search. They want to be the verb for AI.
But right now there's no question that ChatGPT from open
AI is leading that pack. There's ChatGPT, there's
Perpexity, there's Gemini, there's Grok from ex Musk.

(16:44):
There's also Microsoft has Copilot which works with open AI
and there's a whole Anthropic, which Google has a huge
ownership in as well. So it's tons of different
players in the AI space. And then there's very
specialized AI engines. I mean, right now, I mean,
everybody you speak to uses ChatGPT when it comes to this AI
stuff. So right now, I think we have
the lead. I think if you look at similar

(17:04):
web data, it's that, I mean, Google's growing nicely when it
comes to Gemini in that space, but I think it's like chat CPT
and then followed by Gemini. I think I don't have the actual
raw data with me right now and that could change.
But early on, data shows that chat CPT is really winning right
now. Yeah, awesome.
Do you recommend doing any optimization for LLMS like chat,

(17:25):
BT or should you just kind of bedoing standard SEO and it takes
care of itself? I mean, standard SEO takes care
of itself. You have to if you want to make
sure to be included in, you know, answers, you have to make
sure that those engines can actually crawl and so forth.
I know chat CBT just released some structured data options.
If you do a search for like chatCBT structured data, you'll get
access to their their schema. I think those are all product

(17:48):
stuff. So if you have products and
you're selling products that there are ways to do that, but
you're probably doing any that anyway for Google search.
So it's really just doing the same basic stuff.
There are something called the LMTXT file that TXT like robots
TXT supposedly none of them actually use it.
So you can implement it if you want to.
It's not really help you get index, it just helps you get not
index. So if you don't care, just leave

(18:08):
everything the way it is and youshould be fine.
But there's really no specific tips outside of structured data
right now for ChatGPT and of course using all of Google stuff
that they're using right now. So Google search just doing
everything for Google search andyou should be fine.
Awesome. Yeah.
I just want to get clear here because it sounds like from what

(18:29):
I'm gathering so far and what all the content that I've seen
from you is that everyone is coming to meet, coming to me and
other Seos in the space saying like, Oh my God, I can't believe
how much SEO is changing. And you know, what do I need to
do? Do I need to get the latest
tool? What do I need to optimize for?
But it sounds like it's more or less the same.
It actually hasn't changed as much as people think it has.

(18:49):
Yeah, it's more in terms of whatyou have to do.
It's more or less the same. The problem what's changed is
the clicks. You're not getting traffic as
much, you're not getting as conversions as much.
And that's the big issue is whatam I going to do about that?
And that's where we talked aboutbranding and Gentex stuff,
versifying the traffic you get people like, what's your best
SEO advice? I'm like when you get the search
traffic from any place, when youget traffic to your website,

(19:12):
make sure to capture their e-mail addresses or get them to
subscribe to whatever you want them to subscribe to YouTube
channel, whatever. So that when your clicks drop
significantly, which it could happen any day as you live
through algorithm updates and now with UI changes, you want to
be able to continue to market tothose people and do whatever you
can to get, you know, diversify that traffic as much as
possible. So that's, yeah, I mean,

(19:34):
nothing's really changed in terms of what you need to do as
an SEO. It's just more about, you know,
how do you get to traffic that once was there, that no longer
Google's no longer sending. Yeah, OK.
And you, you mentioned branding.I, I just want to get clear here
is like, are bigger companies going to have more of an
advantage now? Is that going to change?
Because I talked to a lot of small pest control owners and
small local business owners, andthey're all worried about losing

(19:56):
their business, especially. Oh well, you know Orkin's
showing up #1 all the time. Do the smaller businesses need
to be worried about this or still can they still compete in
this landscape? I asked the question I asked
that directly to a bunch of Google executives.
Like, you know, how are smaller businesses going to compete if
they're not getting clicks like they used to, if their brand
might not get mentioned in the actual answer?

(20:18):
And if you only the engentic stuff, like think about it,
let's say you're booking a flight right now, probably
Google will work with either maybe directly with the airlines
or maybe they work with some of the bigger players like Expedia
and Travelocity. But they're not going to go
ahead and work with every singlemom and pop, you know, travel
agency. So what do you do?
And Google's like, it's so early.

(20:40):
We don't really have a comment on that.
And I don't know, it's, it's a big concern.
I think it's very early to say. I think what you need to do is
as as an SEO to see what's goingon or as somebody in the space
in the marketing is keep playingwith these features because the
features are changing very quickly.
Google's constantly adapting them.
Chat CBT is constantly releasingnew models and new interfaces.

(21:01):
So keep playing with this stuff so you see how they look and
hopefully you'll find some Ave. where you could actually
leverage to get traffic to your website and get calls and
transactions or whatever might be.
But there's no like specific answer around that.
It's just it's so early. Things are changing and
hopefully there'll be a way for,you know, they'll open up like a

(21:22):
mechanism, some structure data or some AP is that you could be
one of the first leverage that you could get.
Even a small brand can be like the first implement something.
I'm sure Google will reach out to some big players to say, can
you go ahead and build a mechanism for us for this?
Maybe if you have contacts at Google and you're really good at
one specific area, maybe you could reach out to Google and

(21:43):
say, hey, I'm very interested inbuilding out some and genetic
integrations with you guys. Who do I reach out there or how
do I go about this and so forth.It reminds me of like when
Google came out with Google Glass, which is right over here.
Like they work with developers early on to like integrate like
stuff into it. So I know Apple does that too
with Apple Vision Pro and Facebook is doing with their

(22:06):
Meta glasses. So there's all these cool things
you could do. So hopefully you can reach
somebody at Google and say, I really interested in the genetic
stuff. How do I go ahead and be the
first or one of the first to actually integrate with you
guys? And maybe they'll have
solutions. But right now when I asked them
that, they're like, oh, it's tooearly to say.
It's, you know, we're still, youknow, experimenting with this,
which is true. They really haven't really
implemented any nginx stuff in, in AI motor AI search yet.

(22:28):
So we'll see. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned
glasses. I actually wanted to ask you
about that too. Where do you see that going?
And do you think search will be different that way of maybe
people just be talking to their glasses or what does that look
like? Yeah, so Google had a very good
demo at IO around XR, Android XR, which is I guess version 2
of Google Glass, which is reallycool.

(22:49):
People were wearing like pretty much normal looking glasses and
able to like, you know, obviously map directions you're
driving. You don't have to like look at
your phone. You could just have it overlaid.
People are doing live translations.
We're talking to somebody in your, in your Japan.
You don't know the language. You get to have live
conversations with people real time and there's really cool

(23:09):
like, you know, you know, you put your keys down.
I don't really have this problem, but a lot of people do.
You put your key down. It remembers when you put them.
So if you walk away like I can'tfind my keys, it will it will
tell you that. But maybe you're looking at
something, you're walking through a store, you're looking
at a friend's, I don't know, watch or something.
And you want to like, you know, see more information about that.
Where can I buy it? Maybe it's like Google, Hey,
Google, tell me where that you know, my where I just saw my

(23:32):
friends watched the other day, you know, where did what is that
watch and how do I buy it? Or where do I learn more
information about it? And they could buy it directly
from that, I think. I think that's gonna be really
cool. And I think, I'm not sure if
that remember Chad CBT, Sam Altman met his partner, went up
with John Ivy, former Apple designer, and they're coming up
with some new device. Is it gonna be glasses?

(23:53):
Is it gonna be contacts? Is it gonna be something
implanted into your brain? I don't know, but generally it's
like this whole multimodal, as you know, search as Google calls
it, where you're looking at images or videos or seeing
things live. I don't know if you play with
the new Gemini app. The new Gemini app has live
search built into it. So you're holding your phone
looking at stuff you're asking Gemini to tell you.

(24:13):
What am I looking at or how do Ifind more?
More information about that? Apple just had their
announcement yesterday at WWDC where they're showing off their
Apple vision, Apple visual intelligence stuff.
And you know, you could go aheadand ask a question about
something you're looking at and so forth.
So everybody's thinking about, you know, visual search, live

(24:33):
visual search and so forth. And again, if you know you have
a problem, I know somebody was having a problem with your sump
pump. The other, you know, a couple
weeks ago on there, they asked chat CBT how to fix it instead
of calling a plumber and it walked him through the steps to
fix it. So all these things like it used
to be like I made AI remember building a Google Glass app
called how do I do this? And you would ask Google Glass,

(24:55):
how do I do something? And basically all I would do is
bring up a video on YouTube, which has tons of great YouTube
videos on how to fix stuff. So you know, how do I change the
oil in my car or how do I tie myshoes?
Anything stupid, It could be anything.
How do I, you know, do anything And it'll do that.
But now it could be embedded in your glasses, embedded in your
eye and so forth. And it's really making it so
that consumers could actually dostuff with it.
And might be that you have to buy something, you know, I'm

(25:17):
missing the screw or I'm missingthe bottle of oil or whatever.
And Google might help you go ahead and acquire that, have
Uber delivery over or, you know,in a matter of hours or what it
might be. So we'll see.
Definitely so of those companies, because it seems like
everyone's attacking glasses now.
It's Meta, it's Google. I think Apple's doing a little

(25:37):
bit. They're kind of keeping it low
key. Who do you think's going to win
the glasses race? Is it Google?
I don't know. I mean, Meta has been doing some
really cool stuff with their glasses and they're working
really hard on their AI. They've been a little more
quiet. Apple Vision Pro is like step.
It's cool, but I'm not walking around with these things.
I literally keep it on the shelfand I bought them for like $3500
and I don't use them. Google Glass was way before the

(26:00):
time the XR. Google's XR demos are really,
really cool. So I think it's pretty much off
grabs. The question is, will people use
them? And I don't know.
People were really creeped out by Google Glass when it first
came out. They look weird.
People are walking around with Meta glasses.
They're really cool. I'm not really a glasses person.
I don't wear glasses, so I don'tknow.

(26:21):
I mean, I'm not sure who's goingto win.
I think there's definitely room for everybody to win.
You know, people have Android, people have Google, people have,
you know, different, you know, you know, people have Apple,
people have different Divine Meta that's very popular.
People are using all these things.
And I know Google keeps saying it's not a 0 sum game just
because you might like ChatGPT. You probably also go into Google
search and Google says their searches are still continue to

(26:42):
go up even though Apple said theSafari searches are down.
But Google says searches are up and they're also seeing Gemini
searches up and also seeing chatGDP up.
So people are consuming more across multiple platforms and
not just one for different reasons and different purposes.
So I think it's very, very earlyon.
And I don't think you could bet on anybody because like you see
like half, half the people you know probably use Android

(27:04):
devices and half of them use iPhones.
So I think there's plenty peoplecould win in this market.
Doesn't have to be 1. Yeah, yeah.
No, I see a lot of people or not, maybe not a lot, but a good
amount of people saying that glasses are going to completely
take over. We're going to be working on our
glasses. We're going to be consuming
content on our glasses. But I've seen a good analogy
that people say, no, it's almostjust like the iPhone to the

(27:24):
computer that everyone was doingeverything on the computer.
They were sitting at their desktop.
But now you can bring your phonearound and do whatever you'd
like on your phone. So I feel like glasses is almost
going to be an extension of thatwhere maybe you can be a little
bit more mobile, you know, maybeyou can be on a train and
instead of like having to bring your computer on a train, now
you can like watch a movie whileyou're sitting there.
Yeah. I mean, for sure, I think this

(27:45):
is like we had the we went from desktop to mobile and now I
think we're going to be going tomobile to glasses or some other
visual impact. It looks like it's glasses.
I mean, that's what everybody's thinking.
And then what's next? You know, so I know people were
talking about like I know must came out with their brain
implants and Google's been talking about that.
I think the early on the Google search had a Google search back

(28:06):
in the old days and it's a gall.He always went to the Star Trek.
Then when you press the Star Trek like badge and you would
just ask the question. And that was the old Google
Assistant stuff. So I think we're at a really
exciting stage in search right now.
Do you think it will be an implant after it glasses?
I don't know. I mean, that's kind of creepy.
I don't know. I know some people, but I.
Don't know. Yeah, no, I don't want to think

(28:26):
about it, but it's things are just moving so fast.
It's incredible. It's really hard to keep up with
things, which again, I'm glad with Someone Like You in the
space. Again, I'm sorry, I'm kind of
jumping around here. Something else I want to ask you
is regarding keywords. So kind of classically, people
think of SEO as optimizing for keywords.

(28:46):
How do I rank on this keyword? How do I rank on that keyword?
It seems like that's kind of going away.
Do you think we shouldn't be keyword optimizing anymore,
which we'd be optimizing for? I get, I mean, I never really
thought about keyword optimization.
I know it's a big SEO thing. I mean, when I write content, I
write content based on what I think people want to read.
I don't think about here are thekeywords and I'm writing
content. I know it's SE OS do that.

(29:07):
I don't want to say that's good or bad, but I mean, ever since
AI really like Bert and all these early, you know, AI
technologies from Google, I there was really no reason to do
it that way. So I don't think looking at
keywords is important. Look about what you're look at.
Look at what your customers are saying, like you have tons of

(29:29):
phone records and customer service calls and see what
questions they're asking. Because when you do a search in
Google search, at least for the past several years, Google was
expanding that search to many types of variations of those
keywords, thinking they know better what the searcher is
asking and trying to give them abetter answer.
And matching that to 2 words that the searcher isn't
necessarily putting into the search engine.
I mean resemblance words and also showing content that may

(29:53):
not have those words on those pages all the time.
Used to be simple, like your keyword has to match your
content on the page and the title tag and all that type of
stuff. And now with, you know, in
several years that wasn't the case.
And then now with this whole query fan out stuff with AI
mode, Google's expanding your query into multiple avenues.
So yeah, I don't think you need to worry about keywords.

(30:15):
You just got to really think about is the piece of content
that I'm writing answering the question that my customer is
saying or the questions that I'mtrying to solve.
So you might want to. I would take it more from a
customer centric approach, like what are my customers asking me?
How do I solve that with contenton the website?
How do I solve that with a video?
How do I solve that with maybe atool that you might build on
your website and build stuff like that on your website as

(30:37):
opposed to thinking about keywords and how do you optimize
for keywords? OK, cool.
So it has to be useful. It shouldn't just like don't
just pick out your top keywords.It's it's not all about the
traffic or impressions. OK, that makes sense.
I like that perspective. But that's, that's interesting
that you've thought about it that way even before things have
kind of transformed and you know, now it's kind of all AI

(30:58):
mode and the searches are way longer.
And also the same way with LLM'slike I do some of the searches I
do on chat BT are like a paragraph long and like, how can
you SEO optimize for a paragraph?
Obviously that's that's not possible.
So then just to go a little bit further on that, what exactly
should you be optimizing for just quality?
Again, it's all about if you're writing a piece of content, what

(31:20):
is that there to solve? Why are you writing that piece
of content? Is it something that a customer
asked you about, you know, if you have a question like in your
topic, like is there a reason people are are are looking for
that? When I write a piece of content,
it's something that's like either new that people want more
information about, or it's something that is broken or
something that the community is interested in.

(31:42):
And how could you answer that content?
Now some people go really long winded and some people want the
answer in a way. It's it's very interesting how
this stuff works. And I think I think it's really
about, you know, why am I writing this piece of content?
And is that piece of content answering what the purpose of
that question is not about the keyword.

(32:03):
Again, it's about why, Why the piece of content?
And is that piece of content on target?
It might be just like a one wordanswer rarely, but it could be
like a paragraph I do, or it could be a whole book.
It depends on what you're tryingto answer.
And maybe it's multiple pieces of content.
Maybe it's one long piece of content.
So it's really about how does this customer want to read this

(32:23):
answer? Is it a video?
Is it a bunch of images? Is it bullet points?
All those types of things. So you have to think about that
as opposed to thinking about like keyword versus optimizing
stuff. You know, content quality is not
about like, you know, some type of a tool that's looking at a
piece of content and saying, is this high quality or not?
It's about is the customer? Is it, is it solving the

(32:47):
customer's question? Like, oh, I have a high bounce
rate on that page or the page speed is slow.
That means absolutely nothing interms of is this a high piece of
quality content? It could be like the person got
their answer and left after reading it for five seconds and
that's solved that solve that customer experience.
Or it might be they have to click on more links to get to
more details. So they could actually, you
know, expand, I need this buy, buy this product and I don't

(33:08):
need that product or whatever might be.
So again, it's not that simple saying, oh, bounce rates too
high or page and game engagementis low or it doesn't mean
anything. It depends on the query, depends
on the customer, depends on the content, but it's not as simple
as a couple of metrics on the page.
Yeah, OK, awesome. Good to know.
I know I always hear differing opinions in SEO space, but I

(33:30):
really value your opinions. That's great to hear from you.
And then related to that, a big piece of Google search rater
guidelines, which I'm sure you're more familiar with maybe
than anyone, is EEAT, which for those that don't know, that's
experience, expertise, authoritativeness and
trustworthiness. That's kind of how Google is at
least, you know, training their bots to look at content across

(33:53):
the web. Do you, I don't know exactly how
to frame this, but like, do you believe in EAT?
Are you optimizing for EAT? What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, Optus. So Google says you can't
optimize for EAT. There are no single EAT metrics.
So EAT stands for expertise. What's EAAT?

(34:15):
So it's expertise. What's the other E?
Experience. Experience authoritativeness and
trustworthiness. And you can't really fake that.
You can't really like, optimize for it.
I mean, you can try to fake it. I mean, people tend to read my
content because I've been writing about search for a

(34:35):
really, really long time. I know how search has changed.
I don't know if I'm that much ofan expert in the field.
I think I know it better than most people, but not everybody.
I think people do trust me because I really have no gender
or bias when it comes to this type of stuff.
You know, I do think Google willbe adding another E to it.
I think Google will be adding entertainment to that.

(34:57):
But again, I don't think it's something you can really fake.
Can't fake this stuff. I mean, you see, like when you
read something that AI wrote, sometimes it reads really,
really fluffy and kind of fake. You read something that was
written by some SEO, sometimes you read it and sounds like why
is all this content and why is this fluff?
Like recipe sites are the classic example.
Like you read a recipe and before you get to actual steps

(35:19):
and ingredients of the recipe, you read a whole story about,
you know, the family behind it and the grandmother and where it
came up. And like, I just, I, I don't
make, but like, I assume people just want to get to the recipe
and, and see some pictures and like, oh, this is something I
want to, I want to make. And if I want to make it, these
are the steps as opposed to likereading 500 paragraphs before
you get to the recipe. Back in the old days, fluff
worked and people, you know, Google wanted long pieces of

(35:41):
content that worked. And the truth is, I mean, most
people, Google's providing AI summaries for a reason, because
people don't want to read. People are just lazier these
days. So people want these snackable
Google is called snackable bite size stuff to read.
So you know, EAT really encouraged people to write
really long pieces of content that sometimes, you know, kept

(36:05):
people on the page for a really long time and people don't like
to be kept on the page really long time.
So yes, you got to you could show expertise, you could show
all that you know, you know, allthat you know, authority and
trust, but doesn't have to be super long.
You might pieces of content, youknow, or usually a couple
paragraphs, Max 3. And I think you trust me.
You asked me to go on your show,so I think you trust me.

(36:27):
You think you call me authority or whatever it might be.
And you don't have to do that bydoing the long pieces of content
at the same time. It depends what you're writing
about. I mean, medical papers sometimes
have to be long to do all the citations and studies and so
forth. So it really depends on the
reader. It really depends on on what
you're writing for the audience,what they want to read.

(36:47):
And sometimes that might be about, I love how CNBC has their
articles. They usually have like two or
three or four bullet points summarizing the content before
you actually get to it. And that's not AI summarized and
so forth. So it's good.
So I think it really depends on a lot of things, but it's
something you can't really fake and optimize for.
Something I don't think about when I write, to be honest.
So I don't think about, oh, thisis matching this any EAT metrics

(37:10):
or something? I don't look at that, but a lot
of SE OS do because they need some type of formula like how do
I build the content? And I get it.
And there's you hire an SEO company to write content about
you and if you specialize in like pet control, pest control,
what does an SEO know? I mean, you know about it
because that's your field. But what does some random SEO do

(37:32):
about SEO for 100 different types of companies know about
pest control. I mean, they could read a couple
papers on it, but they still won't be an expert on it.
Like somebody who's actually in the field doing the work, who's
been doing it for, you know, 10 years versus somebody who's just
writing SEO content for it. So I think that's the, that's
the complicated part there. Yeah, there needs to be some

(37:53):
expertise tied to the content. So even though it's like you're
not trying to optimize for that,that's that's still what you
should have in place. And yeah, that's what I like to
do for my clients as well. I'd like to tell you about a
strategy that I've been implementing recently and maybe
hear your thoughts on this, which I know you're big on video
content, so I'll see what your thoughts are here.
That for content or for clients.Recently I have been

(38:14):
interviewing them on some of thetop questions that they get and
such. And then we'll repurpose that
into YouTube videos, podcasts, blogs, and then even make short
form content from those. Do you think then that is a good
way to qualify for EAT of? It is actually the expert
creating the content and it is real.
We can see that they actually got interviewed and that we can

(38:36):
also repurpose all of that content.
Yeah, I mean, again, so like a lot of these experts don't have
time like pest control, they're in the field.
They don't have time to like deal with it.
Doctors, they don't have either.They're doing they're in
surgery. They don't have time to write
content. Some doctors are really, you see
them on Instagram there and someof these people are like some of
these home service people are onInstagram showing off what
they're doing, which is great. But a lot of people don't have

(38:57):
that personality or or whatever.So when you see a video or a
piece of content from somebody from an expert like a surgeon or
a doctor or you know, a home repair guy, a contractor, what
it might be, it kind of looks, looks great.
When you see a piece of content written by somebody who appears
to be that person, you could tell sometimes that it's not.

(39:17):
Even if you interview them, you could tell it's not great.
It's better than not interviewing them.
Of course, you want to make surethat person you interview is
reviewing the content that you published before it goes live
because you want to make sure you got it right.
So whatever you could do to makesure it's validated by the
expert in the field will make itjust better.
And if that person doesn't have time to write it, yeah,
interview, record what they say,make sure whenever before you

(39:41):
publish it that they give their stamp of approval and it goes
write it for them. Fine.
They can put their name on it aswell, as long as they're,
they're willing to put their name on it.
And that's pretty much the biggest stamp of approval.
If they're willing to put their own name on it, then it must be
good enough for them for you to publish it.
So I think that's like, like I would go about it.
Like, yeah, let me interview you.
I know you're too busy. I'll write a piece of content on

(40:02):
this topic. Give me like, I don't know, 5
minutes to get some questions from you.
I'll write it up. You can read it when you have
time. And will you let me publish this
under your name? If they say no, you can't
publish this on my name, then obviously you can't publish it
and it's probably not good enough.
But if they're willing to let you publish it under their name,
then probably they'll probably be OK with it.
And it's probably enough of a expert level piece of content

(40:22):
that's trustworthy and authoritative that they want to
be published on their name. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Assuming that you know what you're talking about.
Yeah, of course. So it seems like, and from all
the content that I've seen from you, you handwrite all of your
content. Do you think there should ever
be a place for generating content or repurposing it from a
video? Or should it all be written?

(40:43):
So I do, I mean, I'll cover videos of interviews like Sundar
Pasar said this on this interview and so forth.
Yeah, I thought you can ask about AI writing it, but no in
terms. Of yeah, no, that's what I mean
of like if you generate A blog with Chach BT or you take a
transcript and repurpose that into a blog, is that OK or what
are your thoughts, thoughts there?
No, I mean I wouldn't do that. I've done it twice just to say

(41:07):
this is what I think and this iswhat like Gemini or Chat GPD
thinks. Here is take take a look for
fun. But right now I wouldn't.
I've tried to write blog posts using ChatGPT and Gemini and so
forth for searching a roundtableand I read it.
I'm like, this doesn't sound like I wrote it.
So no, I'm not going to. And often, honestly, I could

(41:27):
write it faster than having chatCPT write it and then be
reviewing it and fixing it so itjust comes out faster and more
the way I want it to come out. When I don't use these services
now, will I think AI can replaceme one day?
Yes. I think it'll happen sooner than
later. I don't care.
I mean, I'm looking forward to that day, but at that point I

(41:47):
don't think I need to do anything.
Meaning I think my website will be overtaken by AI answers from
these services without people having to go to my website.
But at this point, I mean, I don't see why like a chat sheet,
like an AI service can't be likeSundar Pachai said this in this
video interview or John Mueller tweeted out this thing or Google
announced this thing. And here's I don't see why they

(42:08):
can't do the same thing as me asthey consume more and more
knowledge across the web. I mean, that's, that's the
future. I'm looking forward to that day.
But right now it just doesn't sound like me.
And I've been trying to use those services for fun mostly.
And I just, I can't post it. I just, and if I do post it,
which I've done twice, I label that as like this is what the AI

(42:29):
response was. Have fun with it.
But this is what I think, if that makes sense.
Why are you looking forward to the day of being replaced?
I think it's cool. I mean, I don't need the my own.
This is for a hobby. I think this technology is
amazing, and maybe as I do something else, maybe I do
something else that's fun or something else that I find more
interesting. Although I do find interest

(42:51):
writing interesting. Very, very much so.
But maybe it's something else. I don't know.
There's always something else, so we'll see.
Interesting. And something else I want to ask
you, because I, I respect your opinion so much, who are some of
the top Seos and some of the toppeople and search and LLMS and
such and that that you listen to?
Who do I listen to? I don't want to upset anybody,

(43:16):
but there are. I could just, I mean, I listen
to a lot. I follow content across lots and
lots of channels. Literally, if you see my
newsletter, I probably source 100 plus different things every
day from unique sources on a daily basis.
And I think I've covered on my yearly end post, I've sourced

(43:38):
over thousands of different SE OS in the course of a year,
unique SE OS over the course of the year.
So I'm following everything across different searches that
I'm doing and RSS feeds and so forth.
And I quote a lot, a lot of people and I trust a lot, a lot
of people. But in terms of like people that
I like subscribe to on like YouTube channels, like I would

(43:59):
say Marketing O'clock from Greg Finn, Elena Solis, Glenn Gabe,
you know, there's a lot of SE OSthat I follow very closely and
what they say. I don't want to like miss
people, but literally, you know,obviously Google blogs and so
forth. But on a daily basis, I will be

(44:21):
publishing probably over 100 different things from different
Seos and different publications that I just read.
So if you want to see those things that I read every day,
just subscribe to my newsletter.It's free.
I don't make it, you know, I don't really make much money off
of it at all. And I think you'll get a lot of
different sources, a lot of different thoughts across that.
So there's tons of people that Ifollow, people that I don't

(44:42):
follow, including there because I just find it.
So it's not just one thing. And yeah, you can get those
sources right there on a daily basis.
OK, awesome. It's not like a top five or
anything. There's plenty you're pulling
from tons of sources. Cool.
One of the last questions I wantto ask you is it seems like
there's, as the time progresses that search and social is

(45:05):
becoming closer and that they'remore and more related.
And that like really social is becoming part of SEO.
And that, you know, you've probably seen that Gen.
Z is searching on TikTok as really like their main search
platform. How do you see like the merging
of search and social? So we've been seeing it where
people, Google has been putting in like these shorts and, you

(45:28):
know, X posts and LinkedIn postsand Facebook posts and so forth
directly in the search results. Reddit's big.
I've called Reddit a place of social.
It's Google's including Reddit all the time.
Google like a couple years ago was like, we want to include
gems in our search results. So it's really hard to say like,
you know, the integration with that.
I think over time it depends on the type of query you're looking

(45:51):
for. And some queries and some
questions that you might ask Google and other searches
weren't a social response like from Facebook, Reddit or
whatever. And some do not and some may yes
and some no. So you might have both from the
same search results page. So I think they're more like
widgets that you that Google includes.
Like what people are saying is one of the widgets you see in

(46:13):
Google search or these video carousels or Reddit like blocks
discussion forums, it's called. So it really depends on the
under type query, but I think you're seeing like these
different search features there.And then you'll in the AI
responses, you might see citations from, you know, people
talking on Reddit or people talking on social and Google
sourcing those sources as well across social media.

(46:36):
So that's how you see like responses.
You see it also in tech me. Like tech me was a very popular
aggravation tool that a lot of journalists use.
And it shows the headlines, but also shows what people are
saying about it across blue sky and X and different social media
platforms. So I think that's how a good use
of social media works across search and and social.

(46:57):
OK, got it. Something I heard Mark
Zuckerberg mentioned recently isthat there will be AI content
creators. Do you think that will happen if
we'll have just like AI personascreating content?
Do you have any thoughts there? I think, yeah, I mean, I think
you'll start seeing AI starting,create more content.
You see that across some publications.
They've tried it in the past couple years.

(47:19):
They closed it down. I think at some point they'll
probably bring it back. You see a lot of also content
creators utilizing AI to help them with video creation or
creating images. I use AI to create images on my
website, header images for the story, because there's no better
way to like symbolize a robot indexing content.
You can't like see a real robot indexes.
So you make it up and people whoclearly know it's AI and it's

(47:42):
really relevant to the stuff. So I think there's really using,
I don't know if you've seen the VO stuff, VO3, little video
generation tool. It is absolutely insane.
And I think what you'll have is people using AI to help you
build the scripts to create these videos, and then AI
actually building the scripts for you based on those prompts
that you make. And you can always adjust it.
It creates, it makes it makes people who were never able to

(48:02):
create videos, but we're creative, giving them the
ability to actually create really creative videos without
having to know the skill sets that actually do that instead of
just having a creative mind, which is amazing.
So yes, it's scary how things are changing, but at the same
time, this is giving people the tool sets to actually do things
that they were never able to do because either they weren't
educated enough to do it or theyjust weren't skilled enough.

(48:25):
But yet they have these wild imaginations on what they can
actually build, and the AI toolswill help them build it, which
is great. It's also scary, but great.
Absolutely, Yeah, No, I was talking with my mentor about
this, that I always had a dream when I was younger to be a movie
producer and people told me I was crazy and that would like
never happen. And I did feel kind of crazy.

(48:46):
But now it seems like that's just a reality.
Anyone can create a movie, anyone can create a book, anyone
can create anything. It's like AI guess a creator
economy or whatever you'd like want to call it, but it's pretty
crazy. Right, it's a creator economy.
But the same time creator is getting less invisibility
because AI is consuming it all. So you create stuff for the AI
and then AI is consuming it and then repurposing it.

(49:07):
So it's a weird place to be right now where you're people
could create stuff so easily, but yet the AI responses you're
getting are AI generated. And who knows if that's going to
send traffic to it. But yeah, I mean, you could try
side hustles. I mean, it's people could
literally make things on the side, you know, while sitting on
the couch. It's just just amazing.
It's it's a, it's a, it's fun, Yeah.

(49:28):
I mean, I'm a little nervous formy kids.
I'm sure they'll figure something out in terms of what
they're going to get jobs they'll get.
But overall, I think we're in a really exciting space.
Absolutely. All right.
One more question for you, Barry, I'd like to ask you, what
is your advice to Seos and business owners out there?
What do they need to know? What?
What is your message for them? Yeah.
I mean, so continue to create great content or have your

(49:50):
customers build really great content.
Two, obviously we discussed thisbefore.
Think about branding and genetics and genetics
experiences, how you, you know, go over there.
And then three, like we discussed also before is
whatever traffic you get right now, whatever traffic you get in
the future, make sure you have called to actions on your on
those on those landing pages or those wherever they're going to

(50:14):
capture those people's information so that you can
reach reach out to them in the future.
Obviously, e-mail has been around forever and emails not
dying. And you want to make sure to
capture their e-mail addresses or whatever mechanisms you can
reach out to them, text their mobile phone numbers, whatever
it means, so they can actually reach out to the builder.
Build your build those, you know, build something that will
that you could always capture those customers in the future so

(50:35):
that when you do get that traffic now if that traffic goes
away, you are you are diversified enough that you can
actually build that relationshipgoing forward.
Awesome. Cool.
Well, we'll close up the show here.
So where can people? So you mentioned your
newsletter. How can people get access to
your newsletter and, you know, to your services and such?
Yeah, I mean, so the newsletter is on Searches Roundtable,
scroundtable.com. It should be a big subscribe box

(50:58):
on the top right if you want to get that.
Or we could just read the website.
It's all there. I'm on basically at Rusty Brook
everywhere, so on every single social platform except for
TikTok. I don't do any TikTok dancing,
so I apologize, but on every single single platform under the
nickname Rusty Brick. And our services aren't really
SEO. It's custom software.
So if you do need any software development services, web or

(51:20):
mobile, and you wanna make your you wanna be able to get more
done with less, just get things more efficient.
That's what we do. Yeah, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it. Awesome.
And where can people connect with you on socials as well?
I know you're on LinkedIn, I think Twitter, Where can people?
Connect yeah, so X LinkedIn, Facebook, blue sky, Mastodon,

(51:40):
everything and it's the same handles rusty brick so.
OK, cool. All right, cool.
So those links will be in the description.
And yeah, it was a pleasure having you on the show.
Barry, this is this is awesome. And you know, I really look up
to you. So thank you so much for
spending this time with me. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Appreciate it of. Course.

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Danny Leibrandt

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