July 2, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode of Over The Bull, Ken shares two real-world stories from just the past week that spotlight a growing problem in the digital landscape: service providers that simply aren’t ready for the credibility demands of the AI era.
First up is a vacation rental platform that forces businesses to host booking pages off their own domain—eliminating any SEO benefit and causing a jarring trust gap for users who click away from the brand’s site. Then, Ken dives into the frustrating experience of trying to reclaim a domain name on behalf of a client, only to be met with untrained, unhelpful support from the provider.
These aren’t just isolated issues—they reflect a deeper shift. As AI systems increasingly reward authority, trust, and user signals, outdated tools and poor service aren’t just inconvenient—they’re liabilities. If your tech stack or partners aren’t built for visibility, trust, and integration, you’re already falling behind.
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Welcome to Over the Bull.
I'm your host, Ken, and I hopeyou're going to have a happy 4th
of July.
I'm looking forward to spendingthe 4th with family and friends
and We always have a bigget-together with our family.
We try to do it once a month,and this month we're going to
enjoy that again.
(00:31):
And I hope your family andfriends are healthy, and I hope
you're going to have just ablessed Fourth of July.
Now, I was debating on whatexactly to talk about this week
in Over the Bull, because,frankly, there's so much going
on that it can be overwhelmingto And honestly, it can have you
(00:55):
think you're going crazysometimes.
So I thought I'd share a fewstories with you.
And this may be relevant to youor may not, but maybe it'll help
you get a little better insightinto what this Internet world
looks like today.
So we signed a recent, a clientrecently.
(01:16):
And they're local.
And one thing that they do isthey sell vacation rentals, so
short-time rentals you see onplaces like Airbnb or Vrbo.
And one thing that they have isa booking engine.
So let me talk about this justfor a second.
So you can imagine that if youhave a website with rentals and
(01:38):
then you have the sameproperties listed on Airbnb or
you have them listed on Vrbo orother places, that you don't
want to have double bookings andyou want to be able to manage
everything from a centrallocation just to help things run
smooth and efficient and keeppeople happy and all those
(01:59):
things.
Similar in the tourism industry.
You know, we have what we callOTAs, and those OTAs are like
TripAdvisor or Groupon, youknow, Viator, things like that.
And it's the same thing.
You know, you can only book somany tickets, and if somebody
books on Groupon and thenTripAdvisor, and if you don't
have a way to kind ofcollectively manage all that
(02:22):
information, you could overbookor have a lot of issues that
could negatively impact yourcompany.
So in this case, she had aprogram that they use.
And that particular program,what it did was it was that
booking engine.
(02:42):
And so the idea is that when youwent to her website and then you
start to go through thedifferent rentals she has, and
then you click the book button,it would take you over to...
this other website where thebooking engine resides.
So if you could imagine if thewebsite is mytravelcompany.com,
(03:06):
it would, when you clicked onthe booking part, it would take
you to a completely differentwebsite with all that stuff on
it.
Now, there were two problemswhen I investigated the website.
Because you see, you have tolook at it from multiple angles.
You can't just look at it from,Does it work?
(03:26):
You have to ask the questionsof, does it positively impact
the booking process?
Does it negatively impact thebooking process?
And does it help with thingslike search engine optimization?
Does it not do good with it?
And can you track all themeaningful events so that you
(03:47):
can optimize for thoseconversions?
And so there's just a lot ofmoving pieces.
Now, When you click and you goto that other site, so when they
click book and they would go tothat site, the problem was
multifaceted.
The first problem was you jumpweb addresses.
(04:09):
So you go from abc.com todef.com.
And at a glance, you may think,well, that's not really a big
deal.
However, it is a big deal.
Keep in mind, All the junkthat's going on today on the
internet, think of all the spamand, for lack of a better word,
(04:30):
just incompetence.
I mean, I see a lot ofincompetence when I'm dealing
with vendors and third parties,and I'm seeing them trying to
wield this AI thing, and they'redoing a really bad job of it.
And so the big companies aredoing a really bad job.
The little companies are doing abad job.
(04:52):
Then you get the cold emails,you get the spam phone calls,
you get the text messages.
And so people, their radar ishigher than ever.
And instead of them looking fora reason to book with you, they
look for the reasons not totrust you because they're
bombarded with scams all thetime.
(05:14):
So in the booking process, ifyou jump from website abc.com to
def.com, That's a flag.
And a lot of times people willthink twice about booking when
it jumps web addresses likethat, because it's just that one
little thing that makes them go,can I trust this website?
(05:37):
Why did it do that?
What are they trying to pullover on me?
You know, those are thequestions that basically bounce
around in someone's mind.
And so it impacts the buyingcycle.
It can negatively impact it by alittle bit or a lot, but until
you correct it, you don't knowexactly how detrimental that is.
(06:01):
The second thing is when you doall that work to put together
all those properties inside thatbooking engine, all the content,
meaning text and photos andvideos or highlights, whatever,
all those things, And then youlink it to that other site or
(06:22):
you click over to the othersite.
Those pages become valueless interms of search engine
optimization.
And in other words, you're doingall the work.
You really should get the SEOcredit for the work, meaning
that you want to build yourcredibility.
Because if you looked at thelast podcast we had, one of the
(06:45):
big things that's going on rightnow is this This hurricane
called artificial intelligencethat's on the horizon.
And these big tech companies,man, they're drunk on this
thing.
And the idea is that they'removing harder and harder into
it.
They're petitioning for, I mean,entire energy components just to
(07:14):
drive this darn thing.
And so the idea is from a searchengine optimization and AI, you
want to build your credibilityup too.
And so credibility a lot oftimes is content.
And so just by linking to a siteand them saying that they market
as non-indexable, why sure,that's good in one respect in
(07:39):
that Google will not look at thepages, right?
But in another way, it's reallybad because you don't get any
credit for all the hard work andyou don't build your credibility
up from all the hard work.
And so even though technicallyyou can do it, you know, it kind
of goes back to, to paraphraseJeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park,
(08:03):
it's not can we do it, it'sshould we do it.
You know, it's kind of like thatkind of thing.
And should we?
And so the idea is you want to,when you're thinking about the
web work, you really want tothink about the entire
experience from a technical,from a marketing, an aesthetic,
(08:26):
the whole gamut.
And if you're working with anSEO guy who doesn't understand
it, then you're going to misspieces.
And if you work with a designperson that don't get the
technical parts, you're going tomiss other pieces.
And that list goes on and on andon.
And so now it becomes, ratherthan just the dogmatic reality
(08:48):
that that's just the way it is,now it transitions to politics,
where we're trying to justifyour little piece of the pie
because we don't want to loseour little piece of the pie.
But in reality, all those thingsmatter.
And if you hire different peoplein different situations to do
(09:09):
that, then it's going to bedisconnected.
So in here, we see two obviouspoints of disconnect that really
need to be resolved.
Now, we started looking at othersolutions that could accommodate
what this client needs and tofill the gaps.
(09:31):
This was followed by the clientasked me to reach back out to
their current provider for thesoftware and just ask the simple
question.
One, can we create it to wherethey don't leave the website
during the booking process?
Number two, can we get creditfor the search engine
optimization?
Now, when you do that, believeit or not, there are different
(09:55):
ways to put stuff on yourwebsite, that content, in one
way that's meaningful andanother way that's meaningless.
And so even if it looks likeit's on your website, you may
not still be getting the creditfor it.
If you're in the industry, thinkthe word iframe.
Iframe is not the ideal way todo it.
(10:18):
So I got on the phone with them,and I'm talking to...
The guy that was supposed to bethere wasn't there, and it was
somebody else, but he was one oftheir apparently lead techs.
And I asked him the question tojust basically say, can you do
this?
And this person went on adiatribe of, my goodness,
(10:43):
probably 15 minutes, and he wasmaking a word salad mix mash of
terms and concepts and He wasblending together paid ad
concepts with organic concepts.
He was minimizing the domainsjumping.
He minimized the whole argument,trying to in his mind anyway,
(11:08):
because he's defending theproduct.
And it was absolutely crazy.
And I realized a few things.
The first thing that I realizedis that If I was not in the
position that I'm in and I don'thave the experience that I have,
I might have bought part of whathe said.
Now, this is a big problem for alot of you guys because you're
(11:32):
buying the best argument.
And I've had clients in the pastthat if they were on that
conversation, they may havebought what this particular
person was saying.
Even though it's 100% just...
a word salad of nonsensical,technical-sounding knowledge.
And it was crazy because then hetried to transition the
(11:56):
conversation to where it's likea philosophical difference in
the way you develop, when inreality, it's just dogmatically
true.
You want to seal as many holesas you can seal in your
marketing program.
Make the...
the buying process as seamlessas possible for the client.
(12:18):
And don't raise any flags thatmay prevent the client from
trusting your business.
Very basic concepts.
And so anyway, he tried to doall this marginalization of it.
And it made me realize how toughof a job you guys have when
you're trying to run a business.
(12:38):
Because a lot of times, Thestuff that's coming from the
people that are selling andsupporting your product, it's
just wrong.
I don't know of any other way toput it.
So the idea is when you look atany kind of software, and this
would go out to electricians.
It goes out to plumbers.
(13:00):
It would go out to anybody inthe tourism industry.
It goes out to anyone who doesvacation rentals, any kind of
tradesmen.
is that when you start tointegrate third-party tools,
it's essential that it'sseamless.
And it's just as essential thatyou're able to track meaningful
actions all the way throughbecause paid ads like Google,
(13:26):
what they do is when you setconversions.
So conversions is just a fancyway to say, I'm trying to get
phone calls.
I want people to fill out aform.
I want people to sign up forthis.
Those are conversions, okay?
There are different levels ofconversions, and you really
should focus on the importantconversions, by the way.
I see a lot of people in GoogleAds, businesses who focus on
(13:50):
like a click on a button thatreally doesn't mean that much.
And the problem is you're kindof messing with Google's
artificial intelligence withconversions.
paid ads when you put thosemeaningless conversions in there
because it starts to optimizefor the meaningless conversion
as much as the meaningful, andyou can actually trip up Google
(14:11):
Ads if you're not careful in howyou do that.
But the idea is that when you'relooking at software, you really
need to ask a couple ofquestions.
One, does it blend seamlesslywith my website?
Number two, Ask, does it useiframes or does the content
(14:31):
appear native to my website?
Now, that's kind of interestingbecause iframes, if you think
about it, if you took a piece ofpaper and punched a hole in it
and then showed another piece ofpaper behind it, you're
basically not actually puttingthat paper together.
What you're doing is justshowing a window of the paper
behind the piece of paper,right?
(14:52):
And so...
When you do iframes, you're kindof doing that.
And rather than actually havethe content where it appears to
be nested or embedded onto thewebsite.
The other thing you want to dois make sure that it's seamless
and that it fits the buyingprofile.
Don't just look at it from onelens.
Sit back and go, okay, I'm acustomer and I'm doing this.
(15:14):
So a lot of these bookingwidgets that come from,
especially in plumbing andelectrical websites, they'll put
a password before you can gothrough and book.
They want you to put in apassword or username or
something like that.
And if you think like acustomer, that's a barrier.
You might think that's easy, butthis person may be the first
(15:36):
time they're wanting to use youand you're requiring them to do
something and get in the way ofthem booking.
You see, that's not a goodexperience.
And so you want to think aboutthe experience.
You want to make sure thecontent is native.
And then you want to make surethat you can track meaningful
actions.
Now, the word in the industry isconversions.
(15:58):
If you're in the meta world, youcan use the word events.
So Facebook and stuff like that.
But you want to make sure thatyou can do that.
And if you get this word salad.
minimizing the concern, or ifyou see an experience issue or a
little bump in the road andyou're getting heavy resistance
from that, it may be time tostart looking for other software
(16:21):
in those cases.
Matter of fact, it's reallyimportant.
So in the case of thisparticular client, over half of
their bookings, a big segment ofit, doesn't come from their
website.
It comes from other sources.
And so by running paid ads orrunning different kind of
advertising that would gothrough that website, while if
(16:44):
they're booking on somethinglike Vrbo, for example, it could
impact on one level, especiallyif people are finding them on
Vrbo.
While if you're sending itdirectly to the website and it
jumps website addresses or ithas these glitches, It could be
much, much of a larger issuewhen you're trying to make those
(17:05):
things work.
You could have potentialcustomers dropping off, and you
could lose a large amount ofsales from something that you've
not thought through carefully.
The other thing is you want tobe making sure that whenever you
incorporate something like that,that it feels like it's your
stuff.
(17:25):
meaning that you want to makesure you can brand it.
You want to make sure that itdoesn't feel like that there's a
thing on your website thatdoesn't match your website.
Like if your website is blue,you want to make sure that you
don't have a neon green on acertain page where it's branded
to the vendor's colors.
These are all mistakes, andsometimes you do have to pick
(17:49):
your battles, and that's justthe way it is.
Now, if we zoom out a littlebit, This situation also
presents a much larger problemthat's going to become bigger
and bigger as things like Geminiand ChatGPT and these other AI
models evolve.
(18:11):
One of the things you're goingto see is that you can tell that
these companies that havethousands of customers are not
prepared for what's coming.
They're not thinking about yourcitation or your credibility.
They're selling right into thisstorm and they're not addressing
issues.
And remember, citations andcredibility, that's the new
(18:31):
currency here, guys.
This is the new currency of thefuture.
If you're not credible andyou're just running paid ads to
a landing page and you're doingall these things and thinking
you have it figured out, thisstorm is going to catch you.
And you need to make sure thatyou're building the credibility
for your company, your website,your Google business profile,
(18:54):
your social media, and you donot want to be caught in this
hurricane when it hits.
And so that's all aboutcredibility.
So as you're dealing withvendors, keep in mind that they
may not have their hand on thepulse of this or they may not be
able to react.
I mean, the amount of code thatwould take to do some of these
(19:15):
things, Although it may seemsimple, it actually can be
fairly complex to do thesethings.
Now, I want to bookend that partof the conversation, and I want
to move over to another one too.
So there's this other companythat does menus for restaurants,
and it was another strangeissue.
(19:36):
So it boiled down to this.
The client that signed up withus was using this company, that
builds menus and these kind ofrudimentary restaurant-style
websites.
And what they did was they alsomanaged their domain or web
address.
Now, what's interesting aboutthat is that that domain or web
(20:01):
address, she wanted us to manageit.
She wanted us to take that over.
So she didn't want that companyto do it any longer.
So I get into a chat.
And in that chat, the funnything is, is that the person was
not technical at all.
So they're in technical support,but they were really not.
(20:23):
So let me give this to you acouple ways.
So one is, if you want totransfer your web address to
another company, that's a lotdifferent than just pointing out
the new web information insidethat domain.
So you could maintain control ofit or you can give the whole
thing away, the whole webaddress.
(20:45):
And we wanted the whole webaddress.
Well, I was on the phone withthe client trying to get this
resolved because I was curiousif they were even going to
release the domain given thelanguage because the language
implied they were avoiding thequestion of giving her
information her actual webaddress, meaning that they would
change stuff for her but notgive it to her.
(21:07):
You see, that's a hugedifference.
And so I read the language, Igot on the phone, and I spent
the next 45 minutes to an hourin this chat, and oh man, two
sentences and I was waiting 20minutes.
And the only way we were able tofind it was...
their customer support numberbecause the chat was crazy and
(21:31):
she kept mixing up those twoprocesses.
And so it was really weird andwe were talking about getting a
transfer and then at one pointthis person said that they would
release the domain withoutasking us where to release it
to.
Just very fundamental, crazystuff.
And as I'm sitting here doingthat and working through it, the
(21:56):
one thing that that I had seenwas that they didn't know.
And then anyway, the client was,as we were talking on the phone,
we were joking, kind of laughingabout how slow it was.
And at some point, guys, youjust have to laugh.
I mean, and my point to theclient was I said, you know, I
value my time.
And this person, just to giveyou a simple answer, is taking
(22:19):
45 minutes of time.
And we were going to still usethem for part of their service.
But once experiencing that, wedecided not to.
So here's the kicker.
We did get a customer supportphone number.
Now, it's not published on thiscompany's website.
I wish I was kidding.
It was actually a website calledpissedconsumers.com.
(22:41):
Forgive the language, but that'sthe web address,
pissedconsumers.com.
And believe it or not, theircustomer support number was
there.
And then we called in, and wegot a hold of a great person on
the phone.
You know, it's hit or miss.
Got a hold of just an awesomeperson.
We got control of the domainname and we got everything
(23:01):
going.
But it was literally a disasterto try to get control of her
assets.
So the idea here is you want tobe careful with domain names.
That's your web address.
Your website, you can figurethat part out, but your domain
name is the crux of yourbusiness.
(23:22):
And if you're buildingcredibility, the domain name is
that linchpin.
And so you want to be carefulwho you give control of that
domain to.
You don't want to let afreelancer have that domain name
and manage it on your behalf.
You want to have extremeconfidence that that person is
(23:43):
not going to run away with yourdomain or worse, not worse,
that's just that's bad, but holdyou hostage, meaning that I'm
going to take this and I'm justgoing to keep it.
Now, I have seen both of thosethings.
So keep your domain under yourcontrol.
And if you register with acompany like GoDaddy, now keep
(24:05):
in mind, some of these, GoDaddyis what you call a registrar.
Now, they do other stuff.
My personal opinion is they'rereally good on domains.
I don't like a lot of the otherstuff that they do.
That's my personal opinion.
But they have really good domainservices.
And one of those things that youcan do is share parts of your
(24:27):
account with your freelancer andstill maintain full control of
your domain name.
And we actually produce a videowhere we share it out with the
client and say, if you don'ttrust us, this is how you can
share it out and still maintaincontrol of it.
And so it was kind of scary.
So it turned out in the end thatthey did release it, but the
(24:49):
language that the person wasusing implied that they were
avoiding kind of the question.
And so it could have easily beenthe other way where they said,
well, we're not going to give itto you.
And then you may think, well,but they're doing that service
for me.
But in this crazy world ofdomains, very easily the person
(25:12):
who has the ownership of it,they own it.
And sometimes it's really,really difficult to get those
things back.
And if you get a hold of thewrong person, with the wrong
intents, you're going to have abear of a time and you may even
have to start completely over.
And in this world of artificialintelligence, these large
(25:32):
language models, when you resetsomething like that and you're
resetting your credibility, it'snot just putting out another web
address, guys.
What this means is you'rerestarting your credibility.
All those people that have yourwebsite down, they're going to
be confused.
So be very careful about who youtrust with it.
(25:53):
And I've seen big companies getinto trouble with this, and I've
seen mom and pops get intotrouble with this.
You want to work with companiesthat are reputable, and you do
want to get something where youknow that you know that you know
that that's yours and that theyhave to give that over.
Now, keep in mind, they canstill make your life incredibly
(26:14):
miserable.
And they could come in and tryto charge you a lot of money on
the back end just to transferthat over to you.
So you want to be careful aboutthat.
And you want to make sure youmaintain your domain name.
And your domain is just your webaddress.
That's not your actual website.
That's just your web address.
And if you go to our website andyou go to different places, you
(26:36):
can kind of see basic schematicsof what a website comprises of.
And so as I'm going throughthis, business this week.
These were two issues that Isaw, and what it made me realize
is that big companies and smalltech companies, they're not
prepared for what's gettingready to come.
(26:57):
I'm not sure if they can reactto it.
Also, the degree at which thingsare being supported is going
downhill quickly, and the amountof, I guess for lack of a better
word, Apparent deceptiveness insome ways, that's going through
the roof, and I think youprobably see that on your end
(27:19):
too.
And what you want to do is youwant to be sure that your
business, when it comes to howpeople see it online and how
they engage with it, leaves zerodoubt that your business is
reputable and dependable.
Okay, guys, that's all I'm goingto talk about today.
I hope you have a great 4th ofJuly.
(27:40):
I hope this helps you out.
Like I say, I'm just talkingabout things that come across
our agency on a weekly basis.
God bless, and until next timewe meet, this is Ken Carroll
with Over the Bull.
SPEAKER_00 (27:53):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut
through marketing noise.
Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01 (00:10):
Welcome to Over the Bull.
I'm your host, Ken, and I hopeyou're going to have a happy 4th
of July.
I'm looking forward to spendingthe 4th with family and friends
and We always have a bigget-together with our family.
We try to do it once a month,and this month we're going to
enjoy that again.
(00:31):
And I hope your family andfriends are healthy, and I hope
you're going to have just ablessed Fourth of July.
Now, I was debating on whatexactly to talk about this week
in Over the Bull, because,frankly, there's so much going
on that it can be overwhelmingto And honestly, it can have you
(00:55):
think you're going crazysometimes.
So I thought I'd share a fewstories with you.
And this may be relevant to youor may not, but maybe it'll help
you get a little better insightinto what this Internet world
looks like today.
So we signed a recent, a clientrecently.
(01:16):
And they're local.
And one thing that they do isthey sell vacation rentals, so
short-time rentals you see onplaces like Airbnb or Vrbo.
And one thing that they have isa booking engine.
So let me talk about this justfor a second.
So you can imagine that if youhave a website with rentals and
(01:38):
then you have the sameproperties listed on Airbnb or
you have them listed on Vrbo orother places, that you don't
want to have double bookings andyou want to be able to manage
everything from a centrallocation just to help things run
smooth and efficient and keeppeople happy and all those
(01:59):
things.
Similar in the tourism industry.
You know, we have what we callOTAs, and those OTAs are like
TripAdvisor or Groupon, youknow, Viator, things like that.
And it's the same thing.
You know, you can only book somany tickets, and if somebody
books on Groupon and thenTripAdvisor, and if you don't
have a way to kind ofcollectively manage all that
(02:22):
information, you could overbookor have a lot of issues that
could negatively impact yourcompany.
So in this case, she had aprogram that they use.
And that particular program,what it did was it was that
booking engine.
(02:42):
And so the idea is that when youwent to her website and then you
start to go through thedifferent rentals she has, and
then you click the book button,it would take you over to...
this other website where thebooking engine resides.
So if you could imagine if thewebsite is mytravelcompany.com,
(03:06):
it would, when you clicked onthe booking part, it would take
you to a completely differentwebsite with all that stuff on
it.
Now, there were two problemswhen I investigated the website.
Because you see, you have tolook at it from multiple angles.
You can't just look at it from,Does it work?
(03:26):
You have to ask the questionsof, does it positively impact
the booking process?
Does it negatively impact thebooking process?
And does it help with thingslike search engine optimization?
Does it not do good with it?
And can you track all themeaningful events so that you
(03:47):
can optimize for thoseconversions?
And so there's just a lot ofmoving pieces.
Now, When you click and you goto that other site, so when they
click book and they would go tothat site, the problem was
multifaceted.
The first problem was you jumpweb addresses.
(04:09):
So you go from abc.com todef.com.
And at a glance, you may think,well, that's not really a big
deal.
However, it is a big deal.
Keep in mind, All the junkthat's going on today on the
internet, think of all the spamand, for lack of a better word,
(04:30):
just incompetence.
I mean, I see a lot ofincompetence when I'm dealing
with vendors and third parties,and I'm seeing them trying to
wield this AI thing, and they'redoing a really bad job of it.
And so the big companies aredoing a really bad job.
The little companies are doing abad job.
(04:52):
Then you get the cold emails,you get the spam phone calls,
you get the text messages.
And so people, their radar ishigher than ever.
And instead of them looking fora reason to book with you, they
look for the reasons not totrust you because they're
bombarded with scams all thetime.
(05:14):
So in the booking process, ifyou jump from website abc.com to
def.com, That's a flag.
And a lot of times people willthink twice about booking when
it jumps web addresses likethat, because it's just that one
little thing that makes them go,can I trust this website?
(05:37):
Why did it do that?
What are they trying to pullover on me?
You know, those are thequestions that basically bounce
around in someone's mind.
And so it impacts the buyingcycle.
It can negatively impact it by alittle bit or a lot, but until
you correct it, you don't knowexactly how detrimental that is.
(06:01):
The second thing is when you doall that work to put together
all those properties inside thatbooking engine, all the content,
meaning text and photos andvideos or highlights, whatever,
all those things, And then youlink it to that other site or
(06:22):
you click over to the othersite.
Those pages become valueless interms of search engine
optimization.
And in other words, you're doingall the work.
You really should get the SEOcredit for the work, meaning
that you want to build yourcredibility.
Because if you looked at thelast podcast we had, one of the
(06:45):
big things that's going on rightnow is this This hurricane
called artificial intelligencethat's on the horizon.
And these big tech companies,man, they're drunk on this
thing.
And the idea is that they'removing harder and harder into
it.
They're petitioning for, I mean,entire energy components just to
(07:14):
drive this darn thing.
And so the idea is from a searchengine optimization and AI, you
want to build your credibilityup too.
And so credibility a lot oftimes is content.
And so just by linking to a siteand them saying that they market
as non-indexable, why sure,that's good in one respect in
(07:39):
that Google will not look at thepages, right?
But in another way, it's reallybad because you don't get any
credit for all the hard work andyou don't build your credibility
up from all the hard work.
And so even though technicallyyou can do it, you know, it kind
of goes back to, to paraphraseJeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park,
(08:03):
it's not can we do it, it'sshould we do it.
You know, it's kind of like thatkind of thing.
And should we?
And so the idea is you want to,when you're thinking about the
web work, you really want tothink about the entire
experience from a technical,from a marketing, an aesthetic,
(08:26):
the whole gamut.
And if you're working with anSEO guy who doesn't understand
it, then you're going to misspieces.
And if you work with a designperson that don't get the
technical parts, you're going tomiss other pieces.
And that list goes on and on andon.
And so now it becomes, ratherthan just the dogmatic reality
(08:48):
that that's just the way it is,now it transitions to politics,
where we're trying to justifyour little piece of the pie
because we don't want to loseour little piece of the pie.
But in reality, all those thingsmatter.
And if you hire different peoplein different situations to do
(09:09):
that, then it's going to bedisconnected.
So in here, we see two obviouspoints of disconnect that really
need to be resolved.
Now, we started looking at othersolutions that could accommodate
what this client needs and tofill the gaps.
(09:31):
This was followed by the clientasked me to reach back out to
their current provider for thesoftware and just ask the simple
question.
One, can we create it to wherethey don't leave the website
during the booking process?
Number two, can we get creditfor the search engine
optimization?
Now, when you do that, believeit or not, there are different
(09:55):
ways to put stuff on yourwebsite, that content, in one
way that's meaningful andanother way that's meaningless.
And so even if it looks likeit's on your website, you may
not still be getting the creditfor it.
If you're in the industry, thinkthe word iframe.
Iframe is not the ideal way todo it.
(10:18):
So I got on the phone with them,and I'm talking to...
The guy that was supposed to bethere wasn't there, and it was
somebody else, but he was one oftheir apparently lead techs.
And I asked him the question tojust basically say, can you do
this?
And this person went on adiatribe of, my goodness,
(10:43):
probably 15 minutes, and he wasmaking a word salad mix mash of
terms and concepts and He wasblending together paid ad
concepts with organic concepts.
He was minimizing the domainsjumping.
He minimized the whole argument,trying to in his mind anyway,
(11:08):
because he's defending theproduct.
And it was absolutely crazy.
And I realized a few things.
The first thing that I realizedis that If I was not in the
position that I'm in and I don'thave the experience that I have,
I might have bought part of whathe said.
Now, this is a big problem for alot of you guys because you're
(11:32):
buying the best argument.
And I've had clients in the pastthat if they were on that
conversation, they may havebought what this particular
person was saying.
Even though it's 100% just...
a word salad of nonsensical,technical-sounding knowledge.
And it was crazy because then hetried to transition the
(11:56):
conversation to where it's likea philosophical difference in
the way you develop, when inreality, it's just dogmatically
true.
You want to seal as many holesas you can seal in your
marketing program.
Make the...
the buying process as seamlessas possible for the client.
(12:18):
And don't raise any flags thatmay prevent the client from
trusting your business.
Very basic concepts.
And so anyway, he tried to doall this marginalization of it.
And it made me realize how toughof a job you guys have when
you're trying to run a business.
(12:38):
Because a lot of times, Thestuff that's coming from the
people that are selling andsupporting your product, it's
just wrong.
I don't know of any other way toput it.
So the idea is when you look atany kind of software, and this
would go out to electricians.
It goes out to plumbers.
(13:00):
It would go out to anybody inthe tourism industry.
It goes out to anyone who doesvacation rentals, any kind of
tradesmen.
is that when you start tointegrate third-party tools,
it's essential that it'sseamless.
And it's just as essential thatyou're able to track meaningful
actions all the way throughbecause paid ads like Google,
(13:26):
what they do is when you setconversions.
So conversions is just a fancyway to say, I'm trying to get
phone calls.
I want people to fill out aform.
I want people to sign up forthis.
Those are conversions, okay?
There are different levels ofconversions, and you really
should focus on the importantconversions, by the way.
I see a lot of people in GoogleAds, businesses who focus on
(13:50):
like a click on a button thatreally doesn't mean that much.
And the problem is you're kindof messing with Google's
artificial intelligence withconversions.
paid ads when you put thosemeaningless conversions in there
because it starts to optimizefor the meaningless conversion
as much as the meaningful, andyou can actually trip up Google
(14:11):
Ads if you're not careful in howyou do that.
But the idea is that when you'relooking at software, you really
need to ask a couple ofquestions.
One, does it blend seamlesslywith my website?
Number two, Ask, does it useiframes or does the content
(14:31):
appear native to my website?
Now, that's kind of interestingbecause iframes, if you think
about it, if you took a piece ofpaper and punched a hole in it
and then showed another piece ofpaper behind it, you're
basically not actually puttingthat paper together.
What you're doing is justshowing a window of the paper
behind the piece of paper,right?
(14:52):
And so...
When you do iframes, you're kindof doing that.
And rather than actually havethe content where it appears to
be nested or embedded onto thewebsite.
The other thing you want to dois make sure that it's seamless
and that it fits the buyingprofile.
Don't just look at it from onelens.
Sit back and go, okay, I'm acustomer and I'm doing this.
(15:14):
So a lot of these bookingwidgets that come from,
especially in plumbing andelectrical websites, they'll put
a password before you can gothrough and book.
They want you to put in apassword or username or
something like that.
And if you think like acustomer, that's a barrier.
You might think that's easy, butthis person may be the first
(15:36):
time they're wanting to use youand you're requiring them to do
something and get in the way ofthem booking.
You see, that's not a goodexperience.
And so you want to think aboutthe experience.
You want to make sure thecontent is native.
And then you want to make surethat you can track meaningful
actions.
Now, the word in the industry isconversions.
(15:58):
If you're in the meta world, youcan use the word events.
So Facebook and stuff like that.
But you want to make sure thatyou can do that.
And if you get this word salad.
minimizing the concern, or ifyou see an experience issue or a
little bump in the road andyou're getting heavy resistance
from that, it may be time tostart looking for other software
(16:21):
in those cases.
Matter of fact, it's reallyimportant.
So in the case of thisparticular client, over half of
their bookings, a big segment ofit, doesn't come from their
website.
It comes from other sources.
And so by running paid ads orrunning different kind of
advertising that would gothrough that website, while if
(16:44):
they're booking on somethinglike Vrbo, for example, it could
impact on one level, especiallyif people are finding them on
Vrbo.
While if you're sending itdirectly to the website and it
jumps website addresses or ithas these glitches, It could be
much, much of a larger issuewhen you're trying to make those
(17:05):
things work.
You could have potentialcustomers dropping off, and you
could lose a large amount ofsales from something that you've
not thought through carefully.
The other thing is you want tobe making sure that whenever you
incorporate something like that,that it feels like it's your
stuff.
(17:25):
meaning that you want to makesure you can brand it.
You want to make sure that itdoesn't feel like that there's a
thing on your website thatdoesn't match your website.
Like if your website is blue,you want to make sure that you
don't have a neon green on acertain page where it's branded
to the vendor's colors.
These are all mistakes, andsometimes you do have to pick
(17:49):
your battles, and that's justthe way it is.
Now, if we zoom out a littlebit, This situation also
presents a much larger problemthat's going to become bigger
and bigger as things like Geminiand ChatGPT and these other AI
models evolve.
(18:11):
One of the things you're goingto see is that you can tell that
these companies that havethousands of customers are not
prepared for what's coming.
They're not thinking about yourcitation or your credibility.
They're selling right into thisstorm and they're not addressing
issues.
And remember, citations andcredibility, that's the new
(18:31):
currency here, guys.
This is the new currency of thefuture.
If you're not credible andyou're just running paid ads to
a landing page and you're doingall these things and thinking
you have it figured out, thisstorm is going to catch you.
And you need to make sure thatyou're building the credibility
for your company, your website,your Google business profile,
(18:54):
your social media, and you donot want to be caught in this
hurricane when it hits.
And so that's all aboutcredibility.
So as you're dealing withvendors, keep in mind that they
may not have their hand on thepulse of this or they may not be
able to react.
I mean, the amount of code thatwould take to do some of these
(19:15):
things, Although it may seemsimple, it actually can be
fairly complex to do thesethings.
Now, I want to bookend that partof the conversation, and I want
to move over to another one too.
So there's this other companythat does menus for restaurants,
and it was another strangeissue.
(19:36):
So it boiled down to this.
The client that signed up withus was using this company, that
builds menus and these kind ofrudimentary restaurant-style
websites.
And what they did was they alsomanaged their domain or web
address.
Now, what's interesting aboutthat is that that domain or web
(20:01):
address, she wanted us to manageit.
She wanted us to take that over.
So she didn't want that companyto do it any longer.
So I get into a chat.
And in that chat, the funnything is, is that the person was
not technical at all.
So they're in technical support,but they were really not.
(20:23):
So let me give this to you acouple ways.
So one is, if you want totransfer your web address to
another company, that's a lotdifferent than just pointing out
the new web information insidethat domain.
So you could maintain control ofit or you can give the whole
thing away, the whole webaddress.
(20:45):
And we wanted the whole webaddress.
Well, I was on the phone withthe client trying to get this
resolved because I was curiousif they were even going to
release the domain given thelanguage because the language
implied they were avoiding thequestion of giving her
information her actual webaddress, meaning that they would
change stuff for her but notgive it to her.
(21:07):
You see, that's a hugedifference.
And so I read the language, Igot on the phone, and I spent
the next 45 minutes to an hourin this chat, and oh man, two
sentences and I was waiting 20minutes.
And the only way we were able tofind it was...
their customer support numberbecause the chat was crazy and
(21:31):
she kept mixing up those twoprocesses.
And so it was really weird andwe were talking about getting a
transfer and then at one pointthis person said that they would
release the domain withoutasking us where to release it
to.
Just very fundamental, crazystuff.
And as I'm sitting here doingthat and working through it, the
(21:56):
one thing that that I had seenwas that they didn't know.
And then anyway, the client was,as we were talking on the phone,
we were joking, kind of laughingabout how slow it was.
And at some point, guys, youjust have to laugh.
I mean, and my point to theclient was I said, you know, I
value my time.
And this person, just to giveyou a simple answer, is taking
(22:19):
45 minutes of time.
And we were going to still usethem for part of their service.
But once experiencing that, wedecided not to.
So here's the kicker.
We did get a customer supportphone number.
Now, it's not published on thiscompany's website.
I wish I was kidding.
It was actually a website calledpissedconsumers.com.
(22:41):
Forgive the language, but that'sthe web address,
pissedconsumers.com.
And believe it or not, theircustomer support number was
there.
And then we called in, and wegot a hold of a great person on
the phone.
You know, it's hit or miss.
Got a hold of just an awesomeperson.
We got control of the domainname and we got everything
(23:01):
going.
But it was literally a disasterto try to get control of her
assets.
So the idea here is you want tobe careful with domain names.
That's your web address.
Your website, you can figurethat part out, but your domain
name is the crux of yourbusiness.
(23:22):
And if you're buildingcredibility, the domain name is
that linchpin.
And so you want to be carefulwho you give control of that
domain to.
You don't want to let afreelancer have that domain name
and manage it on your behalf.
You want to have extremeconfidence that that person is
(23:43):
not going to run away with yourdomain or worse, not worse,
that's just that's bad, but holdyou hostage, meaning that I'm
going to take this and I'm justgoing to keep it.
Now, I have seen both of thosethings.
So keep your domain under yourcontrol.
And if you register with acompany like GoDaddy, now keep
(24:05):
in mind, some of these, GoDaddyis what you call a registrar.
Now, they do other stuff.
My personal opinion is they'rereally good on domains.
I don't like a lot of the otherstuff that they do.
That's my personal opinion.
But they have really good domainservices.
And one of those things that youcan do is share parts of your
(24:27):
account with your freelancer andstill maintain full control of
your domain name.
And we actually produce a videowhere we share it out with the
client and say, if you don'ttrust us, this is how you can
share it out and still maintaincontrol of it.
And so it was kind of scary.
So it turned out in the end thatthey did release it, but the
(24:49):
language that the person wasusing implied that they were
avoiding kind of the question.
And so it could have easily beenthe other way where they said,
well, we're not going to give itto you.
And then you may think, well,but they're doing that service
for me.
But in this crazy world ofdomains, very easily the person
(25:12):
who has the ownership of it,they own it.
And sometimes it's really,really difficult to get those
things back.
And if you get a hold of thewrong person, with the wrong
intents, you're going to have abear of a time and you may even
have to start completely over.
And in this world of artificialintelligence, these large
(25:32):
language models, when you resetsomething like that and you're
resetting your credibility, it'snot just putting out another web
address, guys.
What this means is you'rerestarting your credibility.
All those people that have yourwebsite down, they're going to
be confused.
So be very careful about who youtrust with it.
(25:53):
And I've seen big companies getinto trouble with this, and I've
seen mom and pops get intotrouble with this.
You want to work with companiesthat are reputable, and you do
want to get something where youknow that you know that you know
that that's yours and that theyhave to give that over.
Now, keep in mind, they canstill make your life incredibly
(26:14):
miserable.
And they could come in and tryto charge you a lot of money on
the back end just to transferthat over to you.
So you want to be careful aboutthat.
And you want to make sure youmaintain your domain name.
And your domain is just your webaddress.
That's not your actual website.
That's just your web address.
And if you go to our website andyou go to different places, you
(26:36):
can kind of see basic schematicsof what a website comprises of.
And so as I'm going throughthis, business this week.
These were two issues that Isaw, and what it made me realize
is that big companies and smalltech companies, they're not
prepared for what's gettingready to come.
(26:57):
I'm not sure if they can reactto it.
Also, the degree at which thingsare being supported is going
downhill quickly, and the amountof, I guess for lack of a better
word, Apparent deceptiveness insome ways, that's going through
the roof, and I think youprobably see that on your end
(27:19):
too.
And what you want to do is youwant to be sure that your
business, when it comes to howpeople see it online and how
they engage with it, leaves zerodoubt that your business is
reputable and dependable.
Okay, guys, that's all I'm goingto talk about today.
I hope you have a great 4th ofJuly.
(27:40):
I hope this helps you out.
Like I say, I'm just talkingabout things that come across
our agency on a weekly basis.
God bless, and until next timewe meet, this is Ken Carroll
with Over the Bull.
SPEAKER_00 (27:53):
Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you
by Integris Design, afull-service design and
marketing agency out ofAsheville, North Carolina.
Until next time.
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.