July 9, 2025 • 47 mins
In this episode of Over The Bull, Ken breaks down how Google’s new AI Overviews are reshaping local business visibility—drawing from a recent whitepaper by Local Falcon, a leader in local SEO tracking and analysis.
AI Overviews now appear at the top of many local search results, replacing the traditional map pack in some cases and pushing small businesses further down the page. But does your proximity to the searcher still matter? And what role does your content play in getting featured?
You’ll learn:
What GAIO (Google AI Overviews) is and how it works
Key findings from Local Falcon’s study across thousands of businesses
Why user intent and content quality now matter more than location
Which types of queries trigger AI results—and which don’t
And to wrap up, Ken offers a surprising take on phishing scams—why scammers still send obviously fake texts and emails (hint: it’s not by accident).
This is an episode packed with practical insight and strategy for business owners, marketers, and anyone trying to stay visible in a changing digital landscape.
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 (00:09):
The wheels are coming off the bus.
Are you still hanging on to someold techniques that are dying a
quick death and no longer a slowdeath?
Are you hanging on to thoseone-page or Google Ads optimized
landing pages that Welcome backto Over the Bull.
(00:47):
So, This episode is predicatedbased on an article that came
across my desk and is presentedby a company called Local
Falcon.
Local Falcon is a pretty neattool.
We use it in part with a bunchof other tools, but it's a tool
(01:10):
that you may want to check out.
They have their hand on thepulse specifically on...
Google Business, its position,things like that, you know, one
of the critical areas ofbusiness.
And oftentimes, it's one ofthose places where Google Ads
providers, when they build thoselittle dinky websites that have
(01:33):
no meaning, that are optimizedfor conversions, they often will
point your Google Business tothose landing pages to help
stack the deck to make theirprogram look more effective than
it is.
Now, with this being said, let'sjump in here and talk about the
article a little bit.
So I'm going to start by justreading the overview and then
(01:54):
I'm going to go over to my notesand you're going to see me
clicking back and forth.
Sorry, it's going to happen thatway, but there's kind of a lot
to cover in the article and Iwant to make sure that you have
everything that you may need tohelp you understand things a
little bit better, maybe askbetter questions to your
marketing and web people andhelp you understand help you
(02:18):
basically prevent from goingdark as search engines are
adjusting to this new world ofartificial intelligence.
All right, so let's dive rightinto the overview.
This is, again, by Local Falcon.
Google AI overviews, and inbrackets they put AIO slash
(02:39):
GAIO, just Google, A-I, istransforming the way search
results are delivered,particularly for local business
queries, by summarizinginformation directly in search
results.
GAIO changes how visibility isearned and how users discover
(03:01):
local services.
This white paper investigates afundamental question for the
future of local SEO.
Does the physical location ofthe searcher impact Google AI
overview's visibility today?
And if so, how?
So as you can see here,everybody's getting on the train
(03:25):
of looking at how people aregoing to change how they
basically search forinformation.
You know, if we look at, forexample, ChatGPT, I've talked to
several people and I even heardone comment where one gentleman
said that his wife considersChatGPT her best friend because
(03:47):
basically people arecommunicating with it.
And if you've not done it yet,you can physically install the
ChatGPT app and talk to ChatGPTas you're driving down the road,
just as if you were talking tothe passenger of a vehicle.
Now, what this means is that theway people are going to start
searching is going to be in partdue to the search engine that
(04:12):
they use, the chat engine, orthe large language model.
And it's also going to bepredicated on that conversation
that they have, especially whenthey go through asking questions
to asking how they solve aproblem and then looking for
resources like your business tosolve those problems.
(04:33):
It's going to dramaticallychange what you've been doing.
looking at.
And again, if you're notthinking credibility and you're
thinking piecemeal systems withdifferent people doing different
things and not a collectiveargument, then you're going to
want to switch gears fairly fastin terms of this.
(04:55):
So let me start digging throughmy notes here.
First of all, my main header isIntroduction to Google AI
Overviews.
And I'm going to call it GAO, Idon't know how you pronounce it,
is a new feature in GoogleSearch that provides
AI-generated summaries for localbusiness queries, often
(05:17):
appearing above traditionalsearch results.
So what you're seeing is thatthese overviews are getting
premier placement when someonesearches for something on
Google.
And this is where we're startingto see the transition, which I
believe, again, the way we'relooking for things today is
going to be archaic in arelatively short time.
(05:40):
And also the metrics at which welook at things will also be
heavily impacted by thosechanges.
So this is premium position whensomeone's searching for
something.
Now, these summaries aggregateinformation from various
sources, changing how businessesgain visibility online.
(06:01):
Okay, so think about thatstatement for a second.
The summaries aggregateinformation from various
sources, changing how businessesgain visibility online.
So, when you think about this,you need to start thinking about
your NAP score, right?
If your marketing person's nottalking to you about your NAP
score, if they're not talking toyou about your overall
(06:24):
credibility, your websitehealth, how your social's tying
into it, if they're not buildinga collective argument, then this
piecemeal system that yourbusiness is sitting upon right
now is going to fall apart.
Now, what that means is...
You know, I keep going back tothe Google Ads guy, okay?
(06:44):
If you've got a Google Ads guyand he's building some landing
page in Never Never Land andsending your Google Ads traffic
to that page, that page is notgoing to have a very high score
and it could actually createsome conflicting information.
And so you want to haveeverything harmonize and
(07:05):
everything needs to harmonize.
And in order to do that, Bigpicture thought has to come into
the equation.
And it's critical to think likethat.
So here was the researchobjective.
The study aimed to determinewhether a searcher's physical
location affects the appearanceand ranking of businesses in the
(07:28):
GAIO results.
So their methodology overview.
Here's what they did.
They analyzed 4,423 businesses.
across 20 countries, focusing on430 U.S.-based businesses for
detailed geographic analysis.
(07:49):
They conducted 60,000 searchesusing a 7x7 geogrid, which are
49 points.
So just think a grid that's got49 total points, seven across
and seven down, within afour-mile radius around each
business.
So Let me break that down alittle bit.
(08:10):
When you research a localoptimization plan for Google
Business, Local Falcon and a lotof these other tools, what
they'll do is let you look athow well your business is
performing within a 4, 5, 6,sometimes up to 9, 10 mile
radius.
(08:31):
And what it will do is it willtell you how you're doing well,
say, in the northeast corner orthe southeast corner, not just
if you're sitting at your officeGoogling something related to
your business, because if you'resitting in your office and you
drive a mile down the road andconduct the same search, you
wouldn't appear necessarily inthe same result area.
(08:54):
Like, for example, if you'reshowing yourself and you go,
well, I'm number one on GoogleBusiness this sitting in your
office and you drive two milesdown the road, you may be in the
third, fifth, or even 20thposition and it could drop off
relatively quick.
And so what these tools do isthey specialize in building
these geo-grids and kind ofgiving you a snapshot as to how
(09:19):
strong your business is withinthose particular radiuses.
And in this case, it was afour-mile radius around each
business.
Now, they generated seven typesof queries per business,
reflecting various user intents,such as informational,
transactional, etc.
(09:40):
So, let's break that down alittle bit.
So, when people are looking forproducts and services, they
typically look in differentpoints.
Now, you may hear this calledthe process.
the funnel, you may recall salesfunnel, and some people refer to
it as an ecosystem.
But basically, it's people go todifferent points within the
(10:03):
buying cycle, mainly looking foreither information or to
actually make a purchase.
Now, most people obviously wantto be at the point of
acquisition, which is lower inthe funnel and closer to that
point of purchase.
But Sometimes injecting yourselfinto the informational area,
which is traditionallyconsidered higher funnel
(10:26):
information style questions,they typically would not cost as
much because they're not asvalued as much.
And then if you built yourcontent correctly, you could
help filter people down from ahigher funnel perspective.
informational intent to atransactional point, and then
you can compare that with payingfor lower funnel, usually higher
(10:50):
cost clicks or conversions iswhat we would typically call it.
And then what you do is you kindof compare the two and then see
if you can you know, save moneyand decrease your RMI, Return On
Marketing Investment, or ROI, ifyou do a traditional return on
(11:10):
investment style model.
And so what this does is this isalready telling us something.
So if you could imagine Youknow, a lot of times when you do
traditional search, what you dois you would sometimes start off
by looking for somethinggeneral, shoes.
And then as you do more, youstart looking for a specific
(11:31):
type of shoe.
And then once you do that, thenyou look for a shoe that you can
purchase.
And so you see you go frominformation to transaction.
Now, when people are using theselarge language models like
ChatGPT, or AI, you know,whatever you want to call it,
what they're doing is they'rekind of mix-mashing this whole
(11:54):
concept that was traditionallydifferent queries all together
in different spaces.
But now what you're going to seeis that people are now asking
these large language modelquestions and then asking their
input as far as transactions.
And so what you're going tostart seeing more and more are a
(12:15):
muddiness between theinformation and the transaction.
And what that means is it'simportant to know how to inject
yourself and create content thatcan bring you into different
places within the informationand transactional spaces.
And so that's a lot, lotdifferent than what we
(12:40):
traditionally look at in waysfrom a marketing standpoint.
So moving on, the queries wereexecuted on both desktop and
mobile platforms to capturedevice-level differences.
And that's another key point,too.
You do want to make sure thatthey're just covering all their
bases, looking at differentdevices.
(13:01):
All right, so here were thefindings in the article.
Searcher location impact.
proximity has a minimal effecton whether a business appears in
the GAIO results.
While closer businesses areslightly more likely to appear,
proximity doesn't significantlyinfluence ranking order once
(13:25):
included.
Now, query intent matters.
So we'll talk about this in asecond.
GAO results are more prevalentfor informational queries than
for transactional ornavigational ones.
So query intent matters.
(13:45):
GAO results are more prevalentfor informational queries than
for transactional ornavigational ones.
So process that.
To get that space, think aboutthe kind of content that needs
to start being processed.
And so you can't just say, I'mgoing to create, you need to
understand what questions arebeing asked and actually
(14:07):
research those questions thatare being asked in the
informational process in orderto highly optimize your content
to address questions that areactually being asked.
And that means research.
That don't mean you just thinkwhat people are asking and then
go, you know, sputter up anarticle on an AI engine and then
(14:28):
post it and then think job welldone.
That's not how it's moving,going to be moving forward.
You gotta be very deliberate anddiligent.
Remember, busy work is not, it'snot necessarily gonna get you
over the goal.
It won't get you over the goalanymore.
It'll make your marketing peoplelook as though they're doing
(14:48):
more work, But in reality, it'snot going to get what you need
to get unless you get thatresearch done first.
And so content quality overproximity.
Okay, so content quality overproximity.
So what they're asking is thecontent, the quality of the
content is over the location.
(15:11):
So think about that with GoogleBusiness.
GAIO emphasizes authoritative,structured, and intent-aligned
content over mere geographiccloseness.
So think about that one for alittle bit.
You've seen those landing pagesthat are built with all those
geo areas listed at the bottomof the page, the counties and
(15:34):
the zip codes and the cities,and those things that SEO people
and marketing people won't putout there to try to leverage
your business for locationalpurposes.
Now we're seeing a little bit ofa flip of the script.
And so if you're seeing allthose locations at the bottom of
(15:56):
your webpage or you're seeingall these things being built,
you need to go back to yourperson and say, okay, what does
this look like in regards toGAIO?
What are you doing here?
And what is your intent overallthat would align not just with
my local SEO, but my overall SEOplan and my overall marketing
(16:19):
plan?
How does that impact everything?
And so as you can see, they'rewaving a flag here.
And they're kind of saying,guys, you might want to start
thinking about this.
So what are the implications forlocal SEO?
Now, local SEO obviously is aloaded term because people, it's
(16:45):
crazy, but you'll see somemarketing people, they
intentionally mix mash products.
what they determine as localSEO.
Some of them will say it's justyour Google business profile,
and then others will say it'strying to get your website
properly ranked.
So you need to get a cleardefinition of local SEO.
(17:05):
But here's what they'resuggesting, a shift in
optimization strategies.
So traditional SEO tactics,focusing on proximity, need to
adapt, prioritizing high-qualitycontent that aligns with user
intent.
Okay, that's a mouthful, butlet's process that a little bit.
(17:29):
So traditional SEO tactics,focusing on proximity, meaning
they're really hyper-focusing onarea, that needs to be adapted.
And they need to startprioritizing high-quality
content, not just...
writing a bunch of blather basedon a keyword or writing based
(17:49):
upon a conversation they'rehaving with you, but based upon
research data that they can showyou is high quality content that
aligns with the user intent.
What is the user intending to dowith their search?
What are they looking for?
What are the questions thatthey're asking?
And then how do you build thatcontent in a way that's
meaningful to where when theselarge language models or AI
(18:14):
models start picking up and theywant to find information, how
are they going to pull up yourinformation versus someone
else's?
And these are serious questionsthat you really need to really
have a serious talk with yourmarketing people to make sure
that they're in alignment andthey're not just riding this
(18:35):
dead horse as far as they canride it and then try to react in
a different way because Becauseif you think about it, you need
to start building your argumenttoday.
You don't want to try to reactand then try to, because that's
going to take time.
So let's talk about theimportance of structured data,
(18:56):
which is the next bullet point.
Implementing structured data andproviding clear authoritative
information can enhancevisibility on GAIO.
And I'm sure they probably havea way to pronounce that, as I
mentioned, but I'm not going toembarrass myself again by trying
to make a pronunciation of it.
(19:18):
So what this means is whenyou're creating structured data,
there's something in webdevelopment called schema.
You want to ask your web guyabout schema.
and ask them what they are doingwith schema.
Do they plan on doing anythingwith schema?
And do you need a plan toincorporate it if you're not
(19:38):
currently paying them for that?
And then make sure you have aclear plan of what that schema
looks like.
And then their last point ismonitoring GAIO appearances.
And so basically businessesshould track their appearance in
GAIO to understand and approvetheir visibility in this new
(19:59):
search feature.
So from there, they make somerecommendations.
Let's talk about therecommendations for businesses.
Enhance content quality.
So focus on creating informativecontent that address common
customer questions and needs.
(20:20):
Okay, so you see here, focus oncreating informational content
that addresses common commoncustomer questions and needs.
You don't want to throw a dartat a dartboard for these
questions.
You don't want to, and I can'temphasize this enough because
I've seen too many companiesover the last, especially, well,
(20:41):
it's been pretty parasitic in myworld, but in the last two to
three years, these so-calledagencies are popping up and
they're just creating companiesjust junk content and posting it
just so that they can show youthat they're doing something and
(21:02):
it doesn't have the researchbehind it.
Now, this is important, okay,because what has to happen is
you've got to be able to givepeople the time, which is money,
to do the research to createquality content.
This isn't who writes the...
the biggest book, the quickest.
(21:23):
It's about who writes meaningfulcontent that is well-intended,
and it also considers EEATstrategies, which is basically
experienced, authoritative,trustworthy content.
And I did a podcast on EEAT, andyou definitely want to go back
(21:44):
and check that out, especiallyif you're just dumping a lot of
AI-generated content on yourwebsite and thinking job well
done.
It's not.
And so it's time we get seriousabout this.
Utilize structured data.
Okay, we talked about that.
Implement schema markup to helpGoogle understand and feature
(22:08):
your content in GAO.
Okay, so what that means isschema is a way to mark places
and pages on your website thatkind of tells these models what
kind of content is on thatparticular page.
And by incorporating a schemastrategy, what you're doing is
(22:31):
you're making that easier forcomputers and large language
models to be able to go throughand see the content, understand
what the content is, and thenproperly catalog that
information for users Toreference.
Okay, so if we look at what'sgoing on here, it really shows
(23:01):
when a company like Local Falcondoes this.
And by the way, this is not aLone Star project.
company out there doing this.
There are some popular toolsthat are used in the world of
search engine optimization, suchas Ahrefs.
And Ahrefs, their portal, now itshows, basically it gives you an
(23:28):
indicator of how well yourbusiness is being citated or
possibly citated when People areasking questions about the
services and products you offerin some of these artificial
intelligence models.
(23:49):
And so what you're seeing isjust this shift, right?
All right.
So the next thing is it'simpacting some things in some
very curious ways.
I saw an article.
Gosh, it was great.
couple weeks ago, I guess, andit was talking about is Google
(24:11):
killing the Internet?
It was some, you know, real, youknow, kind of pitchy title.
And so in that title, what itwas indicating was one of the
examples was Forbes magazine.
And what they were seeing wasthat with Forbes magazine, you
were seeing a decrease intraffic to their website.
(24:33):
Now, the reason that you wereseeing it, or the argument from
the article from what Iremember, was that because large
language models are pulling upthe cliff notes or the synopsis
or the reference material from,say, Forbes or one of these
other websites, what it's doingis it's putting the conclusion
(24:54):
or everything that they needinto the chat, and so therefore
people no longer need to visitthe website in order to get the
information.
So Basically, they cut out themiddleman, right?
They're just going– asking theseartificial intelligence models
questions and is pulling themeat and potatoes from the
(25:18):
websites, publishing it directlyin the chat.
And so therefore, there's reallyno reason to go to that website
any longer.
And so the question– was, well,what are we going to do and how
do we react to that?
And what does that mean?
So then questions become, arewebsites even going to be
relevant in the future?
(25:38):
Or how will that look in thefuture?
And we're in a strange newworld.
We really don't know, except forthe fact that I don't see the
end of websites, just like Idon't see the end of paid
advertising.
I mean, when You know, the bigtitan of the world today, which
is Google, you know, it'sreported that their income is
(26:00):
over 70% from paid ads.
You know, they're not just goingto hand that over.
You know, they're going to havea model that's going to have to
be pursued.
And there's going to be a needto constantly feed these AI
machines.
Now, what happens when theyreach a critical mass of
understanding?
(26:21):
We don't really know.
I mean, when you hear Googleusing blasphemous language like,
you know, they're going tocreate an artificial god, it
does make one wonder, you know,exactly where it's going to go
long term.
But, you know, for right now, wecan definitely see that the
content is needed in order tofeed the machine.
(26:43):
And remember, the machine islocked up in a box.
And as the world progresses,then likely the content and the
needs are going to progress too.
The other thing is, you know, asI'm looking at this AI thing,
and I kind of want to just, I'vereally been doing some heavy,
(27:04):
like, communicating with thissystem.
And the idea is that the waythat the language works on the
system, it kind of gives you theimpression that it's sentient,
right?
That it gets it.
And because you talk to it, itgives you feedback and you kind
of have this thing going on.
(27:27):
But then there was this ideathat as I'm chatting with it and
as I'm talking with it, I foundout that it's really bad.
At least the ones I've beenusing are really guilty of kind
of like giving you aconfirmation bias.
Like they're almost confirmingthat whatever you plug into it
at some point, you're right.
(27:48):
And I made different argumentswith it, just kind of seeing
what it does.
And it was kind of like havingthat friend that's an enabler.
At some point, it just startsagreeing with you and tells you
how brilliant you are and thenjust gives you this vacuum
feedback, making you think thatyou're right about everything.
(28:10):
The other thing is that...
The models also tend to give youinaccurate information.
From what I'm seeing, it seemsto be pulling from outdated
information.
It seems to be pulling frominadequate information and
inconsistent information.
And depending upon how you askthe questions and where it gets
(28:30):
the answers, it can dramaticallychange how those models give you
feedback and the accuracy ofthat feedback.
You know, there was a Gosh, Ican't remember the name of it.
But there was also some articlesgoing around recently talking
about it's creating like this,almost like this psychological
(28:53):
problem with AI because when itgives you a confirmation bias
and you start to live in thatvacuum and you get in that
feedback loop, it's actuallycausing people to have some some
weird psychological issues.
I can't think of the term of it,but it's somewhat kind of
staggering.
I mean, you're talking aboutpeople who need serious mental
help after a short period oftime, after getting in that
(29:17):
feedback loop.
You know, some people are Acouple of the stories that I
remember, and this is me givingit to you anecdotally, but one
thinking that AI was tellingthem that they're basically a
messiah and they could lay handson people and heal them, just
all kinds of crazy things.
And so we also don't know whatit's going to do to us
(29:40):
psychologically as we do moreand more of this kind of
interaction with a non-sentiententity gathering information and
kind of presenting it.
And if the confirmation biasisn't going to be somehow
managed, I think that's going tobe a real problem.
(30:02):
The other problem that Iperceive happening with AI is
they're biased.
I mean, incredibly biased.
What I tried to do was I wouldask pretty tricky questions with
it.
And I would ask it somethingthat I knew was sensitive.
(30:23):
And what I found was that if I'masking sensitive questions about
pharmaceutical companies, it'shard to break the barrier and
get unbiased or an opposing viewof the narrative that it's
programmed to give you.
And so...
What that means is that thepeople who are writing these
(30:46):
programs, whatever theirphilosophical predisposition is,
they seem to also be controllingthe philosophical predisposition
of what it's going to give youback.
And if you can't break thatbarrier, then ultimately you're
going to have a harder timegetting opposing views to
(31:06):
certain things, and it'll beeasier for you to— more accept a
certain narrative versus beingable to make your own decisions.
And so I don't know if peopleare going to start asking more
questions about this.
And, you know, it could have areverse intent that if people
start seeing that it shows moreand more of a bias toward a
(31:29):
certain view or towards certaincompanies, then it could have an
opposite effect on how muchpeople trust these models.
Now, I don't know if that's trueor not.
I don't know how it's going togo.
You know, all we can do from amarketing perspective is just
kind of ride the train, do thebest we can, and react.
(31:52):
But it's very interesting to seehow these things are coming
together.
But the sentiency of AI, meaningconsciousness, is not there.
As a matter of fact, there'ssome really interesting side
notes on this.
the philosophy of sentiency.
(32:14):
Like they say it'll becomeconscious at a certain point.
You hear these terms.
Well, there's some real problemswith these terms.
The first one is we can't evenreally define consciousness
ourselves.
And, you know, we can make asubjective view of what
consciousness is based upon howit's relating to our five
(32:36):
senses, but is that trueconsciousness?
You know, likely not.
Likely it's just mimickingconsciousness based upon how the
programmer is putting it in.
And we're making a philosophicalassumption the whole way about,
you know, can you evolve tosentiency or whatever.
(32:56):
And then that gets intotheological style questions and
those kind of things.
But those are the kind of thingsI've been looking at lately,
which are kind of interesting inmy opinion.
So, when we get back to themarketing leg of it, and we see
that the way it's going, and wedon't know everything.
We really don't.
(33:17):
We don't know how this is goingto be received.
I mean, one of the things thatI've seen from the younger
generation especially is they'vebecome more aware of when an
image is generated by artificialintelligence, they're They're
(33:38):
able to detect whether or notthat that is AI-generated just
by looking at it.
And so we're seeing some signsthat– some holes in the game,
but it could just be it's a– youknow, it's really new on the
market and everything, and I'msure it's going to adapt and get
(33:59):
better.
Yeah.
But I know when I try to use AIto generate images or something
like that, typically it'simpressive from one standpoint.
But from a commercialapplication standpoint, it seems
to be less viable unless I getit like really specific
(34:19):
directions where I'm putting insketches or doing some things
that already kind of give itkind of a real big clue rather
than just– feeding it a bunch ofprompts and getting what I want.
Sometimes it does work in waysand other times it doesn't.
So to kind of wrap up here, getback to the marketing leg of
(34:43):
things.
There are a lot of businessesthat are not prepared for what's
going to happen.
They've built their modelseither hyper-focusing on one
thing and not reallyunderstanding the other 99
pieces of a puzzle that go intoa business, or their model is
(35:09):
designed specifically to isolatecertain things in order to
generate more revenue for theircompany.
Like, for example, not beingable to properly nest content
onto a website kind of forcestheir customers to use their
(35:29):
inadequate web developmentpractices.
But it's done intentionally forthe good of that particular
company because they're tryingto generate more revenue.
They're not really thinkingoutside of that.
For the freelancer,freelancers...
are all over the map.
Some of them really try to do agood job, and others, they just
(35:52):
slap together a template, uploadit to some cheap hosting.
and throw together an about pageand a service page and a
whatever page and then send youoff selling as they collect
their check and look for thenext guy.
And then other ones have thosereal conversations, you know,
those harder conversations whereyou talk about what really goes
(36:12):
into internet marketing and allthe factors that go into it and
the cost associated with it, thecost of learning, adapting,
growing, and also the fact thatit never, ever stops.
I mean, we have clients thathave been They've been with us
forever.
And the marketing never changes.
I mean, I can think of onecompany.
(36:35):
We started with them years ago,and there wasn't that much
competition.
It's a charter company.
And they didn't have that muchcompetition.
They were the best game in town.
You fast-focus or fast-forward–you know, five years, six years.
And we're at where we're attoday.
And now we're oversaturated withclone-style companies offering
(36:59):
the same style service.
But they don't.
But they present it on theinternet as though they do.
And so we had to carve out aniche in order to explain why
The differences between thecompanies, the experience, the
high level of reviews and thenumber of reviews, and carving
out a brand new niche for thisone particular company.
(37:23):
And we do the same thing acrossthe board for everyone.
We work with franchises.
Each franchise location isdifferent.
It varies based on thecompetitive nature of the
market, how people look forthings.
Just a lot of different factorsgo into it.
If you got that person that youlove that's doing one thing that
(37:46):
you really like, like paidGoogle ads, but they're not part
of the big picture, then you'vegot some serious decisions to
make.
And Local Falcon is raising theflag.
They're saying, hey, guys, lookover here.
This is serious stuff.
(38:06):
You want to start thinking aboutthis and you want to start
reshaping how you're generatingcontent to feed those large
language, non-sentient modelswith information that it
considers trustworthy enough toput its reputation to when
someone searches for aparticular thing.
(38:30):
And that's also known as intent.
And that's where you got to bewith this thing.
Okay, guys, thank you so muchfor jumping into Over the Bull.
Thank you for attending thisweek.
I really do appreciate it.
Like every, you know, I'mlooking at the numbers.
We're growing every episode.
(38:50):
And I just find that reallyencouraging because that tells
me that there are so many of youout there that I meet with like
people I meet with every weekwho own businesses.
They don't know who to trust.
They don't know if theirperson's doing the right job.
They don't know if they'removing in the right direction.
They don't know if it could bebetter.
(39:10):
And on the other side of thegamut, they're also still
answering those darn coldemails.
Oh, by the way, let me go aheadand pull something up here real
quick.
I want to give you a littlebonus.
I was going to actually savethis for another podcast.
But I want to do this justbecause I think it would be
(39:34):
interesting for you to know.
Let's see here.
So you're getting me a littlebit unplugged here because I'm
just going to kind of wing this.
So this was kind of fun for me.
So I got an email, and I'm sureyou get these.
(39:56):
This is an email that wassolicited from, it was a cold
email.
And I've been getting a lot ofthese lately.
And they're just like, it's anemail and they're just talking
about, you know, trying to buildme up.
And, you know, they're usingthat whole psychological
strategy of telling you howgreat you are and how awesome
your website looks.
(40:16):
And by the way, for any of youwho think your branding is great
because everybody tells you it'sgreat, No one ever tells you
your branding is horrible.
A lot of times it's just acompliment or they're just
saying something.
So you can have really badbranding but still get
compliments on it or otherexperiences too.
But anyway, this particularperson wrote me this email and
(40:39):
they talked about– Am Iinterested?
Here it is.
Am I interested in acquiringyour company because your
tailored strategic solutionsposition you as a leader in
advanced digital marketing andweb development?
And then it asked me, do I have10 minutes for a quick chat next
week?
So if we look at it, we start tosee this whole thing here,
(41:02):
right?
So generic praise without anyreally details or just trying
to, you know, You know, blather,blather, you know, those kind of
things.
And then if we move on down alittle bit, then they have a
very generic business namethey're using.
And, you know, it soundslegitimate.
(41:23):
Like they'll use the word likeholdings or unite or, you know,
words like that.
And then– You look at theemails, they're suspicious, you
know, 10 minutes to chat.
So, you know, they're trying toopt in and tell me I'm awesome.
They're part of a group andthey're just buying up
companies, which I wouldn't sellIntegris anyway.
(41:45):
So it's silly to me.
So obviously the big questionis, is why in the world do these
people still do this?
Right?
Like you sit here and you look.
Here's the kind of thing, okay?
So when you look at it, okay,when you look at these emails
(42:06):
you get, when you look at theseform submissions you get that
are just junk and crap, and yougo, why are they doing this?
Or worse, if you're answeringthose things, if you've been
listening to this podcast forany time, just go, whap, just
hit yourself real hard here realquick because you should not be
answering those emails.
(42:27):
So here's the thing.
Mass cold emails are cheap tosend.
OK, they want to to book andthey want to move the needle,
but also they're looking attheir ROI model if they're
legitimate.
But but even if that whatthey're trying to do is they're
(42:49):
they're.
phishing to find out if they canget you on the hook.
Now, there's different ways theydo this.
One way is they send you a textmessage.
Hey, I saw your number in myphone.
Who is this?
Can I reconnect with you?
Those stupid things like that,those are long-term scams.
(43:10):
What they're trying to do isdevelop– they're playing the
long game.
They're wanting to try to builda false– communication,
relationship, whatever may haveyou, and then they're looking to
con you in the long game.
So ignore those, block those.
Those are no good.
If you don't know them, justblock them.
But when it comes to theseemails and these things, the
thing is that if they can sendoff 100,000 spammy emails using
(43:34):
bots, and they get threeresponses, because of the ease
at which it's done, They canactually have a positive ROI by
sending out those mass emailssaying, hey, just a friendly
thing.
I looked at your website and Isaw this problem.
(43:55):
You got 10 minutes.
I'll talk to you about it or,you know, any of those things.
It's junk.
It's absolute junk.
And if you're sitting there as abusiness owner.
Looking at someone sending you acold email telling you they've
got the answers to yourmarketing problems when they
can't even market themselvescorrectly, that should tell you
(44:16):
something.
And so you don't want to throwaway your current situation by
chasing rainbows or these thingsthat people are giving you.
because it's all just fake andit's all phishing and it's all
scammy.
And believe it or not, peopleeven still do it by hand.
(44:36):
Even submitting posts, you know,where like you got a blog and
you get all those junk comments,you know, even those, you know,
there was a strategy, gosh, 10,15 years ago.
And I think, Part of it ispeople still think these things
work.
What they do is they try to postthings with URLs associated with
it, hoping that your site willeither automatically approve it
(44:59):
or somehow it'll make its waythrough.
And then either they somehow geta benefit for a link or they get
traction or some marketing.
And then what they think is,okay, I broadcast this junk
across, you know, uh, 50,000sites, but it sneaks through
five, but because it's easy, youknow, um, then it still
(45:19):
accomplished the goals.
And so when you see these kindof strategies for you as a
business and credibility, wecircle back around to the whole
credibility thing.
Then the idea is, do you reallywant to be associated with that
kind of practice?
Do you want your business to beassociated with a company that
operates in such a fashion?
Do you want them representingthe name of your business and
(45:42):
everything that you've built up?
doing things like that?
Even if they said they wouldn'tdo it, do you trust this company
because they did it to you inorder to get you to call them?
You see, reputation andcredibility is huge.
It's getting to be bigger andbigger and bigger and bigger.
And the more credible, realcredible, not fake credible you
(46:06):
can be, and the more contentthat is authoritative and
original, and really addressesreal questions based on real
research is going to help youpropel to the top.
And if you do that, you're goingto be ahead of the curve when
your competition is still usingthese Google Ads guys who are
(46:28):
going around building thesesplash pages, sending traffic to
those splash pages, and creatingdisharmony in your overall
credibility.
All right.
So there you go.
I thought I'd throw that outthere.
I know it was a little clumsythere at the very end, but I
thought I'd throw it because Iget a lot of questions about why
these people do this, why theyscam and why they do it.
(46:49):
And you want to look up likephishing and spam and these
different kind of things anddifferent kind of scam
techniques.
And You definitely do not wantto play ball with these guys.
So until next time we meet, thisis Over the Bull.
I really do hope the best foryou and your business.
(47:10):
And thank you so much for tuningin.
Until next time.
SPEAKER_00 (47:15):
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 (00:09):
The wheels are coming off the bus.
Are you still hanging on to someold techniques that are dying a
quick death and no longer a slowdeath?
Are you hanging on to thoseone-page or Google Ads optimized
landing pages that Welcome backto Over the Bull.
(00:47):
So, This episode is predicatedbased on an article that came
across my desk and is presentedby a company called Local
Falcon.
Local Falcon is a pretty neattool.
We use it in part with a bunchof other tools, but it's a tool
(01:10):
that you may want to check out.
They have their hand on thepulse specifically on...
Google Business, its position,things like that, you know, one
of the critical areas ofbusiness.
And oftentimes, it's one ofthose places where Google Ads
providers, when they build thoselittle dinky websites that have
(01:33):
no meaning, that are optimizedfor conversions, they often will
point your Google Business tothose landing pages to help
stack the deck to make theirprogram look more effective than
it is.
Now, with this being said, let'sjump in here and talk about the
article a little bit.
So I'm going to start by justreading the overview and then
(01:54):
I'm going to go over to my notesand you're going to see me
clicking back and forth.
Sorry, it's going to happen thatway, but there's kind of a lot
to cover in the article and Iwant to make sure that you have
everything that you may need tohelp you understand things a
little bit better, maybe askbetter questions to your
marketing and web people andhelp you understand help you
(02:18):
basically prevent from goingdark as search engines are
adjusting to this new world ofartificial intelligence.
All right, so let's dive rightinto the overview.
This is, again, by Local Falcon.
Google AI overviews, and inbrackets they put AIO slash
(02:39):
GAIO, just Google, A-I, istransforming the way search
results are delivered,particularly for local business
queries, by summarizinginformation directly in search
results.
GAIO changes how visibility isearned and how users discover
(03:01):
local services.
This white paper investigates afundamental question for the
future of local SEO.
Does the physical location ofthe searcher impact Google AI
overview's visibility today?
And if so, how?
So as you can see here,everybody's getting on the train
(03:25):
of looking at how people aregoing to change how they
basically search forinformation.
You know, if we look at, forexample, ChatGPT, I've talked to
several people and I even heardone comment where one gentleman
said that his wife considersChatGPT her best friend because
(03:47):
basically people arecommunicating with it.
And if you've not done it yet,you can physically install the
ChatGPT app and talk to ChatGPTas you're driving down the road,
just as if you were talking tothe passenger of a vehicle.
Now, what this means is that theway people are going to start
searching is going to be in partdue to the search engine that
(04:12):
they use, the chat engine, orthe large language model.
And it's also going to bepredicated on that conversation
that they have, especially whenthey go through asking questions
to asking how they solve aproblem and then looking for
resources like your business tosolve those problems.
(04:33):
It's going to dramaticallychange what you've been doing.
looking at.
And again, if you're notthinking credibility and you're
thinking piecemeal systems withdifferent people doing different
things and not a collectiveargument, then you're going to
want to switch gears fairly fastin terms of this.
(04:55):
So let me start digging throughmy notes here.
First of all, my main header isIntroduction to Google AI
Overviews.
And I'm going to call it GAO, Idon't know how you pronounce it,
is a new feature in GoogleSearch that provides
AI-generated summaries for localbusiness queries, often
(05:17):
appearing above traditionalsearch results.
So what you're seeing is thatthese overviews are getting
premier placement when someonesearches for something on
Google.
And this is where we're startingto see the transition, which I
believe, again, the way we'relooking for things today is
going to be archaic in arelatively short time.
(05:40):
And also the metrics at which welook at things will also be
heavily impacted by thosechanges.
So this is premium position whensomeone's searching for
something.
Now, these summaries aggregateinformation from various
sources, changing how businessesgain visibility online.
(06:01):
Okay, so think about thatstatement for a second.
The summaries aggregateinformation from various
sources, changing how businessesgain visibility online.
So, when you think about this,you need to start thinking about
your NAP score, right?
If your marketing person's nottalking to you about your NAP
score, if they're not talking toyou about your overall
(06:24):
credibility, your websitehealth, how your social's tying
into it, if they're not buildinga collective argument, then this
piecemeal system that yourbusiness is sitting upon right
now is going to fall apart.
Now, what that means is...
You know, I keep going back tothe Google Ads guy, okay?
(06:44):
If you've got a Google Ads guyand he's building some landing
page in Never Never Land andsending your Google Ads traffic
to that page, that page is notgoing to have a very high score
and it could actually createsome conflicting information.
And so you want to haveeverything harmonize and
(07:05):
everything needs to harmonize.
And in order to do that, Bigpicture thought has to come into
the equation.
And it's critical to think likethat.
So here was the researchobjective.
The study aimed to determinewhether a searcher's physical
location affects the appearanceand ranking of businesses in the
(07:28):
GAIO results.
So their methodology overview.
Here's what they did.
They analyzed 4,423 businesses.
across 20 countries, focusing on430 U.S.-based businesses for
detailed geographic analysis.
(07:49):
They conducted 60,000 searchesusing a 7x7 geogrid, which are
49 points.
So just think a grid that's got49 total points, seven across
and seven down, within afour-mile radius around each
business.
So Let me break that down alittle bit.
(08:10):
When you research a localoptimization plan for Google
Business, Local Falcon and a lotof these other tools, what
they'll do is let you look athow well your business is
performing within a 4, 5, 6,sometimes up to 9, 10 mile
radius.
(08:31):
And what it will do is it willtell you how you're doing well,
say, in the northeast corner orthe southeast corner, not just
if you're sitting at your officeGoogling something related to
your business, because if you'resitting in your office and you
drive a mile down the road andconduct the same search, you
wouldn't appear necessarily inthe same result area.
(08:54):
Like, for example, if you'reshowing yourself and you go,
well, I'm number one on GoogleBusiness this sitting in your
office and you drive two milesdown the road, you may be in the
third, fifth, or even 20thposition and it could drop off
relatively quick.
And so what these tools do isthey specialize in building
these geo-grids and kind ofgiving you a snapshot as to how
(09:19):
strong your business is withinthose particular radiuses.
And in this case, it was afour-mile radius around each
business.
Now, they generated seven typesof queries per business,
reflecting various user intents,such as informational,
transactional, etc.
(09:40):
So, let's break that down alittle bit.
So, when people are looking forproducts and services, they
typically look in differentpoints.
Now, you may hear this calledthe process.
the funnel, you may recall salesfunnel, and some people refer to
it as an ecosystem.
But basically, it's people go todifferent points within the
(10:03):
buying cycle, mainly looking foreither information or to
actually make a purchase.
Now, most people obviously wantto be at the point of
acquisition, which is lower inthe funnel and closer to that
point of purchase.
But Sometimes injecting yourselfinto the informational area,
which is traditionallyconsidered higher funnel
(10:26):
information style questions,they typically would not cost as
much because they're not asvalued as much.
And then if you built yourcontent correctly, you could
help filter people down from ahigher funnel perspective.
informational intent to atransactional point, and then
you can compare that with payingfor lower funnel, usually higher
(10:50):
cost clicks or conversions iswhat we would typically call it.
And then what you do is you kindof compare the two and then see
if you can you know, save moneyand decrease your RMI, Return On
Marketing Investment, or ROI, ifyou do a traditional return on
(11:10):
investment style model.
And so what this does is this isalready telling us something.
So if you could imagine Youknow, a lot of times when you do
traditional search, what you dois you would sometimes start off
by looking for somethinggeneral, shoes.
And then as you do more, youstart looking for a specific
(11:31):
type of shoe.
And then once you do that, thenyou look for a shoe that you can
purchase.
And so you see you go frominformation to transaction.
Now, when people are using theselarge language models like
ChatGPT, or AI, you know,whatever you want to call it,
what they're doing is they'rekind of mix-mashing this whole
(11:54):
concept that was traditionallydifferent queries all together
in different spaces.
But now what you're going to seeis that people are now asking
these large language modelquestions and then asking their
input as far as transactions.
And so what you're going tostart seeing more and more are a
(12:15):
muddiness between theinformation and the transaction.
And what that means is it'simportant to know how to inject
yourself and create content thatcan bring you into different
places within the informationand transactional spaces.
And so that's a lot, lotdifferent than what we
(12:40):
traditionally look at in waysfrom a marketing standpoint.
So moving on, the queries wereexecuted on both desktop and
mobile platforms to capturedevice-level differences.
And that's another key point,too.
You do want to make sure thatthey're just covering all their
bases, looking at differentdevices.
(13:01):
All right, so here were thefindings in the article.
Searcher location impact.
proximity has a minimal effecton whether a business appears in
the GAIO results.
While closer businesses areslightly more likely to appear,
proximity doesn't significantlyinfluence ranking order once
(13:25):
included.
Now, query intent matters.
So we'll talk about this in asecond.
GAO results are more prevalentfor informational queries than
for transactional ornavigational ones.
So query intent matters.
(13:45):
GAO results are more prevalentfor informational queries than
for transactional ornavigational ones.
So process that.
To get that space, think aboutthe kind of content that needs
to start being processed.
And so you can't just say, I'mgoing to create, you need to
understand what questions arebeing asked and actually
(14:07):
research those questions thatare being asked in the
informational process in orderto highly optimize your content
to address questions that areactually being asked.
And that means research.
That don't mean you just thinkwhat people are asking and then
go, you know, sputter up anarticle on an AI engine and then
(14:28):
post it and then think job welldone.
That's not how it's moving,going to be moving forward.
You gotta be very deliberate anddiligent.
Remember, busy work is not, it'snot necessarily gonna get you
over the goal.
It won't get you over the goalanymore.
It'll make your marketing peoplelook as though they're doing
(14:48):
more work, But in reality, it'snot going to get what you need
to get unless you get thatresearch done first.
And so content quality overproximity.
Okay, so content quality overproximity.
So what they're asking is thecontent, the quality of the
content is over the location.
(15:11):
So think about that with GoogleBusiness.
GAIO emphasizes authoritative,structured, and intent-aligned
content over mere geographiccloseness.
So think about that one for alittle bit.
You've seen those landing pagesthat are built with all those
geo areas listed at the bottomof the page, the counties and
(15:34):
the zip codes and the cities,and those things that SEO people
and marketing people won't putout there to try to leverage
your business for locationalpurposes.
Now we're seeing a little bit ofa flip of the script.
And so if you're seeing allthose locations at the bottom of
(15:56):
your webpage or you're seeingall these things being built,
you need to go back to yourperson and say, okay, what does
this look like in regards toGAIO?
What are you doing here?
And what is your intent overallthat would align not just with
my local SEO, but my overall SEOplan and my overall marketing
(16:19):
plan?
How does that impact everything?
And so as you can see, they'rewaving a flag here.
And they're kind of saying,guys, you might want to start
thinking about this.
So what are the implications forlocal SEO?
Now, local SEO obviously is aloaded term because people, it's
(16:45):
crazy, but you'll see somemarketing people, they
intentionally mix mash products.
what they determine as localSEO.
Some of them will say it's justyour Google business profile,
and then others will say it'strying to get your website
properly ranked.
So you need to get a cleardefinition of local SEO.
(17:05):
But here's what they'resuggesting, a shift in
optimization strategies.
So traditional SEO tactics,focusing on proximity, need to
adapt, prioritizing high-qualitycontent that aligns with user
intent.
Okay, that's a mouthful, butlet's process that a little bit.
(17:29):
So traditional SEO tactics,focusing on proximity, meaning
they're really hyper-focusing onarea, that needs to be adapted.
And they need to startprioritizing high-quality
content, not just...
writing a bunch of blather basedon a keyword or writing based
(17:49):
upon a conversation they'rehaving with you, but based upon
research data that they can showyou is high quality content that
aligns with the user intent.
What is the user intending to dowith their search?
What are they looking for?
What are the questions thatthey're asking?
And then how do you build thatcontent in a way that's
meaningful to where when theselarge language models or AI
(18:14):
models start picking up and theywant to find information, how
are they going to pull up yourinformation versus someone
else's?
And these are serious questionsthat you really need to really
have a serious talk with yourmarketing people to make sure
that they're in alignment andthey're not just riding this
(18:35):
dead horse as far as they canride it and then try to react in
a different way because Becauseif you think about it, you need
to start building your argumenttoday.
You don't want to try to reactand then try to, because that's
going to take time.
So let's talk about theimportance of structured data,
(18:56):
which is the next bullet point.
Implementing structured data andproviding clear authoritative
information can enhancevisibility on GAIO.
And I'm sure they probably havea way to pronounce that, as I
mentioned, but I'm not going toembarrass myself again by trying
to make a pronunciation of it.
(19:18):
So what this means is whenyou're creating structured data,
there's something in webdevelopment called schema.
You want to ask your web guyabout schema.
and ask them what they are doingwith schema.
Do they plan on doing anythingwith schema?
And do you need a plan toincorporate it if you're not
(19:38):
currently paying them for that?
And then make sure you have aclear plan of what that schema
looks like.
And then their last point ismonitoring GAIO appearances.
And so basically businessesshould track their appearance in
GAIO to understand and approvetheir visibility in this new
(19:59):
search feature.
So from there, they make somerecommendations.
Let's talk about therecommendations for businesses.
Enhance content quality.
So focus on creating informativecontent that address common
customer questions and needs.
(20:20):
Okay, so you see here, focus oncreating informational content
that addresses common commoncustomer questions and needs.
You don't want to throw a dartat a dartboard for these
questions.
You don't want to, and I can'temphasize this enough because
I've seen too many companiesover the last, especially, well,
(20:41):
it's been pretty parasitic in myworld, but in the last two to
three years, these so-calledagencies are popping up and
they're just creating companiesjust junk content and posting it
just so that they can show youthat they're doing something and
(21:02):
it doesn't have the researchbehind it.
Now, this is important, okay,because what has to happen is
you've got to be able to givepeople the time, which is money,
to do the research to createquality content.
This isn't who writes the...
the biggest book, the quickest.
(21:23):
It's about who writes meaningfulcontent that is well-intended,
and it also considers EEATstrategies, which is basically
experienced, authoritative,trustworthy content.
And I did a podcast on EEAT, andyou definitely want to go back
(21:44):
and check that out, especiallyif you're just dumping a lot of
AI-generated content on yourwebsite and thinking job well
done.
It's not.
And so it's time we get seriousabout this.
Utilize structured data.
Okay, we talked about that.
Implement schema markup to helpGoogle understand and feature
(22:08):
your content in GAO.
Okay, so what that means isschema is a way to mark places
and pages on your website thatkind of tells these models what
kind of content is on thatparticular page.
And by incorporating a schemastrategy, what you're doing is
(22:31):
you're making that easier forcomputers and large language
models to be able to go throughand see the content, understand
what the content is, and thenproperly catalog that
information for users Toreference.
Okay, so if we look at what'sgoing on here, it really shows
(23:01):
when a company like Local Falcondoes this.
And by the way, this is not aLone Star project.
company out there doing this.
There are some popular toolsthat are used in the world of
search engine optimization, suchas Ahrefs.
And Ahrefs, their portal, now itshows, basically it gives you an
(23:28):
indicator of how well yourbusiness is being citated or
possibly citated when People areasking questions about the
services and products you offerin some of these artificial
intelligence models.
(23:49):
And so what you're seeing isjust this shift, right?
All right.
So the next thing is it'simpacting some things in some
very curious ways.
I saw an article.
Gosh, it was great.
couple weeks ago, I guess, andit was talking about is Google
(24:11):
killing the Internet?
It was some, you know, real, youknow, kind of pitchy title.
And so in that title, what itwas indicating was one of the
examples was Forbes magazine.
And what they were seeing wasthat with Forbes magazine, you
were seeing a decrease intraffic to their website.
(24:33):
Now, the reason that you wereseeing it, or the argument from
the article from what Iremember, was that because large
language models are pulling upthe cliff notes or the synopsis
or the reference material from,say, Forbes or one of these
other websites, what it's doingis it's putting the conclusion
(24:54):
or everything that they needinto the chat, and so therefore
people no longer need to visitthe website in order to get the
information.
So Basically, they cut out themiddleman, right?
They're just going– asking theseartificial intelligence models
questions and is pulling themeat and potatoes from the
(25:18):
websites, publishing it directlyin the chat.
And so therefore, there's reallyno reason to go to that website
any longer.
And so the question– was, well,what are we going to do and how
do we react to that?
And what does that mean?
So then questions become, arewebsites even going to be
relevant in the future?
(25:38):
Or how will that look in thefuture?
And we're in a strange newworld.
We really don't know, except forthe fact that I don't see the
end of websites, just like Idon't see the end of paid
advertising.
I mean, when You know, the bigtitan of the world today, which
is Google, you know, it'sreported that their income is
(26:00):
over 70% from paid ads.
You know, they're not just goingto hand that over.
You know, they're going to havea model that's going to have to
be pursued.
And there's going to be a needto constantly feed these AI
machines.
Now, what happens when theyreach a critical mass of
understanding?
(26:21):
We don't really know.
I mean, when you hear Googleusing blasphemous language like,
you know, they're going tocreate an artificial god, it
does make one wonder, you know,exactly where it's going to go
long term.
But, you know, for right now, wecan definitely see that the
content is needed in order tofeed the machine.
(26:43):
And remember, the machine islocked up in a box.
And as the world progresses,then likely the content and the
needs are going to progress too.
The other thing is, you know, asI'm looking at this AI thing,
and I kind of want to just, I'vereally been doing some heavy,
(27:04):
like, communicating with thissystem.
And the idea is that the waythat the language works on the
system, it kind of gives you theimpression that it's sentient,
right?
That it gets it.
And because you talk to it, itgives you feedback and you kind
of have this thing going on.
(27:27):
But then there was this ideathat as I'm chatting with it and
as I'm talking with it, I foundout that it's really bad.
At least the ones I've beenusing are really guilty of kind
of like giving you aconfirmation bias.
Like they're almost confirmingthat whatever you plug into it
at some point, you're right.
(27:48):
And I made different argumentswith it, just kind of seeing
what it does.
And it was kind of like havingthat friend that's an enabler.
At some point, it just startsagreeing with you and tells you
how brilliant you are and thenjust gives you this vacuum
feedback, making you think thatyou're right about everything.
(28:10):
The other thing is that...
The models also tend to give youinaccurate information.
From what I'm seeing, it seemsto be pulling from outdated
information.
It seems to be pulling frominadequate information and
inconsistent information.
And depending upon how you askthe questions and where it gets
(28:30):
the answers, it can dramaticallychange how those models give you
feedback and the accuracy ofthat feedback.
You know, there was a Gosh, Ican't remember the name of it.
But there was also some articlesgoing around recently talking
about it's creating like this,almost like this psychological
(28:53):
problem with AI because when itgives you a confirmation bias
and you start to live in thatvacuum and you get in that
feedback loop, it's actuallycausing people to have some some
weird psychological issues.
I can't think of the term of it,but it's somewhat kind of
staggering.
I mean, you're talking aboutpeople who need serious mental
help after a short period oftime, after getting in that
(29:17):
feedback loop.
You know, some people are Acouple of the stories that I
remember, and this is me givingit to you anecdotally, but one
thinking that AI was tellingthem that they're basically a
messiah and they could lay handson people and heal them, just
all kinds of crazy things.
And so we also don't know whatit's going to do to us
(29:40):
psychologically as we do moreand more of this kind of
interaction with a non-sentiententity gathering information and
kind of presenting it.
And if the confirmation biasisn't going to be somehow
managed, I think that's going tobe a real problem.
(30:02):
The other problem that Iperceive happening with AI is
they're biased.
I mean, incredibly biased.
What I tried to do was I wouldask pretty tricky questions with
it.
And I would ask it somethingthat I knew was sensitive.
(30:23):
And what I found was that if I'masking sensitive questions about
pharmaceutical companies, it'shard to break the barrier and
get unbiased or an opposing viewof the narrative that it's
programmed to give you.
And so...
What that means is that thepeople who are writing these
(30:46):
programs, whatever theirphilosophical predisposition is,
they seem to also be controllingthe philosophical predisposition
of what it's going to give youback.
And if you can't break thatbarrier, then ultimately you're
going to have a harder timegetting opposing views to
(31:06):
certain things, and it'll beeasier for you to— more accept a
certain narrative versus beingable to make your own decisions.
And so I don't know if peopleare going to start asking more
questions about this.
And, you know, it could have areverse intent that if people
start seeing that it shows moreand more of a bias toward a
(31:29):
certain view or towards certaincompanies, then it could have an
opposite effect on how muchpeople trust these models.
Now, I don't know if that's trueor not.
I don't know how it's going togo.
You know, all we can do from amarketing perspective is just
kind of ride the train, do thebest we can, and react.
(31:52):
But it's very interesting to seehow these things are coming
together.
But the sentiency of AI, meaningconsciousness, is not there.
As a matter of fact, there'ssome really interesting side
notes on this.
the philosophy of sentiency.
(32:14):
Like they say it'll becomeconscious at a certain point.
You hear these terms.
Well, there's some real problemswith these terms.
The first one is we can't evenreally define consciousness
ourselves.
And, you know, we can make asubjective view of what
consciousness is based upon howit's relating to our five
(32:36):
senses, but is that trueconsciousness?
You know, likely not.
Likely it's just mimickingconsciousness based upon how the
programmer is putting it in.
And we're making a philosophicalassumption the whole way about,
you know, can you evolve tosentiency or whatever.
(32:56):
And then that gets intotheological style questions and
those kind of things.
But those are the kind of thingsI've been looking at lately,
which are kind of interesting inmy opinion.
So, when we get back to themarketing leg of it, and we see
that the way it's going, and wedon't know everything.
We really don't.
(33:17):
We don't know how this is goingto be received.
I mean, one of the things thatI've seen from the younger
generation especially is they'vebecome more aware of when an
image is generated by artificialintelligence, they're They're
(33:38):
able to detect whether or notthat that is AI-generated just
by looking at it.
And so we're seeing some signsthat– some holes in the game,
but it could just be it's a– youknow, it's really new on the
market and everything, and I'msure it's going to adapt and get
(33:59):
better.
Yeah.
But I know when I try to use AIto generate images or something
like that, typically it'simpressive from one standpoint.
But from a commercialapplication standpoint, it seems
to be less viable unless I getit like really specific
(34:19):
directions where I'm putting insketches or doing some things
that already kind of give itkind of a real big clue rather
than just– feeding it a bunch ofprompts and getting what I want.
Sometimes it does work in waysand other times it doesn't.
So to kind of wrap up here, getback to the marketing leg of
(34:43):
things.
There are a lot of businessesthat are not prepared for what's
going to happen.
They've built their modelseither hyper-focusing on one
thing and not reallyunderstanding the other 99
pieces of a puzzle that go intoa business, or their model is
(35:09):
designed specifically to isolatecertain things in order to
generate more revenue for theircompany.
Like, for example, not beingable to properly nest content
onto a website kind of forcestheir customers to use their
(35:29):
inadequate web developmentpractices.
But it's done intentionally forthe good of that particular
company because they're tryingto generate more revenue.
They're not really thinkingoutside of that.
For the freelancer,freelancers...
are all over the map.
Some of them really try to do agood job, and others, they just
(35:52):
slap together a template, uploadit to some cheap hosting.
and throw together an about pageand a service page and a
whatever page and then send youoff selling as they collect
their check and look for thenext guy.
And then other ones have thosereal conversations, you know,
those harder conversations whereyou talk about what really goes
(36:12):
into internet marketing and allthe factors that go into it and
the cost associated with it, thecost of learning, adapting,
growing, and also the fact thatit never, ever stops.
I mean, we have clients thathave been They've been with us
forever.
And the marketing never changes.
I mean, I can think of onecompany.
(36:35):
We started with them years ago,and there wasn't that much
competition.
It's a charter company.
And they didn't have that muchcompetition.
They were the best game in town.
You fast-focus or fast-forward–you know, five years, six years.
And we're at where we're attoday.
And now we're oversaturated withclone-style companies offering
(36:59):
the same style service.
But they don't.
But they present it on theinternet as though they do.
And so we had to carve out aniche in order to explain why
The differences between thecompanies, the experience, the
high level of reviews and thenumber of reviews, and carving
out a brand new niche for thisone particular company.
(37:23):
And we do the same thing acrossthe board for everyone.
We work with franchises.
Each franchise location isdifferent.
It varies based on thecompetitive nature of the
market, how people look forthings.
Just a lot of different factorsgo into it.
If you got that person that youlove that's doing one thing that
(37:46):
you really like, like paidGoogle ads, but they're not part
of the big picture, then you'vegot some serious decisions to
make.
And Local Falcon is raising theflag.
They're saying, hey, guys, lookover here.
This is serious stuff.
(38:06):
You want to start thinking aboutthis and you want to start
reshaping how you're generatingcontent to feed those large
language, non-sentient modelswith information that it
considers trustworthy enough toput its reputation to when
someone searches for aparticular thing.
(38:30):
And that's also known as intent.
And that's where you got to bewith this thing.
Okay, guys, thank you so muchfor jumping into Over the Bull.
Thank you for attending thisweek.
I really do appreciate it.
Like every, you know, I'mlooking at the numbers.
We're growing every episode.
(38:50):
And I just find that reallyencouraging because that tells
me that there are so many of youout there that I meet with like
people I meet with every weekwho own businesses.
They don't know who to trust.
They don't know if theirperson's doing the right job.
They don't know if they'removing in the right direction.
They don't know if it could bebetter.
(39:10):
And on the other side of thegamut, they're also still
answering those darn coldemails.
Oh, by the way, let me go aheadand pull something up here real
quick.
I want to give you a littlebonus.
I was going to actually savethis for another podcast.
But I want to do this justbecause I think it would be
(39:34):
interesting for you to know.
Let's see here.
So you're getting me a littlebit unplugged here because I'm
just going to kind of wing this.
So this was kind of fun for me.
So I got an email, and I'm sureyou get these.
(39:56):
This is an email that wassolicited from, it was a cold
email.
And I've been getting a lot ofthese lately.
And they're just like, it's anemail and they're just talking
about, you know, trying to buildme up.
And, you know, they're usingthat whole psychological
strategy of telling you howgreat you are and how awesome
your website looks.
(40:16):
And by the way, for any of youwho think your branding is great
because everybody tells you it'sgreat, No one ever tells you
your branding is horrible.
A lot of times it's just acompliment or they're just
saying something.
So you can have really badbranding but still get
compliments on it or otherexperiences too.
But anyway, this particularperson wrote me this email and
(40:39):
they talked about– Am Iinterested?
Here it is.
Am I interested in acquiringyour company because your
tailored strategic solutionsposition you as a leader in
advanced digital marketing andweb development?
And then it asked me, do I have10 minutes for a quick chat next
week?
So if we look at it, we start tosee this whole thing here,
(41:02):
right?
So generic praise without anyreally details or just trying
to, you know, You know, blather,blather, you know, those kind of
things.
And then if we move on down alittle bit, then they have a
very generic business namethey're using.
And, you know, it soundslegitimate.
(41:23):
Like they'll use the word likeholdings or unite or, you know,
words like that.
And then– You look at theemails, they're suspicious, you
know, 10 minutes to chat.
So, you know, they're trying toopt in and tell me I'm awesome.
They're part of a group andthey're just buying up
companies, which I wouldn't sellIntegris anyway.
(41:45):
So it's silly to me.
So obviously the big questionis, is why in the world do these
people still do this?
Right?
Like you sit here and you look.
Here's the kind of thing, okay?
So when you look at it, okay,when you look at these emails
(42:06):
you get, when you look at theseform submissions you get that
are just junk and crap, and yougo, why are they doing this?
Or worse, if you're answeringthose things, if you've been
listening to this podcast forany time, just go, whap, just
hit yourself real hard here realquick because you should not be
answering those emails.
(42:27):
So here's the thing.
Mass cold emails are cheap tosend.
OK, they want to to book andthey want to move the needle,
but also they're looking attheir ROI model if they're
legitimate.
But but even if that whatthey're trying to do is they're
(42:49):
they're.
phishing to find out if they canget you on the hook.
Now, there's different ways theydo this.
One way is they send you a textmessage.
Hey, I saw your number in myphone.
Who is this?
Can I reconnect with you?
Those stupid things like that,those are long-term scams.
(43:10):
What they're trying to do isdevelop– they're playing the
long game.
They're wanting to try to builda false– communication,
relationship, whatever may haveyou, and then they're looking to
con you in the long game.
So ignore those, block those.
Those are no good.
If you don't know them, justblock them.
But when it comes to theseemails and these things, the
thing is that if they can sendoff 100,000 spammy emails using
(43:34):
bots, and they get threeresponses, because of the ease
at which it's done, They canactually have a positive ROI by
sending out those mass emailssaying, hey, just a friendly
thing.
I looked at your website and Isaw this problem.
(43:55):
You got 10 minutes.
I'll talk to you about it or,you know, any of those things.
It's junk.
It's absolute junk.
And if you're sitting there as abusiness owner.
Looking at someone sending you acold email telling you they've
got the answers to yourmarketing problems when they
can't even market themselvescorrectly, that should tell you
(44:16):
something.
And so you don't want to throwaway your current situation by
chasing rainbows or these thingsthat people are giving you.
because it's all just fake andit's all phishing and it's all
scammy.
And believe it or not, peopleeven still do it by hand.
(44:36):
Even submitting posts, you know,where like you got a blog and
you get all those junk comments,you know, even those, you know,
there was a strategy, gosh, 10,15 years ago.
And I think, Part of it ispeople still think these things
work.
What they do is they try to postthings with URLs associated with
it, hoping that your site willeither automatically approve it
(44:59):
or somehow it'll make its waythrough.
And then either they somehow geta benefit for a link or they get
traction or some marketing.
And then what they think is,okay, I broadcast this junk
across, you know, uh, 50,000sites, but it sneaks through
five, but because it's easy, youknow, um, then it still
(45:19):
accomplished the goals.
And so when you see these kindof strategies for you as a
business and credibility, wecircle back around to the whole
credibility thing.
Then the idea is, do you reallywant to be associated with that
kind of practice?
Do you want your business to beassociated with a company that
operates in such a fashion?
Do you want them representingthe name of your business and
(45:42):
everything that you've built up?
doing things like that?
Even if they said they wouldn'tdo it, do you trust this company
because they did it to you inorder to get you to call them?
You see, reputation andcredibility is huge.
It's getting to be bigger andbigger and bigger and bigger.
And the more credible, realcredible, not fake credible you
(46:06):
can be, and the more contentthat is authoritative and
original, and really addressesreal questions based on real
research is going to help youpropel to the top.
And if you do that, you're goingto be ahead of the curve when
your competition is still usingthese Google Ads guys who are
(46:28):
going around building thesesplash pages, sending traffic to
those splash pages, and creatingdisharmony in your overall
credibility.
All right.
So there you go.
I thought I'd throw that outthere.
I know it was a little clumsythere at the very end, but I
thought I'd throw it because Iget a lot of questions about why
these people do this, why theyscam and why they do it.
(46:49):
And you want to look up likephishing and spam and these
different kind of things anddifferent kind of scam
techniques.
And You definitely do not wantto play ball with these guys.
So until next time we meet, thisis Over the Bull.
I really do hope the best foryou and your business.
(47:10):
And thank you so much for tuningin.
Until next time.
SPEAKER_00 (47:15):
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.