July 16, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of Over the Bull, we break down how AI is rewriting the rules of search, SEO, and online marketing — and what that means for brands trying to stay relevant.
From zero-click search to AI-generated content flooding the web, we read directly from some of the most respected sources in the industry. Hear what marketing leaders and researchers from Bain & Company, SearchPilot, Forbes, and Tom’s Guide are saying — word-for-word — about the biggest shifts happening right now.
This 30-minute read-through strips away interpretation and commentary, letting the original insights speak for themselves.
DISCLAIMER:
The content shared in this podcast episode includes direct quotations from published articles, used for educational and commentary purposes under the principles of fair use. All credit is given to the original authors and publications. This podcast does not claim ownership of the sourced material. Full links to each article are included in the show notes.
1. https://www.bain.com/insights/goodbye-clicks-hello-ai-zero-click-search-redefines-marketing/
2. https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/research/ai-search-seo-traffic-impact/
4. https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/ai-slop-is-killing-search-results-heres-how-to-stop-it
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
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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 the new format of Over the Bull.
I'm Ken.
I'm your host.
Now, before we get started,because we will be using quotes
from other publications, I dowant to share a quick disclaimer
with you.
The content shared in thispodcast episode includes direct
quotations from publishedarticles used for educational
and commentary purposes underthe principles of fair use.
(00:33):
All credit is given to theoriginal authors and
publications.
This podcast does not claimownership of the source
material.
Full links will be suppliedalong with the show.
So thanks so much for tuning in.
I look forward to talking to youa little bit this week.
You know, there are some thingsthat are going on with the web.
(00:54):
And, you know, we've beentalking a lot about it with
artificial intelligence.
And it's just interesting.
It's overwhelming sometimes, youknow, when you're trying to
convey to people how dramaticit's truly going to be as things
start to change more and moreand how you engage with the
Internet and how people look forthings.
(01:16):
And, you know, as an effect,it's going to affect your
business as well.
So let's jump into the firsttopic here.
And this is the rise ofartificial intelligence-driven
technology.
Zero click search.
Now the source of this isGoodbye Clicks, Hello AI.
(01:36):
Zero click search redefinesmarketing and it's by Bain and
Company.
And again, the link will beprovided.
So let's take a look at a fewconcepts here.
First of all, what is a zeroclick search?
I mean, that's kind ofinteresting, isn't it?
A term probably some of youhaven't heard yet.
So let's start pulling somequotes from the article and kind
(01:59):
of break this down a little bit.
So marketing executives, this isa quote, tailor their customer
strategies around searchresults, but search is changing
quickly.
AI search engines and AIsummaries on results page are
taking a bite out ofclick-through traffic.
(02:20):
Baines also found through theirresearch that 80% of consumers
rely on zero-click results atleast 40% of the time.
One more quote.
Now, the rise of AI searchengines and generative summaries
have upended traditional searchbehavior, delivering answers
directly on search results pagesand removing the need for users
(02:43):
to click through to anothersite.
Most marketers today areoperating under outdated
assumptions.
In a survey of global marketingdecision makers, 60% said their
companies still rely ontraditional search results as
their primary source of inboundtraffic.
So I'm going to stop there for asecond.
(03:06):
And let's talk a little bitabout this zero click.
So zero A couple episodes back,I was mentioning that there was
an article, and they wereshowing an example, and I
believe it was Forbes' website.
And what they've seen was adecrease in their traffic, if I
remember the article correctly.
And it wasn't because they'reineffective.
(03:28):
It was because artificialintelligence is pulling
information from their site,putting it directly into the
chat, given the answer.
And so therefore, people are nolonger clicking on the link to
go to the website because theyget their information.
Why would they do that?
(03:49):
And so the idea is this zeroclick.
So see, there was zero clickinvolved in that transaction.
A question is asked.
In an AI situation like ChatGPT,an answer is given by pulling
information and probablyrestructuring it from a company
like Forbes, for example, andthere's no click in the
(04:09):
transaction.
So if you think about it, theway we've been monitoring or
tracking meaningful actions havebeen through things like what
happens when someone comes tothe website.
Well, now we have zero click.
Right.
Meaning they don't click to thewebsite.
(04:30):
And as you can see, a lot ofpeople aren't ready for this
type of transaction.
And then we see the researchthat shows 40 percent of the
time, you know, people are usingAI as their stopping point for
their searches.
So this could be kind of almoststaggering if you own a business
(04:53):
because you're like, well, howdo I do that?
And what does that look like?
Now, you're not alone becausemost marketing companies and
agencies are not prepared forthis either.
I'm still seeing people who aredoing outdated practices that
are still working right now.
And unfortunately, it's going tonot be a good situation
(05:17):
ultimately.
It's kind of like you're using8-track cassette tapes and CDs
are coming and cassettes, we'regoing to completely bypass those
and people are investing a lotof money in 8-track.
So a lot of these outdatedpractices with Google Ads and
things like that where you'rebuilding these special landing
pages that are low quality,those are going the way of the
(05:39):
dinosaur if all this continuesto trend the way that it's going
right now.
So when you also look at these,one of the comments here was the
rise of AI search engines andgenerative summaries.
So we covered this a little bitlast week.
A couple of the new acronyms youwant to be aware of is GAIO,
(06:03):
which is Google AI Overviews.
And also you will see AIO,obviously what that means.
And what you're seeing is thatpeople are now wanting to be
more and more in these areas.
And so this article continues toshow that the idea that the way
(06:24):
people are looking is going tochange.
So if you own a trade business,the question becomes at some
point, will your prices, yourterms, your booking element all
be right there within an AIinterface?
And if so, how do you presentthe data so you even show up in
(06:44):
an AI model?
Right now, it looks like certainwebsites will be more impacted
than other websites.
I think that trade businessesand things like that, I think
it's still very relevant tobuild things the way they are.
And best practices are going tobe more important than ever with
(07:05):
web development.
Now, what this means is...
The freelancer who's downloadingthemes and using ChatGPT to
create content and putting instock photography, those
websites, which really aren't agood presence anyway.
I mean, it's a cheap solution,but really it's going the way of
(07:27):
the, all that's going the way ofthe dinosaur.
And I've got some reallyinteresting information that'll
further play into that.
So here's another comment.
rather than thinking aboutclicks and backlinks, brands
must figure out how to bepresent in the AI-generated
(07:48):
summary itself.
So you see, everybody's seeingthis thing going on, and
everybody understands that thisis something that has to be
addressed.
And so if you're not hearingpeople talk about this, then
they're not clued in.
And it doesn't matter if it's abig agency.
(08:08):
It doesn't matter if it's a momand pop shop, web design company
or whatever.
If they're not giving youanswers in how they're going to
address this, then you'rebarking up the wrong tree.
Just think that as this becomesmore and more, if you're not on
the train now and then you'regoing to react, you know, this
(08:32):
is going to move so fast thatyou're going to have a hard time
reacting at the last moment tothe changes that are going on
within the web.
So remember, I was telling youthat credibility is the new
currency of the Internet withbusinesses.
So listen to this quote.
The shift means prioritizingrelevance, authority, and data
(08:53):
quality because the modelsbehind these summaries reward
accurate and authoritativecontent.
So what does this say?
It's telling you that you needto be a specialist and you need
to start publishing content andgiving good information about
your business and become anauthority in your field.
(09:14):
Now, in a world where people arecranking out content using AI
and things like that, it'squickly becoming so noisy that
good, strong content isbecoming...
harder to find on the web.
And again, we're going to talkabout that a little bit more as
we go.
And check this one out.
(09:37):
This is a great quote, in myopinion.
It's no longer about tricking analgorithm.
It's about feeding the machineclean, useful data showing up
where your customers are askingquestions.
Now, that's huge.
That's a huge statement.
So let's talk about that alittle bit.
(09:59):
We talked about this a coupleepisodes ago.
But the idea is that if you'vehad your website built from an
SEO guy, a lot of times youwould see like where they put a
big long list of cities at thebottom of the footer of a
website, or they may use kind ofcontent that's trying to like
artificially position yourbusiness in a way that's almost–
(10:20):
literally trying to trick searchengines.
And what's going on here is it'ssaying, no, really what you've
got to do now is you've got tothink about the questions that
your customers are asking intheir journey to buying your
goods and services.
And you need to do the homeworkto validate that those questions
(10:41):
are the ones that are beingasked.
Don't just, you know, come upwith a series of questions and
then start creating questionscontent that answers those
questions.
Now, why this is important,because remember, AI or large
language models, these are notsentient.
We can't even define sentientbeings, by the way.
(11:04):
Consciousness and awareness isnot something that humans can
really understand.
So it's hitting a moving targetwhen we say that something's
going to become sentient at somepoint.
Because it could also be soprogrammed that it would mimic
what we would consider asentient being.
(11:25):
However, it's completely not.
Now, of course, this is allsubjective and it kind of gets
crazy.
And with the advent of all thesci-fi stuff, you know, people's
minds and imaginations kind ofgo crazy.
But the idea is.
is that you want to provideanswers to those questions.
(11:45):
So when artificial intelligenceis looking for the most relevant
answers to those questions,you've got content already set
up in a way that it can see itand then it can refer to those
answers.
Because when you think aboutsearch engines, think like this.
It used to be where you wouldhave what you would call the
(12:08):
sales funnel.
Right.
So at the top of the salesfunnel is where you realize that
you need something or wantsomething.
And then you do some research.
And then once you do theresearch, you're performing
multiple searches on Google orwherever.
And then as you move down thepath toward making a purchase,
then that's kind of the laststep other than, you know,
(12:30):
wanting to get reviews or thingslike that.
So the idea in this whole salesfunnel cycle is if you're
talking with with ChatGPT orGemini or some of these other
models that are up and coming,what you're going to find is
that this conversational piecewill bypass multiple searches.
(12:52):
And that entire cycle will alltranspire in one quick
conversation with artificialintelligence.
Now, if it sounds crazy to you,I want you to know I do this
right now.
I'm working on a sunroom.
I'm renovating it behind myhouse and I'm asking a lot of
(13:14):
questions about, you know,stretching screens over large
areas or things like that.
And what it's doing is it'stelling me how to do it.
And then I'm asking where to buya screen.
It's given me recommendations.
And then I'm asking about, well,do certain screens block out
more light than others, whichthere are according to that
(13:35):
research.
And then I get to pick basedupon the price.
And then it gives me links whereI can click and go in and buy
it.
Now, I'm doing this right now.
And as you can imagine, aspeople get more and more used to
it, the way that we're doingsearches today is is going to
feel antiquated.
Every generation thinks thatwe're at the cusp of technology
(14:01):
and that we know everything andthat we're at the height of all
knowledge from the humanexperience.
However, just research somethinglike nutrition.
Take a hard look at what wetruly don't understand about the
food we eat.
And talk to a nutritionist andyou're going to get answers all
(14:24):
over the map.
You dig deep enough, you'regoing to find out that meat has
gotten a bad rap since about,you know, what, 1950.
And that the carbohydrates rollin the evolution of the food
pyramid.
I mean, just since the 90s hasbeen dramatic.
(14:46):
And so if you think that we'reat the cusp of technology
because we carry our own cellphones and ask Siri a few
questions, I think the world'sgoing to get upended again.
And your kids are going to belike, wow, I can't believe you
searched like that.
I can't believe the Internet waslike that.
Now, if we move on, I want tomove to another article here.
(15:11):
And there are several entitiesthat are big into search engine
optimization and provide toolsto help out with that.
And I've used this toolhistorically.
I don't currently use it.
It's SEMrush or SEMrush.
You may have heard of differentpronunciations.
(15:32):
But this is a tool that'sgenerally keeping their hand on
the pulse of SEO because this iswhat they do.
And so let's talk about a coupleof quotes from SEMrush's
article.
And here's the title of thearticle.
Basically, we studied the impactof AI search on SEO traffic.
(15:53):
And here's what they say.
First pull quote.
included in AI overviews, GoogleAI mode, chat GPT, cloud, and
perplexity, could impact digitalmarketing and SEO industry
traffic and revenue in thecoming years.
So that's a pretty importanttopic if you count on the
(16:15):
Internet to help drive business.
Digital marketing andSEO-related topics may start
driving more visitors from AIsearches to websites than from
traditional search by early2028.
Let's read that again.
Digital marketing andSEO-related topics may start
(16:36):
driving more visitors from AIsearch to websites than from
traditional search in 2028.
And so you're seeing here thefirst articles talking about
zero clicks, and now we're kindof getting a different spin from
SEMrush.
So you can kind of see the noiseand people trying to put it
together.
(16:56):
Now, none of us can see thefuture, but...
we are seeing that AI isdefinitely playing a role in
both of these models.
That's something we can derivefrom either one.
Their next quote is, if thedefault Google search experience
becomes AI mode, this transitioncould happen much sooner, which,
(17:17):
you know, I've got my hand insome resources behind the
scenes.
And as such, one thing that is alot of the chatter not publicly
known talked about is how fastthis is going to be rolled out.
And I don't feel privy to talk alot about that today.
(17:38):
But the idea is it's coming andit's going to be sooner than
later.
Check this one out.
ChatGPT weekly active users greweight times from October 2023 to
April 2025 and are now over 800million.
(17:59):
So you see what's going on here.
You know, you got the Google,which has been the big gorilla,
you know, in Internet marketingfor a long time.
Now we're seeing that with theadvent of all these large
language models, we're startingto see that, you know, people
are finding their favoriteflavor of ice cream as they go.
(18:20):
Now, there's also a lot offactors beyond the scope of
these articles that are worth atleast thinking through a little
bit.
You see, these models are allpredicated on the accuracy of
the data and being able to giveyou good information.
That's why I use Google.
(18:41):
because Google search enginetypically provides you with the
most reliable results.
And so you get what you need.
So you use it again.
And that's kind of their market.
That's also why they reallydon't like people trying to do
things to make their websiteslook better than they are,
because you're kind of cheatingthe system and you're devaluing
(19:02):
the search results by doing so.
And so by not playing by therules, you're actually causing a
lot of problems, right, for themand other search engines.
So I forget where I was goingwith that.
But where was I going with that?
1,800 users.
I'm not really remembering whereI was going with that.
(19:25):
But basically when you look atthese– oh, here it is.
This is what I was going to say.
When you look at these models, alot of them– are coming across,
based on my research, as beingbiased, and they're also not
giving a neutral voice todifferent subjects.
(19:47):
And so the problem is, isthey're adopting the
philosophical bias of thecompanies that are developing
them.
And I've seen this in a lot ofcases.
Now, I've done this with...
with ChatGPT in some like, I'llpick like really controversial
stuff and just see what it does.
(20:08):
And in general, I find that it'sa little bit more neutral than
the other search engines, buthere's kind of the thing.
The adoptability of artificialintelligence will be its ability
to not try to push a narrativeor a bias onto its people and
allow people to make their owndecisions.
(20:30):
Now, of course, there are goingto be people that are just going
to read headlines and they'regoing to trust whatever AI tells
them.
And that's kind of dangerous.
We're already seeing, I saw thisarticle, I think I shared in the
last podcast, where people areactually developing a psychosis
because what you're getting isyou're getting this, a
(20:53):
confirmation bias, meaning thatthese AIs are just agreeing with
people and confirming thatthings that aren't right, and
it's actually making them thinkthings that they shouldn't
think, and it's actuallydamaging certain people, which I
assume they probably had someissues anyway.
But if it's reinforcingsomething that's not true, then
(21:14):
you can kind of see thoseissues.
And believe it or not, there's alot of crazy articles out there
about what's going on withinthat.
So the idea is we don't know howthat's going to play out either.
And these things aren't reallyfiguring into that.
But obviously it's dangerous ifthey're going to do some kind of
(21:37):
thought control.
And for deep thinkers or peoplewho want to see the alternative
view to certain subjects or justwant to get a neutral view, if
they start to see that thesesway in a biased way and pick up
on it, then how well they'readopted could be influenced as
well.
(21:57):
And I have seen it where it'spretty bad, some of these
things, how biased they can be.
Check this statistic out.
The average AI search visitor is4.4 times as valuable as the
average traditional organicsearch visitor based on
conversion rates.
(22:19):
Okay, so what is a conversionrate?
A conversion rate is ameaningful action.
So, for example, if you'retrying to generate phone calls,
well, that should be aconversion you're tracking.
If your Google Ads person is nottracking conversions and they're
focused on impressions, then youneed to have a talk with your
(22:39):
Google Ads person.
But the idea is that conversionsare 4.4 times as valuable than
traditional organic search.
Wow.
I mean, you know, your businessis not about clicks.
Your business is about calls,right?
And so if we're seeing that it'sthat much more effective, then
(23:02):
it's really relevant that westart thinking through exactly
how that's going.
Moving on, one of the quoteshere is LLMs, remember, large
language models.
They tend to equip users withall the information they need to
make a decision.
By the time they reach yoursite, they are ready to convert.
(23:26):
You see that?
See how much different thatbuying cycle is?
And that's incredibly differentbecause traditionally we would
try to create different placesin the person's journey from
wanting or needing something tomaking a purchase.
We would try to inject ourselvesinto different searches along
(23:47):
that journey to try to eitherpush them further down the
funnel or encourage them to buy,you know, our client's stuff or
whatever.
And then you're seeing that nowit's all being kind of mashed
together in one quickconversation.
And so as you're seeing thishappen more and more, now think
about the value that that bringsto the consumer.
(24:09):
I no longer have to performthree, four, five, ten different
searches.
Now I can start a conversationabout wanting a new pair of
shoes or more screen in mysunroom or the best paint to use
on my deck.
And then I can ask a lot ofquestions and then I can say,
where do I get that?
And I get the answers.
And so you're seeing that from aconsumer perspective, it's much,
(24:34):
much more efficient.
So moving on, ChatGPT searchprimarily cites pages that rank
21 or lower in traditionalsearch almost 90% of the time.
ChatGPT search primarily citespages that rank 21 or lower in
traditional search almost 90% ofthe time.
(24:57):
That's kind of interesting, huh?
That top page thing is...
We need to think through that alittle bit.
Check this out.
Reddit and Quora, Q-U-O-R-A, arethe most commonly cited domains
in Google AI overviews.
Now, what's interesting is thatyou're seeing that almost like
(25:20):
what different search enginesvalue may also align...
may or may not also align withtheir philosophical biases,
which that would be kind ofinteresting.
So are you playing in Reddit'ssandbox?
Are you playing Quora's sandbox?
Should you?
I mean, these are big questions.
(25:42):
Half of ChatGPT links point tobusiness or service websites,
including that large languagemodels often rely on company
websites as key sources.
Now, see, this ties back in toexactly how this is going to
function on business companystyle websites.
(26:03):
Now, keep in mind, we got thefirst article where it talks
about no click.
And here we're talking about howit does still affect websites
and traffic and journeys andthat.
So you can kind of see that it'sgoing to mesh.
It's not one or the other.
It's not that this article'sright and the other one's wrong
(26:24):
or whatever.
vice versa, what you're going tosee is exactly what we see in
real life.
Different people are going to dodifferent things.
And the branches in which theway people will do things moving
forward could be significantlydifferent.
And people are going to startusing more and more what they
like.
(26:44):
And now here's the other side,too.
If we get back to thephilosophical bias, you know, if
one is leaning a certain waypolitically or on certain
subjects, and then they get aconfirmation bias, people tend
to migrate toward things thatreinforce what they already
believe.
(27:04):
So, for example, if you believea certain thing about a
religion, then what's going tohappen is you migrate toward
literature that tells you howgreat your religious views are,
or non-religious views, atheismas well.
And then what you do is youmigrate toward that content
because you want to bereinforced that you're right,
(27:25):
and then you're going to startswimming in the same waters as
those people.
Well, you could imagine that ifthese AI models are appealing to
a certain philosophical view,that people are going to migrate
toward those views.
philosophical views.
So I find all this veryinteresting, especially when you
(27:49):
start to break down exactly howthis is going to play.
It's almost like you're going tohave to hedge your bet in
multiple places because businessis not supposed to tie in, at
least I don't think it is, itdoes.
It really shouldn't tie in a lotof things that oftentimes
(28:12):
businesses get drug into, youknow.
Anyway, I won't keep going anyfurther.
You can kind of take that reviewand take it.
So let's move on here and let'stalk about AI's search engine
shake.
Six considerations for brandsand marketers.
(28:35):
So this is kind of aninteresting article.
Let's dive into this article.
A couple of quotes that I pulledfrom it.
AI has undeniably shaken upnumerous industries with
marketing and search marketingat the forefront.
As Google AI overviews, rememberG-A-I-O, increasingly overlap
(28:57):
with organic search result, SEOhas surged back into the
spotlight.
So you see now, what they meanby that is back in...
There's multiple ways toadvertise on the internet.
One is paid advertising.
Another one is organic SEO.
And then you have this SEO kindof like bait and switch with a
(29:24):
lot of web people today.
Like they'll call local SEO.
What they really mean is yourGoogle business profile,
essentially.
And they're not really thinkingabout your website and your
content.
And so there's this idea thatthey basically try to manipulate
(29:47):
it in a way where you think SEOis one thing, but they're
talking about something else.
This isn't true with everyone,but I see it so often where
that's being kind of convoluted.
Now, If I'm right, and I thinkthe content that I'm reading is
right, it's all going to kind ofmarry into you've got to kind of
have this credibility factorwhere overall you're more
(30:10):
credible.
Well, one of the reasons thatI'm so down on the Google Ads
people who spin up their ownpages and run ads to those pages
is because it's not contributingto the cumulative effort, the
cumulative credibility.
And if they start putting thesesplash pages on your Google
(30:31):
business profiles and thingslike that, they're just creating
more confusion.
And it may feel good today, butas you're seeing here, it's not
going to continue down that pathlong term.
And so preparing and buildingthat cumulative effort and that
(30:52):
overall credibility is one ofthe things that your business
needs really needs to kind ofprocess and kind of looking at
how this is going.
And so part of what they'resaying is search engine
optimization is search back tothe forefront because people are
like, wow, I need to beoptimized for GAIO.
I need to be optimized forcitations so that, you know,
(31:16):
chat GPT will reference mybusiness when questions are
being asked.
And so therefore, before I godump all this content and spend
time building it, I'd better getmy ducks in a row and know the
questions that are being askedand have that technical research
performed on the front end.
And then if you go the way thatmost people are going and just
(31:41):
start spitting out content fromsearch engines and dropping it
on, well, that's where thingsare going to get kind of hairy
as we move forward.
Check this out.
This is another quote that Iliked here.
It says, before the rise of AI.
So you see, not coming AI.
(32:02):
It's here.
Searchers often visited multiplewebsites for comparison.
Google AI overviews streamlinedthis process.
So think about this.
Think that if you own a companyand you offer your product at a
certain price point and someoneelse offers at a price point,
you have certain terms, theyhave certain terms.
(32:24):
Now, I often do this indifferent ways with AI right now
for competitive research andthings like that.
But I'll ask for demographicinformation, price points, and
it gives it right back to me.
And so within a question, I canfind out all the businesses that
are offering a service in anarea, and I can find out how
(32:47):
much they charge for thatservice, and I can determine
which one that I want to usefrom that service.
And from that and then fromthere, I can click inside and
then look at that business.
So you see, it's a lot differentbecause now what happens is
people who were traditionallyjust going to go, well, let me
look for this.
(33:07):
And then they pick the resultthat's top of the page.
They make a quick decision on ifit's something that they feel is
worth the cost or not.
And then what you're seeing isnow they're able to just talk to
artificial intelligence.
And by talking to it, they canget those comparisons brought up
right there in front of them.
(33:28):
And so they no longer even haveto really do a lot of homework
to do comparisons.
And so if you're seeing yoursales start to decrease or
you're seeing different actionstaking place, Part of this whole
thing is the idea that peopleare getting smarter on how to
use these tools.
And they're really not hard touse at all.
(33:49):
When I'm driving home, I'll bedriving home tonight, and I'm
probably going to have a couplequestions.
And I'm going to click and askartificial intelligence those
questions.
And just talk to it likesomeone's in the passenger side
of my car.
And I'll probably make a coupledecisions about a couple hobbies
that I have.
And I'm going to check inbecause...
(34:09):
Chat's also notoriously reallybad about not getting up-to-date
information, especially if it'sa niche.
For example, if I'm working onprogramming and I want to know
where something's at within aneditor like Bubble, then what
I'll find is that theinformation often is not
(34:31):
accurate.
But they're getting better.
They're getting better andbetter as they go.
So let's look at this lastquote, and then I want to jump
into the flip side of this coin.
You want to stay tuned for this.
While AI generated contentoffers efficiency, it also
carries risk, including contentdevaluation and search
(34:53):
penalties.
AI content still requires, andhere we go, human optimization.
Are any of you guys out thereright now Cranking out content
with artificial intelligence andchunking it into your blogs.
Are your SEO people, which Iknow for a fact, they're doing
this right now.
(35:15):
They're creating, they're justwhipping out AI content and
throwing it on your site andkind of patting themselves on
the back.
And then you think they'recreating all this content.
And in reality, they're justwhipping it out with AI.
So what's it saying?
AI content still requires humanoptimization.
human intervention, humanediting the content, human
(35:38):
authoritative content.
You see, and that goes back tothose EEAT principles that we've
talked about previously.
You don't want to go throughthis wide gate where you're just
cranking out AI content.
You want to have your custominformation sitting out there
that will help you show up asthis trend continues to
(36:05):
basically spiral at a just hyperspeed, whatever rate you want to
put to it.
Feel free to insert your ownnanosecond analogy.
So check this out.
This is really interesting.
This is from a source calledTom's Guide.
And here's the title of this.
(36:27):
This is crazy.
AI Slop.
is killing search results, andhere's how to stop it.
Now, if you remember, I wastelling you that I jumped on
YouTube three or four weeks ago,and I was looking for something,
and I was scrolling through, andthere was a famous sports
athlete.
(36:48):
You will know him if youfollowed the NBA in the 90s.
And he was talking about someonethat is playing basketball
today.
And the thing was, is that I waslistening to it and I'm like,
wow, that's exactly what I wouldthink.
And then I realized it was AIgenerated.
It wasn't even him.
And so then I'm like, well,that's the stupidest thing.
(37:08):
It's who cares what AI generatesas far as what someone said.
And then I started going throughand then I start seeing all this
stuff.
AI content.
I watched one thing and it wasshowing, like I watched some MMA
stuff and I watched this onething where this one person was
doing this incredible move andthen I'm like, oh, that's AI
(37:32):
too.
Oh, that's AI too.
And by the time I was done, I'mlike, I don't, I don't care to
be on the site because I can'tseparate what's real and what's
not real.
I don't really have the time todo it.
And I don't really care to play,you know, kids games with
something that AI can do.
So I believe this is where we'regoing here.
(37:52):
So let's look at a couple ofquotes.
If you've noticed your Googlesearches getting worse lately,
you're not imagining things.
Whether you're looking for thebest travel gear or a banana
bread recipe or how to fix yourWi-Fi, you're likely wading
through a sea of vague,repetitive, AI-generated
(38:14):
content.
Okay, now, this is huge.
This is absolutely huge to stopon this.
So here's the thing.
Remember, search engines maketheir, like Google, and in the
large language models, the ideais to pull the most relevant
content And so they have workedhard over the last 20 years to
(38:35):
weed out all the games that wereplayed over the years to kind of
like fake or trick the systeminto bringing your website to
the top of search engines.
And so now we've got this messthat's starting to happen on the
Internet.
And what's going to happen iseither these search engines–
(38:56):
like Google, are going to figureout what to do with it and
devalue this junk, or theinternet's going to become this
mess of AI content that no onecares about and will just
frustrate people and willpolarize them to use other
methods to find what they need.
And so you can imagine that ifyou're contributing to the
(39:18):
noise, And Google and othersearch engines and chat models
and large language models, allthese are going to figure out
how to weed that out.
And then you've got a whole seaof this junk on your website, in
your blogs or whatever.
Then what's going to happen isyou're going to get swept up in
this whole thing.
(39:39):
So if your SEO guy is doing thistechnique, well, guess what?
This is not going to help yourbusiness out.
Now, of course, there's levelsand conversations, but the
spirit of that comment is verymuch the reality of today.
Check this quote out.
(40:00):
I love it.
Welcome to the era of AI slopthat's quietly polluting the
Internet.
Now, if this is happening, thisguy's not the only one.
You probably have sensed thatwhere you go to the site and
you're like, what is this?
big article.
And by the way, length ofarticle.
(40:20):
People have this misconceptionthat some people don't read long
articles anymore.
Not true.
It's the type of content.
If you're really interested indigging deep into something, you
want more details.
So don't fall into this.
I've got to say it in fiveseconds.
Think about the type of contentand how much research is needed
in order to provide goodanswers.
(40:43):
I'm going to read a couple moreof these.
These are just really fun.
What's worse, a lot of thisAI-generated content gets
rewarded by algorithms becauseit technically checks the SEO
boxes.
So what's that say about thoseSEO boxes moving forward?
If they can't weed out the junk,the algorithms are going to have
(41:04):
to change.
They've got to figure out a wayto do it.
They've got to figure out a wayto figure out what's going on.
Now, This leads to a lot ofquestions about what are you
going to do moving forward.
But as you can see, these arevery relevant and real big
problems as we move forward onthe Internet.
And so what's the answer foryour business?
(41:27):
It's the same thing we've beentalking about here for about a
month now.
Work on your EEAT scores.
Work on creating originalcontent and doing homework as to
the questions that arelegitimately being asked.
It's time to do the real work.
Now, of course, this isproblematic because if you're an
(41:48):
electrician or you have certaintrades and you're hiring a
marketing team to do it, thenyou're You've got some tough
decisions to make.
Who's going to be in control ofyour voice?
And how do you know that they'renot using AI or generative
content to publish that and thenfake you into thinking that
they're doing more than theyare?
(42:11):
And so, you know, I just findthis incredibly interesting as
I'm going through here becausewhat you're seeing in the
background is– Everything thatwe've been talking about, and
I'm no Nostradamus, I just havemy hands on the pulse of what I
see happening on the internet.
(42:31):
And then this cumulative effort,this whole world of, I'm going
to pay this person to do this,this person to do that, this
person to spit this out, andit's not cohesive, and it
doesn't present you as anauthoritative resource, you're
going to be paying people tospit out content that is going
(42:52):
to ultimately hurt yourbusiness.
And you're going to have a lotof cleanup to do once all this
stuff keeps sorting out.
Once you see these algorithmsstart figuring things out, once
they start to realize that, hey,people want to see what people
are really saying, not these AIgenerated models.
Now, of course, you know, we seethem in movies and things like
(43:14):
that.
Of course, it's entertaining tosee it.
But when you're looking for realinformation, If I were to go to
YouTube and pull a quote fromthat video, I would look like– I
wouldn't look very intelligent,right?
So the idea is that you wantreal stuff when you need the
(43:36):
real stuff and you don't have tofight through all the noise.
This also shows that the days oflazy marketing, the days of
looking at– going to thesewebsites, these do-it-yourself
builders, and putting togetherthese kind of sites that are
(43:58):
just kind of basically junksites.
One of the terms usedhistorically was scrape sites.
These sites scrape together withcontent.
They're going to die.
And so getting serious andhiring someone who's serious
about it is actually going to bepart of the criteria to put you
(44:20):
on the forefront of these issuesrather than playing catch-up.
And the idea of going cheap, forlack of a better word, or trying
to cheat the system is going toblow up.
I think one of the firstpodcasts I talked about was a
(44:42):
concept called PBNs, or PrivateBlog Networks.
And this is horrible.
It's this cat and mouse game,basically, where what you're
seeing is that search engineoptimization companies are
building all these sites up, andthey own all of them, but they
try to fake Google into thinkingthat they don't.
(45:03):
And then they interlink thesefor their clients, and then try
to artificially push them to thetop of search engines.
And, you know, it's just such adangerous game, especially...
As technology is getting betterand better, I mean, do you
really think they're going to beable to hide this from search
engines forever?
(45:25):
They're living for the day.
And then plus, do you want toget caught up in something like
that?
Because there are stiffpenalties for private blog
networks.
So if you want to go check thatout, you can go check that out.
But you want to make sure thepeople that you're working with
are people you can trust thatare actually doing real work and
not following any of thesepractices.
(45:48):
So a lot to think about andprocess and discuss with your
team, your people that arehelping market your company.
And then part of the idea is toask questions.
Say, okay, when it comes tolarge language models or AI or
chat GPT, however you want tosay it, or Gemini, whatever,
(46:09):
Because Gemini is coming, that'swhy I keep talking about it.
I've just seen things behind thescenes on that.
That's why I'm bringing that oneup a lot.
It's just kind of ingrained inmy head.
But as you're looking at thesethings, the big question that
you need to ask is, what are youdoing to research content to see
(46:30):
that I'm actually going to bepossibly used as a citation?
in a conversation.
What questions should we buildthat content around and how do
you get there?
And if you get an answer like,we're going to talk about it and
build it based around a keyword,that's way, way wrong answers.
(46:55):
The other thing is, is how areyou building the reputation of
my company?
Are your services contributingto that cause?
And if so, how are theycontributing to that cause of
building my reputation up for mycompany?
And if you're not getting goodanswers, then you really need to
shift gears because I don't knowwhat the percentage is, okay?
(47:20):
The bottom line is we are– wedon't engage.
Like I never– We don't everrecommend a company.
We got our own network ofcompanies that we work with that
are our partners.
And what we do basically is wework in that group because we
know we have a certain standardthat we want to keep.
(47:43):
But I can tell you that we alsoinvestigate or have to pull
things from other companieswithin our company, like other
marketing firms.
And most of the time, thepractices that they are using
are generated or implementedbecause it maximizes their
revenue for their company, andit's not good for your company.
(48:07):
And some of them, frankly, don'thave a grasp on marketing.
They've just taken some courseson a couple things, or they
built their company around onelittle piece of the puzzle.
And that's also going to beextremely problematic moving
forward.
(48:27):
So hopefully this gives you foodfor thought.
This is kind of like what I wantto do, at least as one segment
moving forward and over thebowl, is to kind of give you a
place where you can look atwhat's going on from the web.
I'll throw a little bit ofcommentary in between it.
And then it gives you food forthought to kind of think about
what's happening on the Internetand let you know that, you know,
(48:49):
hey, this is real.
You know, these websites are notsaying this just to say it.
You know, these are websitesthat...
Bank on being able to offervaluable insight into what's
going on in the world ofmarketing and the internet.
And hopefully what this is goingto do is prepare you, give you
(49:10):
more confidence to understandwhat's exactly happening, and
then be able to think about yourbusiness and your best practices
for your company so that you canbe successful in as this
revolution on the internetcontinues to gain momentum.
So until next time, this is Kenwith Over the Bull.
(49:33):
I hope you have a great week andtake care of yourself out there.
SPEAKER_00 (49:38):
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 the new format of Over the Bull.
I'm Ken.
I'm your host.
Now, before we get started,because we will be using quotes
from other publications, I dowant to share a quick disclaimer
with you.
The content shared in thispodcast episode includes direct
quotations from publishedarticles used for educational
and commentary purposes underthe principles of fair use.
(00:33):
All credit is given to theoriginal authors and
publications.
This podcast does not claimownership of the source
material.
Full links will be suppliedalong with the show.
So thanks so much for tuning in.
I look forward to talking to youa little bit this week.
You know, there are some thingsthat are going on with the web.
(00:54):
And, you know, we've beentalking a lot about it with
artificial intelligence.
And it's just interesting.
It's overwhelming sometimes, youknow, when you're trying to
convey to people how dramaticit's truly going to be as things
start to change more and moreand how you engage with the
Internet and how people look forthings.
(01:16):
And, you know, as an effect,it's going to affect your
business as well.
So let's jump into the firsttopic here.
And this is the rise ofartificial intelligence-driven
technology.
Zero click search.
Now the source of this isGoodbye Clicks, Hello AI.
(01:36):
Zero click search redefinesmarketing and it's by Bain and
Company.
And again, the link will beprovided.
So let's take a look at a fewconcepts here.
First of all, what is a zeroclick search?
I mean, that's kind ofinteresting, isn't it?
A term probably some of youhaven't heard yet.
So let's start pulling somequotes from the article and kind
(01:59):
of break this down a little bit.
So marketing executives, this isa quote, tailor their customer
strategies around searchresults, but search is changing
quickly.
AI search engines and AIsummaries on results page are
taking a bite out ofclick-through traffic.
(02:20):
Baines also found through theirresearch that 80% of consumers
rely on zero-click results atleast 40% of the time.
One more quote.
Now, the rise of AI searchengines and generative summaries
have upended traditional searchbehavior, delivering answers
directly on search results pagesand removing the need for users
(02:43):
to click through to anothersite.
Most marketers today areoperating under outdated
assumptions.
In a survey of global marketingdecision makers, 60% said their
companies still rely ontraditional search results as
their primary source of inboundtraffic.
So I'm going to stop there for asecond.
(03:06):
And let's talk a little bitabout this zero click.
So zero A couple episodes back,I was mentioning that there was
an article, and they wereshowing an example, and I
believe it was Forbes' website.
And what they've seen was adecrease in their traffic, if I
remember the article correctly.
And it wasn't because they'reineffective.
(03:28):
It was because artificialintelligence is pulling
information from their site,putting it directly into the
chat, given the answer.
And so therefore, people are nolonger clicking on the link to
go to the website because theyget their information.
Why would they do that?
(03:49):
And so the idea is this zeroclick.
So see, there was zero clickinvolved in that transaction.
A question is asked.
In an AI situation like ChatGPT,an answer is given by pulling
information and probablyrestructuring it from a company
like Forbes, for example, andthere's no click in the
(04:09):
transaction.
So if you think about it, theway we've been monitoring or
tracking meaningful actions havebeen through things like what
happens when someone comes tothe website.
Well, now we have zero click.
Right.
Meaning they don't click to thewebsite.
(04:30):
And as you can see, a lot ofpeople aren't ready for this
type of transaction.
And then we see the researchthat shows 40 percent of the
time, you know, people are usingAI as their stopping point for
their searches.
So this could be kind of almoststaggering if you own a business
(04:53):
because you're like, well, howdo I do that?
And what does that look like?
Now, you're not alone becausemost marketing companies and
agencies are not prepared forthis either.
I'm still seeing people who aredoing outdated practices that
are still working right now.
And unfortunately, it's going tonot be a good situation
(05:17):
ultimately.
It's kind of like you're using8-track cassette tapes and CDs
are coming and cassettes, we'regoing to completely bypass those
and people are investing a lotof money in 8-track.
So a lot of these outdatedpractices with Google Ads and
things like that where you'rebuilding these special landing
pages that are low quality,those are going the way of the
(05:39):
dinosaur if all this continuesto trend the way that it's going
right now.
So when you also look at these,one of the comments here was the
rise of AI search engines andgenerative summaries.
So we covered this a little bitlast week.
A couple of the new acronyms youwant to be aware of is GAIO,
(06:03):
which is Google AI Overviews.
And also you will see AIO,obviously what that means.
And what you're seeing is thatpeople are now wanting to be
more and more in these areas.
And so this article continues toshow that the idea that the way
(06:24):
people are looking is going tochange.
So if you own a trade business,the question becomes at some
point, will your prices, yourterms, your booking element all
be right there within an AIinterface?
And if so, how do you presentthe data so you even show up in
(06:44):
an AI model?
Right now, it looks like certainwebsites will be more impacted
than other websites.
I think that trade businessesand things like that, I think
it's still very relevant tobuild things the way they are.
And best practices are going tobe more important than ever with
(07:05):
web development.
Now, what this means is...
The freelancer who's downloadingthemes and using ChatGPT to
create content and putting instock photography, those
websites, which really aren't agood presence anyway.
I mean, it's a cheap solution,but really it's going the way of
(07:27):
the, all that's going the way ofthe dinosaur.
And I've got some reallyinteresting information that'll
further play into that.
So here's another comment.
rather than thinking aboutclicks and backlinks, brands
must figure out how to bepresent in the AI-generated
(07:48):
summary itself.
So you see, everybody's seeingthis thing going on, and
everybody understands that thisis something that has to be
addressed.
And so if you're not hearingpeople talk about this, then
they're not clued in.
And it doesn't matter if it's abig agency.
(08:08):
It doesn't matter if it's a momand pop shop, web design company
or whatever.
If they're not giving youanswers in how they're going to
address this, then you'rebarking up the wrong tree.
Just think that as this becomesmore and more, if you're not on
the train now and then you'regoing to react, you know, this
(08:32):
is going to move so fast thatyou're going to have a hard time
reacting at the last moment tothe changes that are going on
within the web.
So remember, I was telling youthat credibility is the new
currency of the Internet withbusinesses.
So listen to this quote.
The shift means prioritizingrelevance, authority, and data
(08:53):
quality because the modelsbehind these summaries reward
accurate and authoritativecontent.
So what does this say?
It's telling you that you needto be a specialist and you need
to start publishing content andgiving good information about
your business and become anauthority in your field.
(09:14):
Now, in a world where people arecranking out content using AI
and things like that, it'squickly becoming so noisy that
good, strong content isbecoming...
harder to find on the web.
And again, we're going to talkabout that a little bit more as
we go.
And check this one out.
(09:37):
This is a great quote, in myopinion.
It's no longer about tricking analgorithm.
It's about feeding the machineclean, useful data showing up
where your customers are askingquestions.
Now, that's huge.
That's a huge statement.
So let's talk about that alittle bit.
(09:59):
We talked about this a coupleepisodes ago.
But the idea is that if you'vehad your website built from an
SEO guy, a lot of times youwould see like where they put a
big long list of cities at thebottom of the footer of a
website, or they may use kind ofcontent that's trying to like
artificially position yourbusiness in a way that's almost–
(10:20):
literally trying to trick searchengines.
And what's going on here is it'ssaying, no, really what you've
got to do now is you've got tothink about the questions that
your customers are asking intheir journey to buying your
goods and services.
And you need to do the homeworkto validate that those questions
(10:41):
are the ones that are beingasked.
Don't just, you know, come upwith a series of questions and
then start creating questionscontent that answers those
questions.
Now, why this is important,because remember, AI or large
language models, these are notsentient.
We can't even define sentientbeings, by the way.
(11:04):
Consciousness and awareness isnot something that humans can
really understand.
So it's hitting a moving targetwhen we say that something's
going to become sentient at somepoint.
Because it could also be soprogrammed that it would mimic
what we would consider asentient being.
(11:25):
However, it's completely not.
Now, of course, this is allsubjective and it kind of gets
crazy.
And with the advent of all thesci-fi stuff, you know, people's
minds and imaginations kind ofgo crazy.
But the idea is.
is that you want to provideanswers to those questions.
(11:45):
So when artificial intelligenceis looking for the most relevant
answers to those questions,you've got content already set
up in a way that it can see itand then it can refer to those
answers.
Because when you think aboutsearch engines, think like this.
It used to be where you wouldhave what you would call the
(12:08):
sales funnel.
Right.
So at the top of the salesfunnel is where you realize that
you need something or wantsomething.
And then you do some research.
And then once you do theresearch, you're performing
multiple searches on Google orwherever.
And then as you move down thepath toward making a purchase,
then that's kind of the laststep other than, you know,
(12:30):
wanting to get reviews or thingslike that.
So the idea in this whole salesfunnel cycle is if you're
talking with with ChatGPT orGemini or some of these other
models that are up and coming,what you're going to find is
that this conversational piecewill bypass multiple searches.
(12:52):
And that entire cycle will alltranspire in one quick
conversation with artificialintelligence.
Now, if it sounds crazy to you,I want you to know I do this
right now.
I'm working on a sunroom.
I'm renovating it behind myhouse and I'm asking a lot of
(13:14):
questions about, you know,stretching screens over large
areas or things like that.
And what it's doing is it'stelling me how to do it.
And then I'm asking where to buya screen.
It's given me recommendations.
And then I'm asking about, well,do certain screens block out
more light than others, whichthere are according to that
(13:35):
research.
And then I get to pick basedupon the price.
And then it gives me links whereI can click and go in and buy
it.
Now, I'm doing this right now.
And as you can imagine, aspeople get more and more used to
it, the way that we're doingsearches today is is going to
feel antiquated.
Every generation thinks thatwe're at the cusp of technology
(14:01):
and that we know everything andthat we're at the height of all
knowledge from the humanexperience.
However, just research somethinglike nutrition.
Take a hard look at what wetruly don't understand about the
food we eat.
And talk to a nutritionist andyou're going to get answers all
(14:24):
over the map.
You dig deep enough, you'regoing to find out that meat has
gotten a bad rap since about,you know, what, 1950.
And that the carbohydrates rollin the evolution of the food
pyramid.
I mean, just since the 90s hasbeen dramatic.
(14:46):
And so if you think that we'reat the cusp of technology
because we carry our own cellphones and ask Siri a few
questions, I think the world'sgoing to get upended again.
And your kids are going to belike, wow, I can't believe you
searched like that.
I can't believe the Internet waslike that.
Now, if we move on, I want tomove to another article here.
(15:11):
And there are several entitiesthat are big into search engine
optimization and provide toolsto help out with that.
And I've used this toolhistorically.
I don't currently use it.
It's SEMrush or SEMrush.
You may have heard of differentpronunciations.
(15:32):
But this is a tool that'sgenerally keeping their hand on
the pulse of SEO because this iswhat they do.
And so let's talk about a coupleof quotes from SEMrush's
article.
And here's the title of thearticle.
Basically, we studied the impactof AI search on SEO traffic.
(15:53):
And here's what they say.
First pull quote.
included in AI overviews, GoogleAI mode, chat GPT, cloud, and
perplexity, could impact digitalmarketing and SEO industry
traffic and revenue in thecoming years.
So that's a pretty importanttopic if you count on the
(16:15):
Internet to help drive business.
Digital marketing andSEO-related topics may start
driving more visitors from AIsearches to websites than from
traditional search by early2028.
Let's read that again.
Digital marketing andSEO-related topics may start
(16:36):
driving more visitors from AIsearch to websites than from
traditional search in 2028.
And so you're seeing here thefirst articles talking about
zero clicks, and now we're kindof getting a different spin from
SEMrush.
So you can kind of see the noiseand people trying to put it
together.
(16:56):
Now, none of us can see thefuture, but...
we are seeing that AI isdefinitely playing a role in
both of these models.
That's something we can derivefrom either one.
Their next quote is, if thedefault Google search experience
becomes AI mode, this transitioncould happen much sooner, which,
(17:17):
you know, I've got my hand insome resources behind the
scenes.
And as such, one thing that is alot of the chatter not publicly
known talked about is how fastthis is going to be rolled out.
And I don't feel privy to talk alot about that today.
(17:38):
But the idea is it's coming andit's going to be sooner than
later.
Check this one out.
ChatGPT weekly active users greweight times from October 2023 to
April 2025 and are now over 800million.
(17:59):
So you see what's going on here.
You know, you got the Google,which has been the big gorilla,
you know, in Internet marketingfor a long time.
Now we're seeing that with theadvent of all these large
language models, we're startingto see that, you know, people
are finding their favoriteflavor of ice cream as they go.
(18:20):
Now, there's also a lot offactors beyond the scope of
these articles that are worth atleast thinking through a little
bit.
You see, these models are allpredicated on the accuracy of
the data and being able to giveyou good information.
That's why I use Google.
(18:41):
because Google search enginetypically provides you with the
most reliable results.
And so you get what you need.
So you use it again.
And that's kind of their market.
That's also why they reallydon't like people trying to do
things to make their websiteslook better than they are,
because you're kind of cheatingthe system and you're devaluing
(19:02):
the search results by doing so.
And so by not playing by therules, you're actually causing a
lot of problems, right, for themand other search engines.
So I forget where I was goingwith that.
But where was I going with that?
1,800 users.
I'm not really remembering whereI was going with that.
(19:25):
But basically when you look atthese– oh, here it is.
This is what I was going to say.
When you look at these models, alot of them– are coming across,
based on my research, as beingbiased, and they're also not
giving a neutral voice todifferent subjects.
(19:47):
And so the problem is, isthey're adopting the
philosophical bias of thecompanies that are developing
them.
And I've seen this in a lot ofcases.
Now, I've done this with...
with ChatGPT in some like, I'llpick like really controversial
stuff and just see what it does.
(20:08):
And in general, I find that it'sa little bit more neutral than
the other search engines, buthere's kind of the thing.
The adoptability of artificialintelligence will be its ability
to not try to push a narrativeor a bias onto its people and
allow people to make their owndecisions.
(20:30):
Now, of course, there are goingto be people that are just going
to read headlines and they'regoing to trust whatever AI tells
them.
And that's kind of dangerous.
We're already seeing, I saw thisarticle, I think I shared in the
last podcast, where people areactually developing a psychosis
because what you're getting isyou're getting this, a
(20:53):
confirmation bias, meaning thatthese AIs are just agreeing with
people and confirming thatthings that aren't right, and
it's actually making them thinkthings that they shouldn't
think, and it's actuallydamaging certain people, which I
assume they probably had someissues anyway.
But if it's reinforcingsomething that's not true, then
(21:14):
you can kind of see thoseissues.
And believe it or not, there's alot of crazy articles out there
about what's going on withinthat.
So the idea is we don't know howthat's going to play out either.
And these things aren't reallyfiguring into that.
But obviously it's dangerous ifthey're going to do some kind of
(21:37):
thought control.
And for deep thinkers or peoplewho want to see the alternative
view to certain subjects or justwant to get a neutral view, if
they start to see that thesesway in a biased way and pick up
on it, then how well they'readopted could be influenced as
well.
(21:57):
And I have seen it where it'spretty bad, some of these
things, how biased they can be.
Check this statistic out.
The average AI search visitor is4.4 times as valuable as the
average traditional organicsearch visitor based on
conversion rates.
(22:19):
Okay, so what is a conversionrate?
A conversion rate is ameaningful action.
So, for example, if you'retrying to generate phone calls,
well, that should be aconversion you're tracking.
If your Google Ads person is nottracking conversions and they're
focused on impressions, then youneed to have a talk with your
(22:39):
Google Ads person.
But the idea is that conversionsare 4.4 times as valuable than
traditional organic search.
Wow.
I mean, you know, your businessis not about clicks.
Your business is about calls,right?
And so if we're seeing that it'sthat much more effective, then
(23:02):
it's really relevant that westart thinking through exactly
how that's going.
Moving on, one of the quoteshere is LLMs, remember, large
language models.
They tend to equip users withall the information they need to
make a decision.
By the time they reach yoursite, they are ready to convert.
(23:26):
You see that?
See how much different thatbuying cycle is?
And that's incredibly differentbecause traditionally we would
try to create different placesin the person's journey from
wanting or needing something tomaking a purchase.
We would try to inject ourselvesinto different searches along
(23:47):
that journey to try to eitherpush them further down the
funnel or encourage them to buy,you know, our client's stuff or
whatever.
And then you're seeing that nowit's all being kind of mashed
together in one quickconversation.
And so as you're seeing thishappen more and more, now think
about the value that that bringsto the consumer.
(24:09):
I no longer have to performthree, four, five, ten different
searches.
Now I can start a conversationabout wanting a new pair of
shoes or more screen in mysunroom or the best paint to use
on my deck.
And then I can ask a lot ofquestions and then I can say,
where do I get that?
And I get the answers.
And so you're seeing that from aconsumer perspective, it's much,
(24:34):
much more efficient.
So moving on, ChatGPT searchprimarily cites pages that rank
21 or lower in traditionalsearch almost 90% of the time.
ChatGPT search primarily citespages that rank 21 or lower in
traditional search almost 90% ofthe time.
(24:57):
That's kind of interesting, huh?
That top page thing is...
We need to think through that alittle bit.
Check this out.
Reddit and Quora, Q-U-O-R-A, arethe most commonly cited domains
in Google AI overviews.
Now, what's interesting is thatyou're seeing that almost like
(25:20):
what different search enginesvalue may also align...
may or may not also align withtheir philosophical biases,
which that would be kind ofinteresting.
So are you playing in Reddit'ssandbox?
Are you playing Quora's sandbox?
Should you?
I mean, these are big questions.
(25:42):
Half of ChatGPT links point tobusiness or service websites,
including that large languagemodels often rely on company
websites as key sources.
Now, see, this ties back in toexactly how this is going to
function on business companystyle websites.
(26:03):
Now, keep in mind, we got thefirst article where it talks
about no click.
And here we're talking about howit does still affect websites
and traffic and journeys andthat.
So you can kind of see that it'sgoing to mesh.
It's not one or the other.
It's not that this article'sright and the other one's wrong
(26:24):
or whatever.
vice versa, what you're going tosee is exactly what we see in
real life.
Different people are going to dodifferent things.
And the branches in which theway people will do things moving
forward could be significantlydifferent.
And people are going to startusing more and more what they
like.
(26:44):
And now here's the other side,too.
If we get back to thephilosophical bias, you know, if
one is leaning a certain waypolitically or on certain
subjects, and then they get aconfirmation bias, people tend
to migrate toward things thatreinforce what they already
believe.
(27:04):
So, for example, if you believea certain thing about a
religion, then what's going tohappen is you migrate toward
literature that tells you howgreat your religious views are,
or non-religious views, atheismas well.
And then what you do is youmigrate toward that content
because you want to bereinforced that you're right,
(27:25):
and then you're going to startswimming in the same waters as
those people.
Well, you could imagine that ifthese AI models are appealing to
a certain philosophical view,that people are going to migrate
toward those views.
philosophical views.
So I find all this veryinteresting, especially when you
(27:49):
start to break down exactly howthis is going to play.
It's almost like you're going tohave to hedge your bet in
multiple places because businessis not supposed to tie in, at
least I don't think it is, itdoes.
It really shouldn't tie in a lotof things that oftentimes
(28:12):
businesses get drug into, youknow.
Anyway, I won't keep going anyfurther.
You can kind of take that reviewand take it.
So let's move on here and let'stalk about AI's search engine
shake.
Six considerations for brandsand marketers.
(28:35):
So this is kind of aninteresting article.
Let's dive into this article.
A couple of quotes that I pulledfrom it.
AI has undeniably shaken upnumerous industries with
marketing and search marketingat the forefront.
As Google AI overviews, rememberG-A-I-O, increasingly overlap
(28:57):
with organic search result, SEOhas surged back into the
spotlight.
So you see now, what they meanby that is back in...
There's multiple ways toadvertise on the internet.
One is paid advertising.
Another one is organic SEO.
And then you have this SEO kindof like bait and switch with a
(29:24):
lot of web people today.
Like they'll call local SEO.
What they really mean is yourGoogle business profile,
essentially.
And they're not really thinkingabout your website and your
content.
And so there's this idea thatthey basically try to manipulate
(29:47):
it in a way where you think SEOis one thing, but they're
talking about something else.
This isn't true with everyone,but I see it so often where
that's being kind of convoluted.
Now, If I'm right, and I thinkthe content that I'm reading is
right, it's all going to kind ofmarry into you've got to kind of
have this credibility factorwhere overall you're more
(30:10):
credible.
Well, one of the reasons thatI'm so down on the Google Ads
people who spin up their ownpages and run ads to those pages
is because it's not contributingto the cumulative effort, the
cumulative credibility.
And if they start putting thesesplash pages on your Google
(30:31):
business profiles and thingslike that, they're just creating
more confusion.
And it may feel good today, butas you're seeing here, it's not
going to continue down that pathlong term.
And so preparing and buildingthat cumulative effort and that
(30:52):
overall credibility is one ofthe things that your business
needs really needs to kind ofprocess and kind of looking at
how this is going.
And so part of what they'resaying is search engine
optimization is search back tothe forefront because people are
like, wow, I need to beoptimized for GAIO.
I need to be optimized forcitations so that, you know,
(31:16):
chat GPT will reference mybusiness when questions are
being asked.
And so therefore, before I godump all this content and spend
time building it, I'd better getmy ducks in a row and know the
questions that are being askedand have that technical research
performed on the front end.
And then if you go the way thatmost people are going and just
(31:41):
start spitting out content fromsearch engines and dropping it
on, well, that's where thingsare going to get kind of hairy
as we move forward.
Check this out.
This is another quote that Iliked here.
It says, before the rise of AI.
So you see, not coming AI.
(32:02):
It's here.
Searchers often visited multiplewebsites for comparison.
Google AI overviews streamlinedthis process.
So think about this.
Think that if you own a companyand you offer your product at a
certain price point and someoneelse offers at a price point,
you have certain terms, theyhave certain terms.
(32:24):
Now, I often do this indifferent ways with AI right now
for competitive research andthings like that.
But I'll ask for demographicinformation, price points, and
it gives it right back to me.
And so within a question, I canfind out all the businesses that
are offering a service in anarea, and I can find out how
(32:47):
much they charge for thatservice, and I can determine
which one that I want to usefrom that service.
And from that and then fromthere, I can click inside and
then look at that business.
So you see, it's a lot differentbecause now what happens is
people who were traditionallyjust going to go, well, let me
look for this.
(33:07):
And then they pick the resultthat's top of the page.
They make a quick decision on ifit's something that they feel is
worth the cost or not.
And then what you're seeing isnow they're able to just talk to
artificial intelligence.
And by talking to it, they canget those comparisons brought up
right there in front of them.
(33:28):
And so they no longer even haveto really do a lot of homework
to do comparisons.
And so if you're seeing yoursales start to decrease or
you're seeing different actionstaking place, Part of this whole
thing is the idea that peopleare getting smarter on how to
use these tools.
And they're really not hard touse at all.
(33:49):
When I'm driving home, I'll bedriving home tonight, and I'm
probably going to have a couplequestions.
And I'm going to click and askartificial intelligence those
questions.
And just talk to it likesomeone's in the passenger side
of my car.
And I'll probably make a coupledecisions about a couple hobbies
that I have.
And I'm going to check inbecause...
(34:09):
Chat's also notoriously reallybad about not getting up-to-date
information, especially if it'sa niche.
For example, if I'm working onprogramming and I want to know
where something's at within aneditor like Bubble, then what
I'll find is that theinformation often is not
(34:31):
accurate.
But they're getting better.
They're getting better andbetter as they go.
So let's look at this lastquote, and then I want to jump
into the flip side of this coin.
You want to stay tuned for this.
While AI generated contentoffers efficiency, it also
carries risk, including contentdevaluation and search
(34:53):
penalties.
AI content still requires, andhere we go, human optimization.
Are any of you guys out thereright now Cranking out content
with artificial intelligence andchunking it into your blogs.
Are your SEO people, which Iknow for a fact, they're doing
this right now.
(35:15):
They're creating, they're justwhipping out AI content and
throwing it on your site andkind of patting themselves on
the back.
And then you think they'recreating all this content.
And in reality, they're justwhipping it out with AI.
So what's it saying?
AI content still requires humanoptimization.
human intervention, humanediting the content, human
(35:38):
authoritative content.
You see, and that goes back tothose EEAT principles that we've
talked about previously.
You don't want to go throughthis wide gate where you're just
cranking out AI content.
You want to have your custominformation sitting out there
that will help you show up asthis trend continues to
(36:05):
basically spiral at a just hyperspeed, whatever rate you want to
put to it.
Feel free to insert your ownnanosecond analogy.
So check this out.
This is really interesting.
This is from a source calledTom's Guide.
And here's the title of this.
(36:27):
This is crazy.
AI Slop.
is killing search results, andhere's how to stop it.
Now, if you remember, I wastelling you that I jumped on
YouTube three or four weeks ago,and I was looking for something,
and I was scrolling through, andthere was a famous sports
athlete.
(36:48):
You will know him if youfollowed the NBA in the 90s.
And he was talking about someonethat is playing basketball
today.
And the thing was, is that I waslistening to it and I'm like,
wow, that's exactly what I wouldthink.
And then I realized it was AIgenerated.
It wasn't even him.
And so then I'm like, well,that's the stupidest thing.
(37:08):
It's who cares what AI generatesas far as what someone said.
And then I started going throughand then I start seeing all this
stuff.
AI content.
I watched one thing and it wasshowing, like I watched some MMA
stuff and I watched this onething where this one person was
doing this incredible move andthen I'm like, oh, that's AI
(37:32):
too.
Oh, that's AI too.
And by the time I was done, I'mlike, I don't, I don't care to
be on the site because I can'tseparate what's real and what's
not real.
I don't really have the time todo it.
And I don't really care to play,you know, kids games with
something that AI can do.
So I believe this is where we'regoing here.
(37:52):
So let's look at a couple ofquotes.
If you've noticed your Googlesearches getting worse lately,
you're not imagining things.
Whether you're looking for thebest travel gear or a banana
bread recipe or how to fix yourWi-Fi, you're likely wading
through a sea of vague,repetitive, AI-generated
(38:14):
content.
Okay, now, this is huge.
This is absolutely huge to stopon this.
So here's the thing.
Remember, search engines maketheir, like Google, and in the
large language models, the ideais to pull the most relevant
content And so they have workedhard over the last 20 years to
(38:35):
weed out all the games that wereplayed over the years to kind of
like fake or trick the systeminto bringing your website to
the top of search engines.
And so now we've got this messthat's starting to happen on the
Internet.
And what's going to happen iseither these search engines–
(38:56):
like Google, are going to figureout what to do with it and
devalue this junk, or theinternet's going to become this
mess of AI content that no onecares about and will just
frustrate people and willpolarize them to use other
methods to find what they need.
And so you can imagine that ifyou're contributing to the
(39:18):
noise, And Google and othersearch engines and chat models
and large language models, allthese are going to figure out
how to weed that out.
And then you've got a whole seaof this junk on your website, in
your blogs or whatever.
Then what's going to happen isyou're going to get swept up in
this whole thing.
(39:39):
So if your SEO guy is doing thistechnique, well, guess what?
This is not going to help yourbusiness out.
Now, of course, there's levelsand conversations, but the
spirit of that comment is verymuch the reality of today.
Check this quote out.
(40:00):
I love it.
Welcome to the era of AI slopthat's quietly polluting the
Internet.
Now, if this is happening, thisguy's not the only one.
You probably have sensed thatwhere you go to the site and
you're like, what is this?
big article.
And by the way, length ofarticle.
(40:20):
People have this misconceptionthat some people don't read long
articles anymore.
Not true.
It's the type of content.
If you're really interested indigging deep into something, you
want more details.
So don't fall into this.
I've got to say it in fiveseconds.
Think about the type of contentand how much research is needed
in order to provide goodanswers.
(40:43):
I'm going to read a couple moreof these.
These are just really fun.
What's worse, a lot of thisAI-generated content gets
rewarded by algorithms becauseit technically checks the SEO
boxes.
So what's that say about thoseSEO boxes moving forward?
If they can't weed out the junk,the algorithms are going to have
(41:04):
to change.
They've got to figure out a wayto do it.
They've got to figure out a wayto figure out what's going on.
Now, This leads to a lot ofquestions about what are you
going to do moving forward.
But as you can see, these arevery relevant and real big
problems as we move forward onthe Internet.
And so what's the answer foryour business?
(41:27):
It's the same thing we've beentalking about here for about a
month now.
Work on your EEAT scores.
Work on creating originalcontent and doing homework as to
the questions that arelegitimately being asked.
It's time to do the real work.
Now, of course, this isproblematic because if you're an
(41:48):
electrician or you have certaintrades and you're hiring a
marketing team to do it, thenyou're You've got some tough
decisions to make.
Who's going to be in control ofyour voice?
And how do you know that they'renot using AI or generative
content to publish that and thenfake you into thinking that
they're doing more than theyare?
(42:11):
And so, you know, I just findthis incredibly interesting as
I'm going through here becausewhat you're seeing in the
background is– Everything thatwe've been talking about, and
I'm no Nostradamus, I just havemy hands on the pulse of what I
see happening on the internet.
(42:31):
And then this cumulative effort,this whole world of, I'm going
to pay this person to do this,this person to do that, this
person to spit this out, andit's not cohesive, and it
doesn't present you as anauthoritative resource, you're
going to be paying people tospit out content that is going
(42:52):
to ultimately hurt yourbusiness.
And you're going to have a lotof cleanup to do once all this
stuff keeps sorting out.
Once you see these algorithmsstart figuring things out, once
they start to realize that, hey,people want to see what people
are really saying, not these AIgenerated models.
Now, of course, you know, we seethem in movies and things like
(43:14):
that.
Of course, it's entertaining tosee it.
But when you're looking for realinformation, If I were to go to
YouTube and pull a quote fromthat video, I would look like– I
wouldn't look very intelligent,right?
So the idea is that you wantreal stuff when you need the
(43:36):
real stuff and you don't have tofight through all the noise.
This also shows that the days oflazy marketing, the days of
looking at– going to thesewebsites, these do-it-yourself
builders, and putting togetherthese kind of sites that are
(43:58):
just kind of basically junksites.
One of the terms usedhistorically was scrape sites.
These sites scrape together withcontent.
They're going to die.
And so getting serious andhiring someone who's serious
about it is actually going to bepart of the criteria to put you
(44:20):
on the forefront of these issuesrather than playing catch-up.
And the idea of going cheap, forlack of a better word, or trying
to cheat the system is going toblow up.
I think one of the firstpodcasts I talked about was a
(44:42):
concept called PBNs, or PrivateBlog Networks.
And this is horrible.
It's this cat and mouse game,basically, where what you're
seeing is that search engineoptimization companies are
building all these sites up, andthey own all of them, but they
try to fake Google into thinkingthat they don't.
(45:03):
And then they interlink thesefor their clients, and then try
to artificially push them to thetop of search engines.
And, you know, it's just such adangerous game, especially...
As technology is getting betterand better, I mean, do you
really think they're going to beable to hide this from search
engines forever?
(45:25):
They're living for the day.
And then plus, do you want toget caught up in something like
that?
Because there are stiffpenalties for private blog
networks.
So if you want to go check thatout, you can go check that out.
But you want to make sure thepeople that you're working with
are people you can trust thatare actually doing real work and
not following any of thesepractices.
(45:48):
So a lot to think about andprocess and discuss with your
team, your people that arehelping market your company.
And then part of the idea is toask questions.
Say, okay, when it comes tolarge language models or AI or
chat GPT, however you want tosay it, or Gemini, whatever,
(46:09):
Because Gemini is coming, that'swhy I keep talking about it.
I've just seen things behind thescenes on that.
That's why I'm bringing that oneup a lot.
It's just kind of ingrained inmy head.
But as you're looking at thesethings, the big question that
you need to ask is, what are youdoing to research content to see
(46:30):
that I'm actually going to bepossibly used as a citation?
in a conversation.
What questions should we buildthat content around and how do
you get there?
And if you get an answer like,we're going to talk about it and
build it based around a keyword,that's way, way wrong answers.
(46:55):
The other thing is, is how areyou building the reputation of
my company?
Are your services contributingto that cause?
And if so, how are theycontributing to that cause of
building my reputation up for mycompany?
And if you're not getting goodanswers, then you really need to
shift gears because I don't knowwhat the percentage is, okay?
(47:20):
The bottom line is we are– wedon't engage.
Like I never– We don't everrecommend a company.
We got our own network ofcompanies that we work with that
are our partners.
And what we do basically is wework in that group because we
know we have a certain standardthat we want to keep.
(47:43):
But I can tell you that we alsoinvestigate or have to pull
things from other companieswithin our company, like other
marketing firms.
And most of the time, thepractices that they are using
are generated or implementedbecause it maximizes their
revenue for their company, andit's not good for your company.
(48:07):
And some of them, frankly, don'thave a grasp on marketing.
They've just taken some courseson a couple things, or they
built their company around onelittle piece of the puzzle.
And that's also going to beextremely problematic moving
forward.
(48:27):
So hopefully this gives you foodfor thought.
This is kind of like what I wantto do, at least as one segment
moving forward and over thebowl, is to kind of give you a
place where you can look atwhat's going on from the web.
I'll throw a little bit ofcommentary in between it.
And then it gives you food forthought to kind of think about
what's happening on the Internetand let you know that, you know,
(48:49):
hey, this is real.
You know, these websites are notsaying this just to say it.
You know, these are websitesthat...
Bank on being able to offervaluable insight into what's
going on in the world ofmarketing and the internet.
And hopefully what this is goingto do is prepare you, give you
(49:10):
more confidence to understandwhat's exactly happening, and
then be able to think about yourbusiness and your best practices
for your company so that you canbe successful in as this
revolution on the internetcontinues to gain momentum.
So until next time, this is Kenwith Over the Bull.
(49:33):
I hope you have a great week andtake care of yourself out there.
SPEAKER_00 (49:38):
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.
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