Meredith's husband: 0:24

Let's see what are we going to talk about this week. Let's see, I'm just kidding, I know exactly what we're going to talk about Insider's Inbox Going to talk today about something that came to my inbox Insider's Inbox, seo Insider Ooh, I am the insider. Yes, let me give you access to my inbox. Doesn't that sound exciting? Tmz, come over it. Actually, I think it is kind of exciting, I know, because this week, do you know what happened? Yeah, earlier this week, tuesday on this week, google had their IO event. Yes, and so that's their annual big thing where the CEO of Google comes out and talks and remember when Steve Jobs used to do that at the Apple event and then all the heads of all the independent portions of Apple would come out and say what's happening at Apple. So Google does that too. What does IO stand for? Input output? Oh, is that like ACDC? Well, I don't know what ACDC technically stands for, but that's alternating current and, I think, direct current. I don't know why ACDC came up with that name. Google is input output like computer, like a person sitting at a computer and typing stuff in, putting stuff in and getting stuff out. Okay, so, google CEO and I'm not sure how you pronounce his name, but I think it's Sundar Pichai. He's an Indian fellow.

Meredith's husband: 1:37

Led with his sort of keynote was how this thing called AI is changing search. Have you heard of this? Ai, ai, ai, how AI is transforming Google Search. And then the head of Google Search, a woman by the name of Liz Reed Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah, it is, I'm pretty sure. Yes Said quote that the new AI mode is the future of search. Oh, wow, so AI came out a few years ago? Well, it came out decades ago. So AI came out a few years ago. It came out decades ago. But chat GPT came out a few years ago and really catapulted everything forward in a pretty short amount of time. Everybody in the internet industry tried to then start including AI features, right Including Google, and so they had their AI overviews and we talked about that for a long time, and it was at that time I started getting a ton of questions from my clients as a consultant about what do we do? How do we get our website into AI search results. So that's when that all started happening. Then, more recently, just in the last couple of months, google came out with something called their AI mode, which is I described this on one of our very recent episodes very similar to ChatGPT's search and it's just very much a Gemini. It's powered by Gemini, but Gemini is like the model that providing all the information, but it's not the we don't. You can go to Google Gemini, but AI mode is something it's right.

Meredith's husband: 3:06

At Google search results, if you look at, if you do a Google search, you know how there are tabs at the top, yeah, and they, I think, are like all results, images, videos and that sort of changes, depending on the type of search that you do. Like some searches might come back with like news, some might be images or videos or views or whatever. The first one, the first one in that list, is now AI mode. Oh, really, yeah, so it is presumably not going to change. It's there for good and literally Google said this last week this is the future of search. Wow, and it looks a whole lot like a sort of chat GPT type interface, which is what I said is going to happen. Like Google is going to adapt they have adapted and like Google is going to adapt, they have adapted.

Meredith's husband: 3:50

Google actually started this process before ChatGPT came out in 2019. And sort of surprised everyone. Google started making changes like this, back when TikTok started to get a lot of market share, because young people were going to TikTok, often even to do searches, to look for stuff. Yeah, all those kids. Yeah, if you wanted to know how to do something, yeah, and I actually found this. I did a survey myself, yes, and I said how do you find new information, like new ways of doing things? And some people wrote back and said, tick tock, like five years ago, I was blown away because I would. I would just go to youtube. Yeah, so would I, but but again the point, they're not going to google, they're not going to youtube.

Meredith's husband: 4:33

The way people searching is changing, so I'll come back to that thought a little bit later on. So, in terms of business owners and website users, this creates a couple of problems. Actually, people are really kind of frantic about this, but there are two problems. One problem is that this creates this new AI mode especially is resulting in less traffic to websites. Oh, no, because if you think about it, you go to Google, you get all your results, you have a conversation right there with Google. You're going to need to go and visit fewer websites.

Meredith's husband: 5:11

Now people are all up in arms about that very upset that their traffic dropped. Which is hilarious to me that people are angry literally angry at Google and saying put it back to the way it was, oh really. And at the same time they're saying Google is dead because the future of search is AI. And they're angry at Google because Google has adapted and is including AI. They're saying to Google put it back so that you can die quietly. Well, they're probably saying put it back so I can get more traffic. It's just change, it's just okay.

Meredith's husband: 5:39

So my argument to that is typically a website owner is going to have a conversion rate of like one or 2%. Okay, that means for every hundred people that visit your website, one or two of them are going to take the action that you want them to take. So 98% of your traffic at best, is kind of useless to you. Right, right, yeah. So who cares if your traffic drops? As long as your conversions don't drop, as long as, at the end of the day, you're still making the revenue that you want to make, then who the fuck cares if you get a hundred visitors or two visitors, it doesn't really matter. Or and I'll get to this in a second too what if you don't get any visitors. That's an interesting thought, okay.

Meredith's husband: 6:20

The second problem is that traffic from AI is not really trackable. It's not trackable as traffic from AI. Wait, wait, wait. You just said traffic from AI is not really trackable, unlike traffic from AI. I don't think that's what I said. It is what you said. Okay, so I will restate Thank you, traffic. Go back to hear me say the right thing and you saying that you. Oh, if I'm right, if I'm right, this whole conversation is staying in. Trust me, I don't think we'll be hearing it. Okay. So the second problem with AI is that the traffic that you do get from your website, you can't say I. There's no way to say I got this traffic from AI. It's just going to look like it's coming from Google, so it's not really trackable. So that's an issue that people inside the industry are talking about. People outside the industry probably not so much. That is a very big one, though inside the industry.

Meredith's husband: 7:12

Okay, so Google is changing. That's obvious. This is probably the biggest change ever. Yeah, in Google's history, there was a really big change in 2007, I think it was when they included something called Universal Search and that just brought images and videos and news and all that stuff together in a single place, because before that, like Google Image Search was different and Google News was different, you couldn't do a search all in one place. And then you know other feature snippets were huge, local listings, everything, everything, all the stuff. This is going to be the biggest. Okay, I can tell you're totally. I just get to the point.

Meredith's husband: 7:47

There's going to be this thing called and I don't know how this is going to work but it's called agentic search, agentic integration. How do you spell that? A g, and that might not be how you pronounce it a g, e, n, t, I, c, yeah, I would think it Argentique, and that is going to be kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, but it means that Google is going to be, the Google algorithm is going to be a little bit independent in how they show results to you, independent of what. So okay, so traditionally you do a Google search and there's like 10 listings, yeah, and maybe there's some ads and maybe there's local listings. Well, imagine if it was just a blank canvas and not only could Google show you, like, say, a grid of videos, it could show you anything. See, and Google is even chiming in right now, instead of a structured list, you're picturing a blank canvas where algorithms yes, holy shit, I'm very smart, okay. Algorithms yes, holy shit, I'm very smart, okay, google, stop, oh, my God, okay.

Meredith's husband: 8:47

So not only is it going to be completely flexible, it's going to figure out what you like, what, what sort of format do you like, what? Yeah, and so a Gentic search is going to also be able and this has not rolled out yet. So this is kind of what we're all expecting and what Google has hinted is coming. You're going to be able to say you, meredith, you're going to be able to do a search. You're going to be able to go into AI mode and say I want to dress sort of like blah, blah, blah. That makes me look blah, blah, blah. And if all you have to do is put in a upload, a photo of yourself, google will be able to go out and find all the dresses that it thinks match your query and put it on you and show you images of what you're going to look like.

Meredith's husband: 9:26

Yeah, pretty exciting, right? That's amazing. Yeah, I figured you would like that one. I hope it's organic. Cut it. And then this agentic search will go a step further and you will be able to put stuff right in your cart and buy it right from Google without even actually going to the website. What? Yeah, now I don't know how that's going to work, but supposedly there are integrations already in the works that are going to make that happen. I'm already designing my dress, yeah, and I can see by your eyes Meredith has just glazed over and there's drool coming out of the corner of her mouth Dress land.

Meredith's husband: 9:57

So one thing I got to say is like fucking ChatGPT, you're dead. Chat GPT will never be able to compete with that. There is no way. Yes, okay. So my girl in chat GPT? Okay, but she is not going to be able to do what Google is going to do. But, but that's okay, that's fine. Chat GPT is amazing at what it does, sure, and the agentique is going to be great at what it does.

Meredith's husband: 10:25

Openai, the owner of ChatGPT, has a very rosy future. I think yes, because they are going to power all the apps, all the things that we use, that have AI built in. That AI is all coming from OpenAI, wow, okay. Chatgpt is the interface that you and I use. It became a big hit because it was sort of Helpful, it was new, it was novel, okay, but Google is going to just crust the shit out of Chat GPT. Crust the shit. They're going to crust them all over. They're going to crust everything. All the kids are saying that, yeah, you're going to have some crust later on. Pizza from Hungry Root Crust. I think they need to make a pizza. That's just crust. Yeah, they do. It's called bread, oh, focaccia.

Meredith's husband: 11:14

Another way that AI search, ai mode, can help brands is if AI mode itself, in the responses, mention a brand, that's going to give that brand a huge advantage. So that's kind of the direction that the SEO industry is going inside. That way, I'm thinking about it. Like I said, there's a lot of SEOs that were just really pissed off, but I was like I can grab a clue man Like this. I look at this and this solidifies my future as an SEO consultant, because it just got a whole lot harder and nobody knows what's going on.

Meredith's husband: 11:50

But you do, and all the SEO newbies who thought it was easy, you just tell, explain how you write. Image. Alt tags are like this is new. I don't know what to do. I love it, okay, moving on. This is new. I don't know what to do. I love it, okay, moving on, this is such an exciting time in SEO you have no idea you are, I love it.

Meredith's husband: 12:10

Okay, you were going to say, I was going to say so, how do you get? Yeah, so what does this mean for us? Is that what you're going to say? Yeah, what does it mean for us? That was next in my bullet list. I am clairvoyant. It means you have to adapt. Right, that is to be honest. The one thing that good SEOs are good at is adapting, because SEO changes all the time. Yeah, inside the SEO industry, yeah, this is going to be challenging, to be honest, because my clients they're going to want data, they're going to want loads of data. They're going to want very granular decisions to make On a broader scale.

Meredith's husband: 12:47

Let's go back to what Google said, or has been saying, probably for two decades, but especially they said verbatim, like six months ago if you're doing good stuff, you don't have to worry about it. Okay, and what they said earlier this week. One of the things that they said was what the fuck did they say? They said that their goal is to get their users the information that they want as quickly as possible. They are always going to do that, and that means most likely the days of having a long list of results and looking through website by website. Does that one have what I want? Pages after pages after pages. Those days are numbered, really. Yes, they will probably leave that option there. They'll probably rename the tab like old school SEO, old school Google or something like that For those with a lot of time on their hands.

Meredith's husband: 13:35

Yeah, but we want information as quickly as possible. Like TikTok, people go to TikTok because they get information. I guess I'm not a TikTok user, but I guess you get information very quickly. It's all about speed, wow, and we all want speed. I guess, like you, don't want to spend time looking through a list of websites. So that's the direction that SEO the industry is going. Wow, that's exciting. It's a little scary because there's a lot of change. You know people have not always, but for the last few years people have said oh, you should brand yourself as the AI search expert and I'm like but I'm not Right. But I am putting more information out there about this. This is the future of my career for the foreseeable future, but for 99% of website owners, continue doing the same stuff. Continue focusing on creating a good user experience, like Google has said it many, many times. Yeah, and you've said it Relax, stop doom scrolling articles about the SEO industry.

Meredith's husband: 14:38

Okay, I have to write it down. Relax, eat your hungry root pizza. Google, please stop, google, stop, that's enough. Google, google, stop talking. Hey, google, stop, can you turn your phone off? I figured it out. That's in half my videos on SEIQ, by the way. I'm talking about. Stuff Usually makes me look smart, though, so I leave it in, okay.