Meredith's Husband: 0:24

This is the final episode of 2025.

Meredith: 0:26

Holy smokes.

Meredith's Husband: 0:27

It's over. Almost. I'm assuming we're gonna make it.

Meredith: 0:31

I I hope we are.

Meredith's Husband: 0:32

But I thought I we should do a year in review. Everything. SEO and spoiler alert, AI. Who? AI changed a lot.

Meredith: 0:43

AI.

Meredith's Husband: 0:44

So what happened is cover, just you know, conceptually, what happened in 2025? What does that mean moving forward? And then next week we'll get into a little bit more about how we what we can do and how to prepare for 2026 as best we can.

Meredith: 0:57

Okay. And that will be in 2026.

Meredith's Husband: 0:59

Aaron Ross Powell That will be. It'll be the first week of 2026.

Meredith: 1:01

Got it.

Meredith's Husband: 1:02

As best we can, knowing that something is coming that we have no idea what's going to happen.

Meredith: 1:06

Oh, oh, I think. So how do we prepare for the unknown? So many things are coming.

Meredith's Husband: 1:10

So we started the year. Chat GPT was here. Everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people knew about it. It hadn't really changed the way people search. Back in January. I don't think I was using ChatGPT in January, at least not regularly. And definitely not to search. I don't know. Probably not many people were using it to search. Then Google came out with the AI overviews. So you do a search in Google, and up at the top it started giving you, instead of where it used to be featured snippets, it gave you AI overviews. And it was, and to be honest, it was really, from my perspective, they just renamed featured snippets and called it AI overviews. It did the same thing. Okay. So it was probably a different technology. Powering it had the same effect. And what that was doing is basically just summarizing the stuff that came up on the first couple pages of Google. Right. That's AI overviews.

Meredith: 2:08

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 2:09

Then I think more and more people started using Chat GPT to search for things.

Meredith: 2:14

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 2:14

And Google came out with their AI mode, which was the equivalent of using, you know, something like ChatGPT to search. Google then released their AI mode, which was a full, it's basically the same thing as ChatGPT.

Meredith: 2:26

Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 2:27

Powered by Gemini.

Meredith: 2:28

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 2:29

Okay. So then people using AI, I think, just exploded. Yes. Like on a massive scale, not just the way they used it to search, also to create stuff.

Meredith: 2:40

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 2:41

But especially, I think now, I mean, I think there's no doubt now, like AI has changed the way people search.

Meredith: 2:47

Search on the way people edit for photographers.

Meredith's Husband: 2:53

It's changed everything.

Meredith: 2:54

Oh, geez, everything.

Meredith's Husband: 2:55

And if it hasn't changed your life yet, or parts of I'm not saying that's changed your life. It has it has changed a lot of things. If that hasn't happened for you yet, definitely that I my money is that it will happen in 2026. I know that so like I said, I was, I don't think I was using ChatGPT at all in like January. I started using it late summer, early fall, something like that. I just got a recap. So you know how all these companies are sending you like your year in review, 2025 in review. So ChatGPT sent me a bunch of stats and it told me that I did uh 9,000 requests with Chat GPT over the course of the year. So I did most of those 9,000 in the last uh three, four months. I went from literally zero to what is that? That's probably almost a thousand per month.

Meredith: 3:43

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 3:43

Is that is that right? Is that my math? I don't know.

Meredith: 3:45

I don't know. It'll depend. It'll know when you started, and then you'll be able to go, oh yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 3:50

I'm doing a lot now. I use it a lot.

Meredith: 3:52

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 3:52

I was thinking about it earlier, and again, I my math's probably wrong, but I was thinking that means I must use it like a hundred times a day. And I thought, there are probably days that I don't speak to you a hundred times.

Meredith: 4:04

But also, I think that's counting every time you type something in.

Meredith's Husband: 4:09

Every time you hit enter, I believe. Exactly. Yeah.

Meredith: 4:12

Yeah. And so each conversation can continue to be a little bit more. Maybe ten hundred.

Meredith's Husband: 4:16

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's I figure it's kind of the same thing as sending text messages. Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, our use exploded. If it hasn't, like I said, if it hasn't happened for you, expect it in the next year. People also used it to change the way they create content. Probably even more massive explosion and how content is created.

Meredith: 4:36

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 4:37

And we we talked about this when we did the episode about the attention economy versus the trust economy. We used to be in the attention economy. We were there for like probably two decades after the rise of social media. Everybody's trying to get your attention.

Meredith: 4:50

Two decades?

Meredith's Husband: 4:51

Yeah.

Meredith: 4:51

Yeah. Yeah. Gosh.

Meredith's Husband: 4:53

Yeah. 2006, I think, is when Facebook came out. And there were there was social media before that, too. But I'm Friendster. Yeah. But let's say, let's say it's been two decades since social media has come out. And so now we don't have an attention to give anymore.

Meredith: 5:07

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 5:07

Like I had said in that episode, we spent it all. And so now, if you ask me, we are now in a what I call a trust economy. We are not in the attention economy. We don't have any more to give. It's now there's so much content. What do we trust? What are we going to see that because there's so much out there that is just completely generated by AI.

Meredith: 5:26

Yeah. What's real?

Meredith's Husband: 5:27

Yeah. So trust is huge. By the way, I will say that has always been a major component for SEO as well.

Meredith: 5:34

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 5:34

So one thing that people predicted at the beginning of the year was SEO is dead. SEO is going to die. And I would say that is one thing that has not happened. Yes. Like a few things have changed. The fundamentals of SEO are all pretty much exactly the same. It's just some of them have become more important than others, like trust signals.

Meredith: 5:51

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 5:51

We did an episode about that exclusively. Yeah. In my mind, the biggest way that AI has changed SEO is that you are now creating content for a machine to give to people. Now it used to be people used to think, oh, you need to do this for Google. You need to create content for that is not true. At least if you were doing good SEO, you were creating content for people, and Google was trying to decide what type of content is great for people. Now for certain people. Yeah. And now for the first time ever, you need to essentially create content that is going to please a machine, AI, so that AI picks it up and gives it to a person.

Meredith: 6:30

But ultimately, it's still the same because ultimately it's still for people.

Meredith's Husband: 6:35

It is still for people. So you have to take that into consideration. Yeah, you need to first please the machine and then please the person. You need to do both.

Meredith: 6:43

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 6:43

Which is new. That is a new phenomenon in SEO. That to me, that is the biggest change.

Meredith: 6:49

Pleasing a machine. That is a little dark.

Meredith's Husband: 6:53

Yeah, I know.

Meredith: 6:54

Anyways.

Meredith's Husband: 6:55

Yes. And that will change that changes just the way you format your content mostly. That's mostly what it's about.

Meredith: 7:04

And we also had like a lot of people, companies saying, hey, we'll do your blogs for you.

Meredith's Husband: 7:10

Oh yeah. If you've done that, please, that's going to be a major piece of advice for my 2026. Like, don't do that. You're going to put yourself in a hole. It's going to be hard to get out of.

Meredith: 7:20

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 7:20

So yeah, don't do that. I mean, absolutely. We should, I should do an episode also about just AI workflow, how you do create content with AI, how you use it to help you, but not do it for you.

Meredith: 7:31

Completely.

Meredith's Husband: 7:32

So a lot of people were saying SEO is dead. Oh, I'm not going to be able, you know, if you're an SEO, your job is kaput. I actually feel more secure now than I have in years.

Meredith: 7:41

That's great.

Meredith's Husband: 7:42

Because SEO has there's been no real big changes in like I would say a handful of years, probably more like a decade. And it was getting so what was out there has been out there for a few years. This is all new. Yeah. And this is all SEO. Now I realize the word, the term SEO, not ideal, you know, because you think of it like search engine optimism, like you think of it as just this old clunky thing. But I would encourage you to think of it just as search. People are searching. You want to get in front of them when they're searching for something that you have to offer. It's and that's what I when I'm a part of a team. Yeah, I'm the search guy. I'm the organic search guy. Doesn't matter how people are searching. A lot of it's on Google, some of it's on AI. Actually, moving forward, it's kind of probably mostly AI. But remember, AI is still using Google to search. AI gets AI gets information two different ways. They train on data. So they get a whole bunch of data. So uh OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, just as an example, they give their chat bot a whole bunch of information. It then just learns all of it. Okay. So it trains on that information. But if you do a search for, say, like a photographer near me, that is something that ChatGPT goes out and looks for because it's changing. So the information that it trains on is something that doesn't change over time. It's like concrete information. It's like the capital of Zimbabwe is, you know, obviously not Chicago, but something like that. That's not going to change.

Meredith: 9:14

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 9:14

It's a pretty good example, right?

Meredith: 9:16

Oh, incredibly.

Meredith's Husband: 9:18

All the, for example, uh medical studies that have been done. They're not going to be changed. There might be new ones, but all this all this knowledge that is concrete that is not going to change is like the information that it trains on.

Meredith: 9:31

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 9:31

Things that can change, like, hey, this year the photographers near me might be so-and-so and so-and-so, but those people might move. They might go out of business. New business. New ones might arrive. So when ChatGPT wants up-to-the-date information like that, it goes to Google. Like literally, that's where it goes. Ask, like, sit down and ask. And I have done this, trust me. You ask Chat GPT, I spent probably hours doing this trying to understand the details. It just goes to Google.

Meredith: 9:59

Right.

Meredith's Husband: 10:00

Okay. And it's just getting the information from Google. So it's, I don't even remember what my point was. I don't know. Okay. So how do we take this knowledge and prepare for 2026? Like I said, I'm going to do a full episode on this next week.

Meredith: 10:15

Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 10:16

And I've said this before, but the first thing you should do is don't take your SEO and like throw it out the window. Okay. It needs to be the foundation. If you don't have good SEO, if you are not in Google, you are not going to appear in AI search results when AI goes out and uses Google to search. Now, Google will tell you that. Chat GPT will tell you that. So don't freak out if somebody says, oh, SEO is the old stuff. We do the new stuff and just think that you're going to, ah, I don't need to do SEO. Okay. So I've said that before. Hopefully that's not new.

Meredith: 10:47

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 10:47

But keep that in mind. Don't freak out for 2026. We're just going to tweak it a bit. We're going to add new things. This is this is the same thing that SEO has done for two decades. A decade. Things change. Yeah. And so if you want to call it something else instead of SEO, that's fine by me. Call it search.

Meredith: 11:04

Cabbage.

Meredith's Husband: 11:06

Let's call it search. Okay. Or the sound guy would be like, plane, and we'd be like, I don't hear a plane. Oh, there it is. It's coming. Good job. My face was the funny part of that. So if I put this clip at the end, it's it was a lot funnier to see. That's what I'm saying.