Ai Search Impact on Local Business - (no longer will keywords work)

Hey, let's be straight up. No one loves change, especially when we're talking about running a business. But right now we are in the midst of a massive change. I don't think anyone on the planet or especially in the United States or any other developed country has not heard that AI is going to change everything that we do. Well, now we have a situation where, and I say now it's been about, it's been about four months since I started doing this with our clients. But what I, what's happening now is AI is involved in every search on every.

Every search platform. Now what does that mean? Well, it used to be a situation where you would put in a search term, keyword, whatever, and the Internet would go out, your search would go to the Internet and that search like Google, and it would deliver about eight or 10 results, right? And it would deliver to the results that, that would most likely based on the information on there to respond, and it would be served up and we would go from there. Now what is happening is instead of it going directly to the Internet, guess where it's going or directly to Google, it's going to AI now. And AI is now finding the best answer, not answers, the best answer for you. And when it does this, it has to have it speaks in a certain language. Now what I mean by that is, is it tries to read your website based on its understanding of what's on there. And if your website is not ready for this, in other words, it's almost like saying, hey, I only speak Spanish and it sent me to an English site and I'm having trouble reading it. Well, if that's the case, what are we going to do? I'm going to move on. Well, that's exactly what the AI is doing. So what happens is that little a AI overview or if you go to search on say through chat, GPT or grok or any of them, and your website is one of those that it says, hey, this isn't a language I don't understand. Guess what? You don't stand a chance of being seen. I know this is kind of heavy, but what's happening is literally overnight you go from saying, hey, I'm getting a lot of traffic, the phone's ringing to nada. And the reason is, is because we as consumers, when we get on our phones and we do a search, if you don't come up, we forget or we don't even know you exist. So you get this much attention no matter how big your brand is. I'll give you a perfect example Today in a meeting I was in, a very large group, stood up and after I mentioned about this and stood up and said that I was right now it wasn't I was searching for, right. They said, this is what happened. They are an H Vac group. And all of a sudden their phones stopped ringing. And it's because they did SEO the way it used to be. Keywords, right? And using eeat, that's still relevant, but it's not as relevant as making sure that AI can read your site well. Well, literally, they said all of a sudden their phone stopped ringing. Now, where I live in the Coachella Valley here in Southern California, it's 115, 18 degrees. And he says, my phone's not ringing. So he called the company and they were caught, I'm going to say, with their pants down, because they weren't ready for this. So they had to hustle. And with all the people in their group start making their websites AI ready. So that what can happen is now when those bots who are searching the. Searching the web first. So when you put in, hey, I'm looking for an H Vac company to help me repair my H Vac or my air conditioned, blowing warm air, it now goes to AI. AI now gathers all the information it can read and then it serves it back to you in a search result. Well, guess what? If your website, in this case, that group's websites did not have optimization for AI search. We call it AEO or geo, and that's artificial intelligence engine optimized. And so what happens is you just don't exist.

And that's tragic because it takes away all your, all the work that you've done. So what I want to point out today is there's a few things that you need to do as a business owner to make sure you're ready. Now, I want to give you an example here.

We've all seen this and we've heard about it where there's been this cute little town that we used to always go through the road went through there, we love visiting it. And then all of a sudden the state comes in and puts in this superhighway that's now a mile away from city center. Well, what happens? That city, it becomes forgotten because we zip past it at 70 or 80 miles an hour and we no longer go down Main street and see the cute little restaurant or the, the antique store or all these kind of things. And all of a sudden that, that business is no longer, excuse me, that city has kind of, if you will, fallen off the map and it struggles. So they have to work extra hard to let the people know that while we're going down the highway at 70, 80 miles an hour, there's an opportunity to come and see them. Well, when that happens, imagine how challenging it is for a local business to get back on track. Now here's a stat that I picked up from being at a four hour workshop over the weekend on AI and this was part of the discussion that almost none, now when I hear almost none, let's say 90% or more of local businesses a have no idea this is coming. And it's not coming, it's here, it's happening today. I challenge you to pick up your phone, put in a search term and see what comes back. It'll come up with an AI overview and then it will give you some responses. But we as humans are kind of naturally lazy. When we get a response or an answer that feels like, okay, that satisfied what I need, can guess what, I'm done. I don't even see what's below the line, I don't even see what's below that. I now move on and I decide, hey, I'm going to go to that company or that information, I'm going to follow up with it and that's who's going to get my business or attention for that period of time. Well, when a local business is not prepared for that, guess what? We're not going to see you. It's affecting everything. I'm talking about not just organic traffic, but I'm talking about also traffic that is paid for. Because again, everything that's happening on the web and I don't care what you know, it doesn't matter what search engine you're working with, they're all going through some AI piece. Why? Because we demand it. That's. And guess what, it's a race. This whole thing is a race. Everyone is trying to one up the other one to give you a better result. Now if you've ever watched me talk about this, I've said, hey, the search engines are like this big dating machine. You put in a query of what you're looking for, they go out with all their knowledge and all their searchability and information and they try to give you back your best match. And if the match, if the matches were poor, guess what? You're going to move from that search engine to somebody else. So they're going to give you the very best results they possibly can.

What does that mean? Well, if you're not getting your website up to date, with the language that the AI search bots can read and understand, and then put you as a solution. Maybe you show up in the AI overview, then you kind of don't stand a chance. It's like having a Snowball and it's 100 degrees outside. It just, it won't last very long. So what I did, this was about, like I said about four months ago, I created this little tool. It's really easy. You put your name and your email address and your URL in there and it will give you a readout of, hey, where are you at? Where is your website when it comes to is it ready for AI? And I did it because, again, when I first heard about this about four or five months ago, I thought, well, how relevant is this? How important is this? It's very important. Now, I had a kind of a cool experience during this particular workshop. I mentioned earlier there was. They also had a tool and I put my website in there. And you know, the first one they did, it got 49 out of 100. So it did poorly. And because I've already been doing this with my website, swingpointmedia.com I was anxious to see. But I was also hesitant because I didn't want to be. I'll be honest with you, I didn't want to be embarrassed because this is what I do. I. I didn't want to be embarrassed by putting it in there and get a bad grade. Well, I did really well. We got a B. It wasn't an A, but it was one of those things where the good chance of when you put in, you know, let's say AI automation or consulting in the Coachella Valley or La Quinta or Rancho Mirage, that I'm going to show up, my company's going to show up, and that's what I want. That's what we all want, right? Because here's the thing. We have been on this search drug for now several decades, meaning when we want to do something or we want information, what do we do? We go to the search engine. Whether it's Google, it's Bing, it's Apple, whatever, it doesn't matter. We go to that search engine to give us our starting point. And then from that point, it's like string on a, on a sweater. We just keep pulling on till we say, that's what I'm looking for.

So we're going to continue to go to those search locations. And here's the cool thing. There was over the same weekend they were talking about, hey, what's the percentage of people who now are using like ChatGPT or Grok or Perplexity. How many of those people are using, what's the percentage of people using that as their first tool? Very few people raised their hand. There were about 25 of us in the room and you know, two or three people raised their hands. We're still going to the main search tools, which in this case is Google. Google at the time was, was about 92% of all of our search traffic goes to Google. But this was the blow away moment. Is that extra layer in there? Guess who they're using for their AI bot? Open AI chat GPT. It's all going through there and then going to the, the search results. So we have to be prepared for this. It's almost like saying, hey, we look at the Farmer's Almanac, what's this winter gonna look like? Let's get prepared for it now. Let's not wait till it's raining outside or snowing outside and it's 13 degrees and think, oh geez, I gotta get my coat down from my winter clothes that's out in the garage. No, do it now. So how do we prepare for this? And this is really what I wanted to share with you today is one, the awareness that it's not coming, it's here. If you're a local business and you're saying, wow, I've never heard of any AEO or GEO and I've only maybe haven't done any optimization on your website. But maybe you have and, and you're. Yes, mainly keyword and long tail search engines. Here's some things that you have to be aware of.

Artificial intelligence. Those bots, when they come to your website, they can't read your content if it's not using what we call structured data. Now I'm not going to get too technical, I promise to keep it real here. But basically it says, hey, when I put content in there, it has the headline, it has the tagline, it has the body, it has a call to action, it has, in other words, it's very structured. Every article you put out or your page has a structure to it that the AI engine or the bot can read. And then it gathers that and then that's what comes back to overview or your search results. But if you don't have that, and no, it's not normal to have it on anything. So if you're on WIX or you're on WordPress or it doesn't matter if you don't have structured data, the chances of you showing up Are pretty, pretty. In fact, just forget it. You're not gonna, you're not gonna show up. The next one is schema. And again, schema is going to say, like as an example, let's say, you know, raise your hand if you have an FAQ page. Well, if you have FAQs, if you don't have a schema FAQ on there, when the AI bot comes to your website, it doesn't know that's what it is. It just sees it as some information, but it doesn't see it as frequently asked questions. And here's the cool thing. If you think about AI doing search, when you put something in there, what is it delivering you back? An answer, right? So another thing that you need to think about when you're putting together, or let's say updating your website is what I'll call answer clusters. And this is nothing more than an FAQ page with schema. And it's helping you under, it's helping the AI bots understand, oh, they have the answers we want now. Now how does that relate back? And this is me now, I don't know the exact algorithm of Google. Nobody knows that except Google. Right. But when you have content that has the answers and it looks like that's the answer to the search query, it adds credibility, trustworthiness and authority to that result. And quite frankly, who out there, by a show of hands, wants to work with somebody they can't trust, they don't look to have any authority and they really don't know what they're talking about. Well, when you put together an FAQ schema and you put the typical questions your ideal customers will ask in one location, it makes it very easy, or I should say easier for those AI search bots to look at that very quickly and say they've got this going on. So if I go to somebody like, yeah, I'm looking for solar and I it pops up a company called Supreme Solar and it has answers in there in a schema and they're clustered together, then the chances of them having authority, trustworthiness and expertise goes way up. And so they a chance of putting that back to me. Now the response they give in AI overview is not directly from the website, but it's taking that and giving you an answer. And then in the answer, what does it do? It gives you a reference or resource. This is where the magic comes in. Because if I go through and it gives me an answer, you know, I ask about solar, is it a good idea? And it says, this is what we need to do blah blah, blah. And, or if I say should I add batteries to my solar if I'm going to get solar? And it gives me an answer and let's say in this case Supreme Solar gives me an answer and I click on that. Now it takes me to the website. That is the journey people are going to start taking more and more and more. Meaning if you're not showing up, there will be no link there to your content. We won't know how to get to you otherwise. So it's important to think about this. So just in recap today, I'm talking about how things are changing when it comes to search and specifically for local businesses who are really stand a chance of getting hammered on search engines. Meaning if you don't start optimizing your website for artificial intelligence to find you, you will suffer immensely. I'm going to give you one example.

Of how what happens when you don't get search traffic? There was a company who had done really, really well. They started out with us and they had about 300 searches a month on their website. And then about, oh, I don't know, probably 18 months later, they had between 8 and 10,000. That kept that way for a long time. Then I left the company, somebody else went in, they changed the website, all the content we had on there that, that the search engines loved to, to create expertise, authority, trustworthiness, it, it all went away. They didn't transfer to the new site. And literally if you looked at something like Google Analytics showing, you know, the traffic, it literally dropped off a cliff just like this. And so for almost eight months they were getting almost no traffic. I mean, I say almost under a hundred views a month for their website. Now think about that. If you had a store and you had traffic of 10,000 people coming through every month and it went down to 100, would that affect your bottom line? 100%. I make this example of saying if I, if this was that business, it's almost like we work to grow this great forest, to give it protection, shade and safety. And this other individual came in, put the website in there, cut down every one of the trees, excuse me, took down every one of the trees and all of a sudden you have no protection. The wind, the rain, all that is on you, but nobody knows you. Well, they call us back, we're back in the process of building that up and now we're at about 2,500 views a month, which is significantly higher than that hundred we had coming up there. Has her business restored to. I'm going to call it pre destruction normal. Absolutely not. Is it getting better? We think the traffic dictates that. It is not our numbers, it's, it's the, it's the web saying yes, we see them, we show them, which means they at least have a chance. See if you don't even get in the, in the search, you don't have a chance because we don't even know you're out there.

And when I say that I want to wrap it up by this. When I search, when you search.

The majority of a search for the problem we want solved, right? Like I just recently bought some tires and I said I want replacement tires for my 2023 Tesla Model 3 rear wheel drive. And so it brought up the answers and from there it led me to the place that I bought my tires from.

I typically don't go in and say I'm going to buy tires from XYZ company. What do they have? I'm not saying it doesn't happen but when we start we typically put in, tell me if I'm wrong, put in the comments if I'm wrong. That you don't start with a problem you want solved in the search engine and then you're waiting for that response to come back. Well, if you think about on the other end, let's say AI goes through its thing and it sees that you have solutions to this problem and you have videos, you have articles, you have handouts, all that kind of stuff, it sees this, delivers it back, you have a connection. But if you don't answer any of this, you just. What I call it is chest beating. We do this, we're greatest at this. We don't solve any problems on our website. You're not going to be seen. So you have to have content to go onto your website that solves your customer's ideal problem. So here's your homework today. I would say, okay, first of all, and I'll put it, I'll put it in the comments. It'll take me a minute. I'll put it in the comments. I have this little tool I'm going to share with you that you just put your, your name and email address because it emails you the response and your URL of your website. And that gives you a chance to test and say, hey, how full of baloney was Jeff? How is my website? And I'd love to hear back from you. So I'm going to put it in, I'm going to put it in the comments that you can do. This doesn't Cost you anything. Just put it in there. And then if you want to have some follow up, reach out to me. You know, I'm not going to hound you. There's going to be, here's the thing. When 90% of the businesses in the Coachella Valley need it, what do you think? 90% of the businesses need this help. I'm going to be plenty busy, but I've already got a big head start on some last thing, I promise. I was speaking to a gentleman who is in the same kind of business I am in a month ago. He's in Miami. He's been doing what he's been doing for almost 20 years. And I asked him, I said, hey, what do you think about this artificial intelligence optimization? How much of a big deal is it? And I already had three months of understanding and really understood this. I mean I was, I had this conviction that I'm like, this is going to make things change. And he says, we're not even worried about it. We don't think it's going to be a big deal. It shouldn't change anything. When it comes to search.

I got to be honest with you, I had a hard time like staying in there with him and not, not totally, you know, disconnecting because I went ahead and asked him a few more questions. We were, it was an hour long conversation we're having, but it was like, are you kidding me? You're telling this to your customers? This is almost like this is malpractice. You from anyone should be on top of this, knowing what's coming down the pike. Like I said, I started reading about this about four or five months ago, built a tool for it, started doing it with my customers so that they didn't see this massive drop off. They actually see growth. Because here's the coolest thing, let's say, for instance, I'll give you an example. Frazier Pest Control, one of our clients, we've only seen their numbers escalate. And because we're putting content on there, we're search engine optimization. But here's the other thing. Their competitors who are not doing this, guess what, they no longer show up in the search engine. So all of a sudden it's almost like this process of elimination. If they have 10 other competitors in their area and seven of them do not do any optimization for artificial intelligence, guess what? There's only two other companies out there that they can choose from. And if we're leading, guess who gets the bulk of the business? Fraser Pest Control. Guess who has been getting the bulk of the business, Fraser Pest Control. And this is true with all of our clients. We didn't just do it with Frazier, we did with all of our clients and we didn't ask them to do it. We said, hey, this is something needs to be done. We are doing it to make it better. So again, I'm going to put that link in the comments and if you'd like to give it a shot, please do. If you have any comments or thoughts on this, if you think I'm all wet, let me know. But to I'd love to have a conversation. Thanks for joining me today again. My name is Jeff Harrison on a company called Swing Point Media and we're a digital marketing agency. But we are also an AI automation and consulting firm. So basically what we do is we help customers like we're talking about to take a look at their situation and say, are you ready for the future? Because the future is here today. It's not next year. It's not 18 months from now. If you wait for 18 months, it's not that you're going to go out of business because you didn't use AI, it's because your competitors did. Don't get caught in that. Thanks. Have a great day.