Phil Risher explains why the #1 Google ranking no longer matters: AI now decides what to recommend. A gutter-cleaning company's blog post got surfaced by ChatGPT, landing them a $1,000 job. Businesses now need to build trust with AI systems through authoritative content.
Bye-bye to ranking number one on Google. Those days are gone. Doesn't matter. What matters now is AI platforms trust you and they recommend your business when people ask questions. Everyone used to want the number one spot on Google cuz that's where all the clicks happened. There's no more number one spot on Google. If you go to Google search right now, it says AI mode. What matters now is getting recommended by these platforms through trust. And the way that they trust you is by creating authority content as the thought leader in your space so that they can verifiably recommend you and say, this is the company you should work with. So we have a gutter cleaning company we work with, and someone went to ChatGPT and asked a question about, I got my gutters cleaned, but my water is still backing up and overflowing, so what's going on? And the answer that was given was a blog post that we had written that just 'cause you have your gutters cleaned doesn't mean that your downspouts are not clogged, and you really need all 3 parts of your gutter to be cleaned. They found that piece, and then they ultimately said, hey, this is the company that I want to work with, and they went through and they ended up turning into a $1,000 job.
