The Truth About Google’s AI Search Nobody’s Telling Home Service Owners

AI mode for Google is here. What that means is that ChatGPT is now basically on Google and people are searching different on Google now than what they were doing before. And in this video I'm going to break down what that means for home service businesses and how you can prepare your business so that way you are relevant in AI mode and even how to even track this stuff. All right, so if you're not familiar with what AI mode is, first I'm going to show you that and then I'm going to break down this article that Bright Local wrote and how you can use the information on this article to set up your business for success. All right, so before you would go to Google something like this and you would type in H vac service near me and it would give you results. Google Local service ads, Google search ads, the map pack, and then the on site rankings which has to do with your website. And when we look at this, there's four core sections. There's ads running well, if you notice up here now there's AI mode. This has been in labs for about six months and we have been testing it before it went fully live. But just last month they went fully live with AI mode. So basically if you click AI mode, it's going to switch over to something that looks like ChatGPT. So this is your normal Google search engine results page. Here's what it looks like when it comes to a ChatGPT and what it does is it searches for H VAC service near me. I type that service in and then it's going to pull a list of people. So I just want to go through and analyze these real quick to show you how this works. So this company holds Zoppel. Frederick Air Smock, when we go back to the normal search engine results page, is not even taking into consideration any Google Local service ads. Frederick Air was one of the ones that I recommended, but it didn't say anything about the ads, didn't say anything about Larry and Sons. But if you notice, it's smock here, Frederick Air, this is your off site SEO, your Google Biz profile. And then this is your on site SEO, which is the number one spot here. And that's the first three. Now what I did a step further and I would recommend doing this for your area is do this search whatever service you offer in the area, do AI mode and then ask it this question here. How did you come up with these results? This is going to tell you exactly how they came up with these results and what you need to do. For your business. And if it doesn't give you the exact things, ask it again. Well, what should I do to rank my business in this section? So the first thing is understanding request. The request for H Vac service provides providers in this specific area was identified information. So it went and it searched the keywords for this and for a couple other keywords that you might also be thinking about. So it doesn't just take the keyword that you typed in. It takes several other keywords. Then it analyzes the results. Now this is the big one that I want to hit on is that the service offerings. So on your Google business profile, you need to make sure all your service offerings are listed out, all the categories, all the services that you offer and on your website. A lot of times when we go to websites, it's just H Vac service, H Vac repair. You need to break down what all those services mean. So that way you can. Google is going to go here and say, okay, heating, repair, cooling, repairs, installation. It wants to see all the services that you offer because it's going to build trust. So that's the first thing. On your website, make sure you have all your services built out. Not just one thing that says services and a page with a bunch of the services. Have individual services pay built out. Also on your Google business profile, make sure you have all your categories and services added and do this on a monthly basis because Google's going in and it's erasing things, adding things in that it thinks that you do, it doesn't know. So you need to make sure that you're auditing this on a monthly basis. All right, next up, location and service area, whether they serve the Linganore, Bartonsville area. Same thing on your Google business profile, you need to go in every single month and make sure that the cities that you serve are listed there. Also on your website, we talk a lot about these service area pages, which is a page specifically on your website about that you do service in this area. So for example, in this instance, Frederick, Maryland is where I actually live, but it's pulling in Linganore, which is kind of close to me. And so you want to make sure that you have different service areas built out. So if you're in Dallas, you have Fort Worth, you have McKinney, you have all the different cities around you that you serve, because that's going to then trigger back and say, oh, yep, they also serve this area as well. Next up is customer reviews. This still matters. Google reviews still matter, Especially AI Mode. Google, it's going to literally be pulling from your Google Biz profile. Number of reviews and customer experiences, availability. This is a big one and this is something that's unique. Emergency services. Do you list emergency services or not? And specific operating hours. So let's say someone does a search at 6pm and you close at 5pm well, that could affect AI mode because the hours are saying that this company's not open. But they are open because they have emergency services. So what does this mean for your business? If you have after hours call someone on call 24 7, your Google business profile should reflect that and your website should reflect that. You offer emergency services for 24. 7. Don't just shut off at 5 or 6pm and say, okay, well my office is closed so I'm not going to take any more calls. Open that up to 24 7. That will help you not only with this but also with your Google Biz profile rankings. Next is company information, whether they're family owned, certified, et cetera. This is a really big one and this is called authority. And I talk a lot about this content and in my content and that is that you need to make sure that you're telling Google that you are certified in certain things. If you have specific certifications or local licenses, you need to make sure that you're sharing that on your website and also talking about it inside of your content. Because they want to show the best companies here and they're trying to find the best information. That's why they're pulling all this information. If they didn't want to find all the best information, people wouldn't trust Google and they wouldn't go to AI mode and they wouldn't use this platform against ChatGPT. So Google's trying to pull all this stuff in with their AI and say, hey, here's the best companies. Next is synthesizing information. The gathered information was organized in a concise and easy to read format. Key details were included on each service provider to help inform decisions. Basically, they summarize what they found, presenting the results to H VAC Services providers were presented in a structured list highlighting the specialty key features. Okay, that's cool, whatever. Next. I said, do you care about social media content in these results? This is something that I've been talking about a lot. And what they they said specifically in this instance is that it didn't directly use the initial list of service providers based off of social media content. However, here's what it did. Look at customer testimonials and reviews. So let's say you don't have enough review. Let's say you're in a competitive market and you have someone that has a thousand reviews and you have a hundred. Well, you can still make customer testimonials on your website. You can still make case studies and blog content on your website and talk about it inside of your content, which that again could help you with customer testimonials. It's not just review count, it's the quality of the testimonials and things that you're sharing. Another one, showcasing expertise in educational content. I know for a fact I've been preaching this, is that this type of content is going to help you with AI rankings because these large language models, they're being trained on the content that you put out there, like they're just trained on content. So if you give them more content that you're credible, they're going to show you more often because they see you as the expert and the educational piece. So sharing tips, advice, educational content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube positions H vac companies as experts. And that's what AI is literally pulling from. Targeted advertising. Same thing. Social media platforms allow companies to reach potential customers based on demographics, interests and locations. So if you're running ads on those platforms, they said they're going to pull them in community engagement, interacting with followers through polls, quizzes, live Q and A visual content, posting images and videos and graphics showcase work to explain these things. So search results considered social media content and strategies relevant to H Vac businesses. This includes details found on social media platforms such as. And then explains everything here. All right, so you can do the search in your area. As I mentioned before, I want to go in to some more particulars because there's some really important things that happen with, with SEO in particular, and how this is going to be changing. And the first one that they highlight in this article is that AI is not going to be. Clicks are likely going to go down because when you go, when you go like this, right, this is going to go and build a list here and maybe they click over here onto your website, but it's. They're going to just say, okay, what's the phone number for this company? And then they're going to get the phone number, just call it. So there we're already seeing it. Clicks are going down because people are just searching for information. And before you know, you go to Google search and results page, you click on like five different businesses, read the reviews, go to their websites, check them out. That's different now because now you're asking qualifying questions. People are going to start going here and saying H vac service near me. What's the best company to help me because my AC is out, who has the most years of experience? Right? You're going to be able to ask a lot more questions. What happens? What happens with this company in particular if they get a one star review? Do they care about customer service? Do they have a guarantee? People are going to start asking these questions inside of this to get to the exact person that they want to work with. That's why you have to make sure you're putting content out there that sets you up. So clicks are likely going to go down because of this. AI search ranking for general terms may become less important. So with traditional SEO, people want to see my rankings and we track rankings literally using bright local actually. But there's Semrush Ahrefs and you can track your rankings for on site SEO, the map pack. But in AI search, it's so particular to the person that there's no way to track rankings in here. So what we do is we'll go in and audit AI mode and see. Okay, if we search in a general term, how are we ranking? One of the biggest things that we have have we found, we've been tracking this over the last six months is that by doing the SEO things that you have to do. Those service area pages I mentioned monthly SEO audits to make sure that your categories, your services, your locations are listed, getting reviews, posting content, that's the subject matter expert. That's not just general chatgpt stuff. Those things are positioning companies as the experts in AI mode. And you still need to do all of those things. It's just going to be harder and harder to say this is leading to more traffic, but it's going to correlate into better AI rankings. The next thing is your brand and reputation is important more than ever. And this kind of leads into exactly what I was just saying, which is making sure AI understands your brand and that your brand is both familiar and respected locally will be crucial to getting it found. It goes without saying, but continue to work on getting more reviews and I'll add a caveat here. And creating content that is unique to you. Don't just put fluff chatgpt content out there. Create content that's unique to you because again, it's going to be training these models. Diversifying your channel is going to be more important. So I interviewed Neil Patel on the podcast, it's on this channel and he said instead of SEO Search engine optimization. It's search everywhere optimization. So looking beyond simply optimizing for Google, where else is your brand visible? TikTok, YouTube, Yelp. This is what I'm saying is that you need to be posting content on all these platforms because this is how you stand out as the expert. And people might say, oh, I hate, I hate Yelp. Yelp is a scam, that's fine. But you still need to have a SEO optimized Yelp profile with your name, address and phone number and hours and everything matching cohesively with pictures. Because these platforms are pulling. AI is pulling all this stuff into one section and giving people results. So it's not just Dominic Google anymore. This is very important for companies that are coming up. If there's big competitors in your area, there's a land grab that's out there by creating content, diversifying, not just relying specifically on Google, which Google is still the behemoth, don't get me wrong. But there's a lot of opportunity out there that's going to be captured if people lean into content and people lean into doing all the other thing, the right things on the other side and not just relying strictly on praying to the Google gods and Google search ads. And that's another thing about that, is that on here there's not even any ads being shown, right? There's no ads on AI mode. So how is Google going to monetize this? I don't know. They haven't said anything about this. But when it comes to ads, there's nothing here. Next is your Google Biz profile remains important. This exactly what I was saying is that you want to make sure that the content on your Google Biz profile is accurate. Obviously you're getting reviews, you're posting content on there. Your locations, your services are listed because Google just said that they're pulling the information from your Google Business profile. And the example Google uses in the presentation, AI continues to surface the full profile for local businesses it recommends. And you can't track traffic from AI overviews or AI mode. Again, another issue is that as it stands, Google is not offering the opportunity to track traffic from its AI search functions. With ChatGPT, we can see traffic coming from ChatGPT or other platforms. AI mode, they don't have this tracking yet. I would imagine it's going to get there because they obviously they have Google Analytics and that's how people track your traffic. But that's the big things. All right, so what can you do to position your business? Hopefully in this video I explained a bunch of things that you need to do. If it was me and I owned a home service business and the companies that we support, I'm preaching all the time. Content, content, content. Creating video content right now is the only thing that AI can't replicate you as a subject matter expert. Specifically like on job sites talking about real questions in your local area. Not just fluff things like three reasons why an H vac system goes out in the, in the summer. But talk about like in Dallas, Texas, there's an issue with the grid, you know, the electrical grid. And what happens is when it goes out, then da da da da happens. One, it ties in your local area. But two, it's very niche content that only you would know that you have experienced because you've been on these job sites for 20 years and you're able to talk about that. It's so important to create this content because one, it gives people like a real person like me, you know, I'm a real person sharing this information with you. This is not AI yet, but two, it also, the transcripts that I'm saying right now will then be layered into these large language models and help me stand out as the expert when people are searching for certain things and they find us. So hopefully that helps. If you have questions or comments, drop a comment below. I'm very curious to get your thoughts on this AI mode and AI search. One thing for us. I will be continuing to make content on AI search for home service businesses. So if you like content like this, be sure to hit like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.