AI Isn’t Killing SEO—It’s Killing Bad Traffic (What Actually Works in 2026)

Is AI killing SEO—or just changing how it works?

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Lisa from Service Scalers to talk about what SEO actually looks like in 2026. They break down why AI isn’t replacing search, why Google still dominates high-intent local buying behavior, and what home service companies need to do to stay visible.

They cover the shift away from low-intent traffic, why Google Business Profiles matter more than ever, and how authority, trust, and user experience are replacing old-school SEO tactics.

In this episode, we cover:
-Why AI is changing SEO, not killing it
-Why low-intent traffic is dropping
-How Google Business Profiles drive local leads
-Why brand search matters more than most owners realize

Host: John Wilson https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/
Guest: Lisa Appleby https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-appleby/?originalSubdomain=uk

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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Transcript

 Is AI killing SEO? I personally don't know anyone that uses an AI platform as a search engine. I mean, the results are always terrible. I don't think that Google should be quaking in its boots as a search engine that's gonna be replaced with ai. Yeah. I think what people get freaked out about is like traffic has gone down.

Yeah. Low intent traffic that would often like inflate numbers. Yeah. Like it make it make our SEOs look way better than we actually are. So in 2026, SEO is building for a user experience. The keywords. Are not enough. What's your closing thoughts on AI and SEO? Um,

welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. I'm the CEO of Wilson Plumbing, heating, cooling and Electric in Ohio and Indiana. For fun. I run a podcast where we talk about the home service industry, how to grow, how to get leads, how to hire people. Uh, it is a great time bringing my friends on, and I get to learn every time.

Today we have Lisa from Service Scalers, and we're talking about. AI and SEO and the impact that it's having. So stay tuned and make sure you like and sub welcome, welcome to the show. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, this'll be great. Today's, today's an interesting one 'cause I feel like it's been talked about.

Mm-hmm. You know, for two, three years. I don't know when chat GPT came out, like 2022 or whatever, but, uh, is AI killing SEO. Uh, short answer, no. Um, so I've been working in SEO for the last 10 years. Okay. And this question has existed in different forms, um, since then and probably since before then. What, what are some other forms?

Uh, so basically is SEO dead has been a question that has been kicked around? Yeah. Yeah. The digital, uh, sphere for a long time. And this is just like the, the modern day AI era of that question. Yeah. Personally is what I feel. Um, so in 2026, um, the key to local success in SEO is being the most trustworthy, reliable, accurate answer.

Um, exactly when somebody needs it, when they're searching. That has pretty much remained the same, um, forever. Mm-hmm. But what has changed now is the fact that AI has. Killed it, but probably changed it beyond recognition. Like for me personally, if I think back to when I first started working in SEO, I would probably never have imagined this.

Um, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all. Um, so. Before to be able to rank, you would just need Google to crawl your website or crawl your page and index it. Yeah. I mean, even just two years ago. Yeah. You used to be able to, uh, you know, we were doing like a programmatic project. Yeah. And, uh, it was like inputting for, uh, in indexing every day or something.

It was kind of ridiculous. But you used to be able to like, submit for indexing or something like that. Yeah. And um, yeah, it wasn't complicated. No. But honestly, I don't feel like. Because of the rapid state of change. I haven't really been paying attention at all to how SEO works now in the last 18 months.

I just like, I have no idea. Yeah. But I used to know, I used to know how it worked. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I, like I said, I think like previously, like you say, even like two or three years ago Yeah. What was important is your page would get indexed, and that's all that Google cared about is indexing the page and going, okay, yeah, that can go on.

Position three, page one, whatever. AI now needs context and it needs to understand those pages in order to be able to rank them within, like AI overviews, AI queries on the platforms themselves, and it's so much more than just Google scanning a page. It's about AI going in, reading that page, understanding the context, understanding the what, the why, the where.

Specifically for local SEO, the where is very important. Um, and what that has given us, I think personally is a much more meaningful set of data in 2026. So previously, obviously we report, um, we still do, and uh, any SEO will tell you that you report on traffic figures for your clients and you report on, um, like conversions.

So traffic figures, um, I think in the past have been a bit of a false sun. So you could say, Hey, actually we sent 20,000 visitors to your website. But a lot of the time, 15,000 of those are going, looking at blogs and they never taken an action. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we bought a company in 2021. Yeah. And they had 30,000 monthly hits.

Yeah. And it was like, wow. Like what? You know, what's going on? And honestly, the, they should, what they should have done with it is sold air filters or something. Mm-hmm. Like they should have actually made use of that. Yeah. Um, 'cause like traffic was coming from all over it, but it was Yeah. Blogs 'cause their backlink strategy.

Yes. But like their actual intent. Visitors was very low. Yeah, exactly. And it's, um, you know, it's like, it always looks great on paper and it's a great number, but when it comes down to the crux of it, if you are only sending people to a blog post and they're only getting information and like DIYing, the, the service that you're selling and taking it away.

While those numbers look good on paper for like figures, actually you are not getting people that are there specifically to convert. Yeah. So if we're talking about like AI overviews and like how tos and Google keeping people on the results page, um, then what you're doing is getting a set of data where you can, you know, like quite confidently say the people that are actually coming to your site and clicking through.

Are a potential true like lead or customer and not just some Joe blogs looking for how to fix a, a dripping faucet, for example. Mm-hmm. I think what people get freaked out about just from like what I see from Reddit or just talking to people is like, traffic has gone down and your, your thought is, yes, bad traffic went down.

Yeah. Not that it's necessarily bad traffic, but I think it was low intent. Yeah. Low intent traffic that would often, like inflate numbers. Yeah. Like it'd make, it'd make us SEOs look way better than, than we actually are because again, they, those aren't like converting pages. Those aren't people who are ever gonna convert.

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I haven't paid much attention. Um, I don't know how our, like we should look it up, but, uh, like I'm sure our marketing manager does, but I don't know how our monthly, I'm, I'm assuming it dropped over the past few years 'cause like, I think everybody's dropped. Yeah. What has I, does DA matter anymore? Like domain authority?

I'm gonna say something maybe controversial here. Okay. Um, I don't buy into da. Yeah. So DA or like Dr. Depending on which tool you're using. Right. Um, is unique to like each tool that you go on. So, yeah. So, ah, refs, it's not Google, it's Ahf. Exactly. Ahrefs or like Resh or Search Atlas. Mm-hmm. Um, and it is like.

Uh, their formula or their algorithm to come up with that figure. If you put the same website into three different ones, you'll get a different figure. Yeah. Um, and like your site can have domain authority, but domain authority isn't a measurable metric that you could say, oh yeah, you're a 10 out of a hundred.

Um, and I think it's super easy for people to get hung up on that. Mm-hmm. When in reality what you wanna look at bottom line, if there's just one thing is the conversions. Right. I, I could ignore every single other metric if conversions going in the right direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah.

We, uh, are my, my like commentary on domain authority. I, we're a Ahrefs house here, so, uh, so my commentary on that is like, over the past couple years our. Domain authority keeps going up and we're just like, we're not doing anything different. So like what we're assuming is happening is we've ranked well in the past and like our blogs that were low intent, like did whatever they're gonna do and got more backlinks.

'cause we have not been working that hard on it. And I think that we're just showing up in more search because of the amount of volume. And that's giving us like. More credibility or something, but we're up like 10 points. Like we're in the forties and like we were in the twenties. Yeah. And it's like we didn't do anything.

Yeah. I mean, we'll keep it, but it is, it is a bit interesting. Yeah. And age domain does add into that, um, like domain authority score. Well, but that, um, it kind of contradicts itself because you could get a, a new websites spun up that gets a ton of great backlinks straight off the bat. Yeah. That isn't, or doesn't have that sort of like historical footprint.

Yeah. Um, and performs really well, but their DA may still say seven. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Alright, so you, so you're thinking that searches are down, oh God, I wish I had my laptop and we could like dive into this a little bit, but searches are down, but it's bad search, or not bad, but like low intent, which again, totally tracks.

'cause I'm sure that, um, I'm thinking of my friend's websites, like we've talked about it like six months ago maybe. And the blog, like their traffic went down, but it was all like. How to fix your navi and water heater. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, okay. Nobody really gives a shit about that. Like, I don't give a shit about that.

Okay. And like, have we seen, uh, I had someone on the show, um, it was Zach from Mantle and he, he's not like an SEO expert, but it was just like data. Mm-hmm. Uh, what he was finding that it was like 60% of people found their con their contractor still on Google, 20% from like referrals. Uh, but it was only like three from Chad, GPD.

Has that like changed or like any, um, this is another one that I've got a bit of a hot take on because, which is a conversation I have with my clients. Aton. Yeah. Um, and I personally don't know anyone that uses an AI platform as a search engine. I dunno about you. Um, I mean, the results are always terrible.

Yeah, exactly. Um, and the, they all pull their data from Google. Uh, Google's got the biggest knowledge base, the most data. Um, yeah. I, I guess the intention is that one day that won't be the case. Um, but yeah, I don't think that, um, Google should be equating in its boots as a search engine, um, that's gonna be replaced with AI for at least the, the.

Immediate future in probably the next five, 10 years. Yeah. So with like sort of low intent searches down your take is that high intent searches are still happening on Google? Absolutely. Yeah. So if you think of things like, um, looking for the best Thai food in. Best Ty food in STO Ohio, for example. Yeah, you're not gonna read an AI overview.

You may get a few suggestions from there, but then you're gonna go click through the profiles, take a look at the review counts, look at the pictures. So the, so that's what I've heard is like discovery happens on chat GT or perplexity or whatever. Yeah. But then like authentication or, or like, uh, verification happens on Google.

So, Hey, I was served up. Like, gimme some tie options for this event, or whatever the fuck. And then we're gonna go over to Google and like, are their reviews terrible or are they good? Uh. And I feel like that's how I, like, I'll occasionally do that. Yeah, for sure. There's still a lot of distrust with the general public with ai.

Well it's, it's because the results are terrible. Like I, I tried to do, I, I tried to do this, uh, yesterday and it was sort of funny 'cause I was, I logged, I like opened up my laptop this morning and my search was still up and I was looking for like something weird and like I never used Chad GPT to like look for places to go.

Yeah. But I was like, Hey, give me the vibes coffee shop. In Cleveland and, and in my mind, I couldn't think of another way to word it. Mm-hmm. And because that's how I was wording it. I was like, I don't think Google's gonna do much with this search. Yeah. So, because I think I said vi bist and, um. So I went over to Chachi.

It was terrible. Like the, the results were still, were still terrible. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, but yeah, um, yeah, that level of distrust, like, I think it's there with like the General Joe Blogs member of the public mm-hmm. People who are spending money on, um, digital services. So our clients specifically, uh, a ton, ton of them, uh, don't, don't buy into it, don't want it.

Um, obviously it's a case of, you know, we have conversations about the benefits and how we Yeah. Um, you know, how we don't just spit out. AI generated content as is and we humanize and edit content. Um, so that, that tracks with that as well. Um, another thing that's still always gonna get clicks is emergency queries.

Um, so if I'm like emergency plumber in STO and I'm looking for that at 9:00 PM at night, I need to take an immediate action. Yeah. I'm not even looking at the IO view, I'm scrolling straight down, finding that call button and picking up the phone, booking the job. Absolutely. Will never, ever go away from, um.

It'll never be sort of like taken over by ai. Um, and then brand searches. So somebody that already knows you is typing in, um, owned and operated mm-hmm. Is typing in Wilson companies, either they may not be a new client, uh, but they may be like a repeat customer or somebody that's had a word of mouth recommendation.

They know what they're looking for, they don't need the options. Yeah. So they're typing on that in, they're seeing the profile. Clicking a button, picking up the phone. Yeah. Yeah. People, um, what we found. Which in some ways it's good. In some ways it's like kind of annoying. Mm-hmm. Uh, but we'll look at our monthly reporting for our gbps and some of the, like most of our traffic, like north of 80% Yeah.

Comes from someone searching Wilson. So like the good mm-hmm. Is like, Hey, we've been effective at branding. Yeah. And do you know, Hey, great job. You know, all that money went somewhere. The bad is like. Okay. Not that many people are like, we're not showing up in the plumber near mes. And I don't know if there's just not that many plumber near me.

Mm-hmm. But, um, it, it was kind of, it, it was really shocking when I first saw that. 'cause I really thought that, hey, all of our traffic is coming from, you know, emergency plumber wa hot water tank, broken, you know, sort of pick a problem. And really the vast majority was like someone just looking for us.

Yeah. For sure. Which I don't know if that's good or bad. Like it is good and bad there. Yeah. I think if you are operating on a large scale like you are, um, then it is never a bad thing and it doesn't really matter. Um, if you are a smaller company, um, who can't rank for those key terms. Yeah. But your brand search is like.

50 a month. Yeah. Um, so you are getting not much, then you're like, Hey, actually we need to look at how we target brand versus brand, how we direct people, um, straight to service pages rather than just to the homepage. Yeah. Um, supporting like contextual content, like build a network of content around the topics of the services.

Um, but yeah, for like a larger company, like it doesn't really matter. Yeah. Okay, well, like how can people drive SEO today? Like what does SEO look like? How do you do it successfully? Got it. Okay. Um, so in 2026. SEO is building for a user experience. Um, the keywords are not enough. The, um, sort of like index and spit out a page into, uh, the SERPs is not enough.

Yeah. You need to be able to demonstrate authority and expertise. So when these LLMs are crawling your site and taking this information, they're like, actually this guy's know, this guy knows what he's talking about and we wanna. Put this or serve this as a result within the LLM. Yeah. Um, but again, it comes back to that contextual information and the, the, the AI model, understanding what is on your site rather than just going, oh, keyword.

Cool. Position three. Yeah. How do you think, um, it's just like a, a, a issue that we're having. I'm curious, like your take on this. Yeah. We're using Webflow. Yep. And, uh, like we, we did a programmatic project with service scalers like three, four years. I don't even remember what it was. I remember it. And, uh, we got on Webflow and, uh, Sam Thompson like pushed that programmatic project out and I don't even know how many freaking pages.

It's like 20,000. Yeah. Something ridiculous. And one of the problems that we had is we ran out of. Like pages or categories or something. Mm-hmm. Like what do you, what do you do? Um, so if you like run out because it feels like one of the strengths of, I'm sorry. To my point, bringing it back to this topic.

Yeah. One of the strengths of AI is that we can mass produce SEO. Yeah. And like you can take on a project like programmatic that, you know, 10 years ago was probably like a million dollar project. Yeah. And Angie's List invested tens of millions of dollars into their website and you can do it now for like.

Not a million dollars. Right. Like you can do it somewhat affordably. Um, and we did that project in 2023, and I think that was a huge part of our growth over the ne like next couple years was we hit AI hard and fast. Yeah. When it first came out and covered everything in the world. And now it's like, okay, we did that.

Now what should we be working on? Yeah, sure. So I think like in, uh, a case like that where you are like, actually we've exhausted every service. We've exhausted every arm of every service. We've exhausted every location. I think we put like 20,000 or 17, somewhere in that range, like. It was crazy. Yeah. If you've genuinely reached the limit of what you can, uh, produce in terms of like topic, um, obviously like time goes on, there will be developments and all sort of things, but if you are genuinely at the point you're like, I've reached the absolute limit of this.

Then you just refresh the content, you add more expertise in there. You can add quotes from, uh, somebody that carries clout in the industry. Mm-hmm. Again, just building that trust, that authority, um, like expanding on the content, adding like, um, mixing up the FAQs. Like researching what has changed since 2023 when those went up.

Maybe there has been a massive shift in searches for a specific keyword that relates to something that wasn't a thing in 2023. So think of, for example, if there was like a big weather event somewhere, um, that might have, I dunno, change like a hurricane or something. Makes sense. Yeah. Let's change like the landscape of like a city or a town.

Yeah. So there is always an opportunity to refresh content and it is always. It's never a bad thing. Obviously, if you have like a really well written thousand word page and you are just gonna bin it off for like 10 words and a picture of like a local landmark. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But there is always room to improve.

Um, the key thing about SEO is, and this is like said to death, but it's obviously never done. It's never ever finished. You can never get to a point where like, oh, my SEO is finished. I can sit back now because always someone waiting on the wings to come. Knock you off the top spot. And once that happens, if you don't keep on top of that, then it's a domino effect and you just fall further and further and further down the soap results.

So, um, yeah, even if you think you are done, you're definitely not. Yeah. There's a company, um, and this still freaking cracks me up. So there's two companies, but one of them specifically is like, they're not, uh, they're not a good like, local plumbing company. Mm-hmm. Like, they're not great marketers. They're not.

Um, I dunno, I don't think they've actually grown in like 15 years. Like, I think they've been at $2 million for literally 15 years. Like, which, you know, I, it would, is kind of impressive in its own right. Uh, they own page one of Google. I do not understand how for the fucking life of me, because we have put so much work into SEO and they still show up like top five searches for plumber Akron, and I'm just like, that's crazy.

Like, what do you think I can do to kick 'em off? Um, so my first, like, first stop on that journey would be to do like a, obviously like a third party audit of their site. Figure out what they're doing in the background. Yeah. Um, so look at the backlinks that they've got. Look at how long their site has been established.

Look at how often they're publishing content. I don't think they touched their website in 10. Like they couldn't have, the business has gone nowhere in 15 years. Yeah, sure. Then in that case then I would say that um, strong brand recognition. Is it well known in the area? Do people, like if you say it does some, someone in the street, would they know who you're talking about?

Maybe then backlinks, like it's crazy. Like I bet I could look right now and there's still like, it's wild. Yeah, that is wild. I'd like to have a look at it. I'll show you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll show you. So there's two of them. So one of 'em like earned it, like they, they did good. The business is good. And like, I'm like, okay, like, you know, pop off.

But yeah, the other one is just like, what? How, how are you doing this? Um, it, it, it's, it's really, uh, like genuinely wild to me. Okay. So authority now. Was back, probably still is backlinks, but like, you know, you're, you're talking about like quoting influencers or quoting like big people in the space to drive more authority.

Can you give us some examples that are like home servicey? Yeah, for sure. So, um, if we were, for example, someone was gonna write an article. Um, about, um, loft insulation, for example. Okay. So, um, in the article you would wanna have direct quotes from somebody. Um, they don't have to be well known, um, but as long as Google can recognize that this person is knowledgeable and is an authority on this subject.

So I'm sure there's some big players in the loft insulation world that aren't well known by anyone outside of it. Mm-hmm. Um, but. Um, adding like expert insights from those kind of people and marking those things up in the backend, um, with like structured data and just feeding into that, um, this is useful, helpful content delivered by an expert, not just some random guy who's thrown a page up on a website.

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And like what they'll do is they'll geotag a photo to like the website and to your GBP and like somehow it connects or something like that. But every time I've looked deeper at it, it seems like it just makes a mess. Yeah, so, um, like any photo that gets posted, like if it's been taken on an iPhone, nine times out of 10, we will have, um, the geo data attached to it anyway.

So they, they have them regardless of whether you think they do or, or not, 90% of the time. Um, so pretty much anything that goes on A GBV not, but like job photos for example, that would go to home service GBP most of the time those are taken on the text phone uploaded to A CRM pulled from there. They have that geo data already.

Um, where it seems to be a bit more impactful is on the website, um, because obviously. Those photos on the GBP are tied to a very specific set of locations and it's a part of a map set up. Um, so geotagging photos and adding them to the website, um, a lot of the time people will have professional photos on their website.

Um, so they don't come with that data. Um. It's very easy to add it, it's very easy to check if it already has it. Um, but is something we're doing with some of our clients. Um, just adding that extra, it's a set of, so it does work coordinates. Yeah. I wouldn't say if you, you're gonna chuck 50 photos on your website with, um, coordinates in your service area and you're gonna go straight up the, straight up the search results.

Um, it definitely is impactful. It's more of a sort of like. Drip feed background thing that helps sort of like support it rather than something that is like a core ranking signal, I would say. Mm-hmm. What do you think the fast move for SEO. Is like, is there a fast move? There isn't a fast move for SEO. Um, it's a conversation I have all the time.

Um, and you know, it's a conversation we have in the early doors of talking about working with the client on SEO, um, is that it's not a quick fix. It's not a PPC or an LSA, that's a money tap and you can turn it on, turn it off, yeah. And you get in sort of what you put out. Um, one of an analogy that I like to use with my clients is that, um, SEO is a long-term relationship, not a one night stand.

You've gotta work at it. Um, to get something out of it. Um, so like months one, months one is like a big research phase for us. Mm-hmm. We do a shit ton of research to make sure that we have all the data we need to make effective strategic decisions for the next sort, like six months for example. Yeah. And like I am completely comfortable with saying, Hey listen, don't expect to see much.

Until three to six months. Um, and that is the tricky part with SEO because you have to invest for such a long time. Yeah. Before you get anything back. It makes it a harder sell, like from an agency point of view, it makes it harder to form client relationships off the bat because. You've got the PPC guys who're like, oh, they made me 10 grand, and I'm like, oh, I got you two extra phone calls, but just wait.

Mm-hmm. Um, one important thing as well that I repeat to anyone that will listen is that your website is the bottom of the funnel for any digital channel that you are working on. Yeah. So like P-P-C-G-B-P-S-E-O, and it's a very, very integral part of that journey, whether or not you are using the money tap ads to bring leads in.

Like your page quality score, the the speed, the load speed of the website. Super duper important for other channels, page channels. And obviously now we're looking at AI as well as a separate thing that we need to optimize for. But again, the bottom line is the website. How else, like how I'm trying to, like the photos I guess matter, like what else does the GBP do for like my local SEO.

So GBP is an interesting one and I like talk to people as well, like imagine, think of your GBP as a website. A lot of people don't even have a website. They just have a GBP, but you need to think of it as, um, a website. So you need the information, let to be accurate. Mm-hmm. Um, for it to be served accurately.

Um, you need to update it with fresh content. Um. You need to reply to reviews quickly as if that's someone dropping a feedback on your website that you're gonna reply to once that hits the office inbox. The other interesting thing about, um, GBP is that there are a ton of optimization opportunities that people don't type into.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so there are optional information in the backend, but you can, um, tick a box that says Hispanic owned, and then when somebody is typing in, um. Hispanic owned HVAC company, you'll only be served, you'll be served in that result and you'll be super relevant. So somebody wants to send someone around to look at their grandma's ac, but their grandma only speaks Spanish.

Mm-hmm. So they don't want, uh, an English speaking HVAC company. Yeah. It just allows you, those search groups are so, so small as well. It may just be like 10, 20, 30 searches a month, but you'll guarantee that those people are going to book a job. Yeah. Um, so any opportunity you get to give Google more information contextually, um, take it.

Even if it's a no, even though you say no, not Hispanic owned. Yeah. Because then you won't appear in that search and it won't be a wasted phone call. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I feel like Google any like L-S-A-G-B-P. Anything we've touched with Google, the game seems to be like, if Google wants you to do something you should do, you should do it.

So like if you get the email of like, Hey, are you open on Thanksgiving? Like you should just tell 'em Yeah, a hundred percent. Like even if you are, 'cause then it's like interacting with the platform and they like that and Exactly. Your feed back data back to them. Yeah. And they love that. Um, and yeah, anything, anything they ask of you, like even if it is a no, just yeah, let them know for sure over the past, like.

Two, three years it feels like. And this is like a feeling, not a fact. So I'm curious what the fact is. It feels like the GBP and like I would, I would classify GBP as like local SEO Yeah. Is more important than the website. SEO. Um, again, I think just going back to my point about the website being the bottom line of everything.

Yeah. I dunno if like more important is the right term. Uh, I think it may be more effective. Um, in terms of how people search these days as well, and we're all so used to typing in and then having something immediately in front of us that we can click. Yeah. So that map pack result or that top result is always ideal because you're like, okay, bing.

Especially if it's something that doesn't have, um, like a ton of like the emergency queries, for example. I'm not looking through the shit and comparing these guys. Yeah. I'm just like, results straight there in the palm of my hand. Convenience, bam. Pressing the call button. Picking up booking a job. Yeah.

Our website is produced like, I think honestly because of the programmatic thing, like it was a huge push at the right moment. Like it was like the best timing of all time. But, um, I think that that helped a lot. But the, yeah, G Gs is so, um, measurable and over the past even like six to 12 months, GBP important feels, it feels like it's becoming like.

The channel and like everything ties now to Gs, like l, SA is GBPI feel like PPC is like really tied into GP now. Yeah. Um, yeah. It's, it's kind of an, uh, I like a good and bad. Good. If you have a great GBP. Yeah. Bad if you don't. We, we looked at a company for sale last week and they had like a th like a mid three star, uh, rating, and I'm like, I literally could do nothing with this.

Yeah. Like, it's like the company is essentially worthless because. Your reviews are not good. So I can't run LAI, like nobody wants PBC to a three star. Yeah. Like, would you eat at a three star sushi restaurant? Absolutely not. I, I would Not as well. Yeah. Yeah. Reviews are, um, definitely the backbone of any well performing GBP profile.

Yeah. Um, and review consistency and review freshness are so important. Your review responses are so important as well. Yeah. Um. So you could see, um, A GBP profile, for example, um, that had lag. 200 reviews ranking above a GBP profile that adds a thousand reviews. Um, but the one with the, the less reviews, they're getting consistent reviews.

Uh, the reviews are fresh, they're replying to the reviews. This guy with the 600 reviews hasn't replied to review in two years. Last review was five months ago. It was a one star. Um, so Google really cares about the sort of experience. Yeah. Now, and that is another reason why, um, G Ps seem to be more important than ever because you have that sort of like trust factor attached to it right off the bat.

You don't even have to look for it. You can see it right there. One click and you can see, okay, yeah, last review is two days ago. Like consistently very good. They replied, they're pleasant. The amount of people that kick off at their Yeah. Um, kick off at people in reviews when they get a review they don't like is Yeah.

Some of the review replies I've seen over the years are absolutely. Unbelievably, mm-hmm. Like aggressive at some points. Um, so just like thinking about your tone and how you want your brand to come across is really important there as well. But it's kind of like a one-stop shop. Like I say, it's, it's almost like a website for your business.

You've got that proof right there. You can call straight from the profile. You literally don't need to go anywhere else. It's all there on the screen ready for you. Well, and I feel like chat, GPD sends you there now too. So like back to the, is AI killing SEO O? It's like, no, it's feeding, it, it's, you know, the, in that vibey coffee shop query I had, I sent me the GPS for like five coffee places.

None of them. Or the vibe that I was seeking. But, um, it, it was interesting how. It was sending me to the, yeah. This now hyper valuable asset. Yeah. Like hyper valuable. How are you feeling about like, written content video? I remember back in like 2020 video was like a whole thing, like, get videos on your website.

Like does that still matter? Uh, yeah. Videos I think are great. Um, it's, you know, people don't wanna read a ton of words when they're looking for Oh yeah. Something on a website. Visually it looks nice. Um. A lot of people would just bang a video on the website with absolutely no consideration at all. Um, but you can like, um, the way you, um, serve it on the website, like you can compress it.

Yeah, there are a ton of things you can do so it doesn't, um, like your website and it's like, it's a bit of like, it's not a myth 'cause there is some truth behind it, but like, it's not a, it's definitely not a no go, um, in terms of content. So I think AI has. Um, like killed low quality content. Um, so in terms of how it's gonna rank your site, um, like volume is out, quality is in, um, looping back to the point on authority and expertise.

Yeah. The depth of the content and then being able to understand the context and the what, the why, the who, the where, um, is just so important. Yeah, yeah. I, I've noticed in my own behavior. I don't know if this is normal or not, uh, but I'm almost never on the internet the way that I feel like I used to be on the internet, like reading blogs or, uh, like researching the same way.

I think like, and maybe this is just me, but I feel like research has just changed so much. And when I think about SEO, like our SEO still performs and we drive traffic and we drive sales through our website. So clearly someone out there is still, you know, browsing like it's 2005. But, uh, I noticed that I don't like, have you noticed like big changes in behavior?

Yeah, for sure. Um, I'm exactly the same. Um. I'm probably like a, I'm AI's dream. I will, whatever's on that first scroll of my screen, I'm, I'm gonna check out that first. Yeah. Um, and that will, so obviously you have the AI overviews. Um, I'll click on an AI overview. I'll usually click the links that are in there, but I don't think that's typical.

Um, I think it's probably 'cause of my job that I do that. I think typically people read that AI overview and they don't go any further when they're looking for that sort of like informational. Stuff. Yeah, I think that's probably what I do. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't even know, maybe YouTube, I don't, I don't know.

I'll watch YouTube if I need like a, a tutorial, uh, 'cause I'm not gonna read 20 steps of how to put this wheelbarrow together, for example. Yeah. If I can sit there, watch a video, do it, pause it, if I need to stop and do something. Then yeah, YouTube. Um, I think as well, um, obviously 'cause people use it as a medium for just like entertainment Yeah.

And absorbing content. It's very easy to go there for that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it kind of seems like a natural progression into using it for that kind of purpose rather than just entertainment. Yeah. Alright. So for, for winning, like for what we should be focusing on in 2026. Local Yeah. And local sort of on page.

Which, like maybe the geotagged photo. A lot of like, I mean, does the classic service location like still work for SEO, like toilet repair, Akron, Ohio? Like is that still like we should be producing pages with that? Yeah. Still super duper relevant. Um, um, probably more so because you have this. Like second level of, it's not just for Google, it's now for an LLM as well.

Yeah. Yeah. So those pages need to be structured and again, explain all of those things. What, what you do, um, where you do it. Yeah. Who you serve. Um, and like, not the, just the, we fix your toilet, but like, how and why do we fix your toilet? Yeah. And again, just that depth of content that the LLM needs to be able to go.

Okay. Actually, yeah, this is an actual expert on this subject matter in terms of like crushing it. Like holistically local. Those pages are super important. But again, the completeness and the freshness of your GBP having links directly Yeah. From your GBP to those service pages. Yeah. For those areas and services, super duper important.

And just creating that connection, um, that again, when the LLMs come in. They're gonna see that connection, they're gonna see that network of, okay, uh, this is business X, y, Z, this is our website. Oh, they have this huge network of content on their website that goes really in depth on these subjects and these topics and these services that they offer.

Oh, wow. They've got this expert guy who works there, who's got like a bunch of qualifications and is like licensed in his industry, and they're like that. At that point, the LLM will be like, okay, this is a really good result for us to Yeah. Serving now. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. And then how, like, how are we thinking about brand?

Because I think, like I said, with our GBP analytics, a lot of it is brand at this point. Yeah. Which I, again, I think is good. It's also just a little annoying because I want to show up for like people that weren't looking for me in the first place. Yeah. Like I want to be like, yeah, I'm ranking number three in mat pack and like basically what that tells me is.

Uh, maybe I'm not ranking well, because if all the people that are coming just from direct search, like why aren't they coming from like plumber near mes? Like, what's your take? Yeah, sure. Am I not ranking Well again, I would love to have a look because I want to. We should do it. Yeah, we should do it. Um, so in terms of like brand, brand is super important.

Um. Again, and this is probably more pertinent to a smaller business, um, which is obviously the kind of businesses that we work with on the home service side of things. Um, brand is super important and AI models throw a lot of clout behind companies and brands that people are actually actively searching for.

So AI models will obviously take a lot of their information from Google, but they're trying to learn and build their own knowledge base as well. Yeah. So if there are a ton of people typing in Wilson companies. They're just like, right. Cool. This Wilson Companies guy, uh, is super relevant, uh, to what we want to, um, produce in our search results.

Yeah. And like the relevancy that goes along with that. And then they will look at your GBP as well and be like, oh yeah, this guy's got tons of like, great reviews. Um, so like, like. You, for example, kind of become a victim of your own brand in that sense. Um, but for like smaller businesses, probably looking at like a five mil or less.

Mm-hmm. Um, then building your brand is super important for, um, like recognition and trust within AI models. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What's your closing thoughts on AI and s. Um, so yeah, most businesses don't lose jobs because they're bad. They lose jobs because they're busy, and a customer could not get a quick answer, one missed call, one forgotten follow up, and the job goes somewhere else.

Quo helps solve that by putting every customer conversation, calls, text, voicemails, into one shared thread that your whole team can see. So whoever picks up next. Already knows what's going on. There's no scrambling for context. No more botched communication and nothing gets dropped quo. Helps keep your team aligned, helps you respond faster and makes the customer experience feel way more consistent.

If you want cleaner communication and fewer lost leads, check out quo@qqo.com. Slash own, you'll get a free seven day trial plus 20% off your first six months. SEO in 2026 is about building that user experience. And it's just not possible to do it with a, without AI now. And as much as some people may want that, or may want not want that, um, it's just a, that's just the game these days.

Yeah. All of the things that we've spoken about are perfectly leverageable for any business. Um, and. Things that if you don't do now, that you are gonna be left in the dust in two or three years time. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel like that resonates. Yeah. Except for this one fucking guy who's still 15 years later is holding onto page one.

We're, we're gonna do a deep dive. 'cause I do not understand how this guy still has, like, I'll talk to competitors, like friendly competitors that also run big businesses and they're also like, dude, what the fuck? Like, how does this guy still on page one? And I'm like, I don't know. I don, I actually dunno.

We'll find out. Yeah, we'll find out. Thanks for coming on today. This was a good conversation. Thanks for having me. It was fun. If you like what you heard, make sure you like and sub.