Is Your Business Invisible to AI Search? (And How to Fix It) ft. Ray Young

Speaker A: Welcome to Revenue Science. I'm Rich Smith, CMO founder, investor, executive advisor, and lucky enough to be your host on Revenue Science. We Talk with successful CEOs, executives and expert operators to explore the intersection of growth, behavioral science, marketing strategy and revenue systems. Thanks for being here today. Please subscribe to Revenue Science on your podcast platform of choice and YouTube. To connect with me, go to richmsmith m.com we have a really important conversation for you today. Today's episode is a little different as we're diving into one of the biggest shifts happening in B2B growth right now. How AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI are changing who gets discovered, trusted, and ultimately purchased from. Joining me today is Ray Young, AI search strategist, researcher and president of Razorsar Public Relations. Today we're going to unpack what it really takes to win AI citations, why earned media and substance matter more than ever, and what CEOs and CMOs should do before the competitive gap compounds. Ray, welcome to Revenue Science. I wonder if we could start by just having you introduce yourself and tell the audience about what you do.

Speaker B: So my name is Ray Young. I'm the, uh, prince, excuse me, President and founder of razor sharp PR. I've uh, been in the PR business, uh, media relations business now for almost 30 years. And it's changed so dramatically over those years. And I, I actually started, actually started Razor Sharp pr, uh, after I left the agency I was with, you know, because I wanted to jump into social media and make that more of like what we did in terms of, in terms of communication. So I did that in 2011. And our focus, our focus is on helping businesses, uh, CEOs and businesses raise their visibility with investors, uh, with their customers, with their clients, uh, effectively any, you know, any stakeholder that matters to them. It's making sure you're delivering those messages and those people that you need, that need to know about you, maybe they misunderstand you. Um, all those, those types of folks that businesses need to reach. Um, that's what we, that's what we're here to help with, and that's what we do for clients.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's a great segue into the topic that we wanted to talk about today. And this episode is going to be a little bit different than, uh, many of the episodes that we do on Revenue Science because today we're really, we're not looking in general at revenue systems. We're digging into a specific topic that is really matters. Doesn't matter if you're B2B or B2C or what kind of organization? Uh, this is really affecting how buyers buy and how people find you. So today we're going to talk about AI search and, and how you start to show up in AI search. And Ray, I uh, know you've spent a lot of time researching this. You've done some, some background work and, and uh, have been analyzing it and, and you help clients with this already. So why, you know, most of our audience are CEOs, so why should the CEO care about AI search?

Speaker B: So that's a, that's a really good question. Why? I mean, why does it matter? That's one of the questions we always ask whenever we start with a relationship or start with uh, um, reaching out to media. Why should their viewers care? Why should the CEOs care? Um, the reason is because AI is deciding who gets recommended. AI is deciding who gets ignored. Uh, Google's AI overview handles, and this is probably already dated data, but two billion interactions a day two chat GPT does something like two and a half billion, uh, prompts. Um, and in B2B, in the B2B world, buyer adoption, uh, of AI assistance comes across or across. The entire purchase process is approaching 100% if it isn't already. You know, so basically if your company isn't showing up in AI search, you know, it's not just that the, it's not just that the uh, you know, you don't get the accolades or people don't find you. It's that it's, it's going to become a revenue problem.

Speaker A: Right, right. And is this a niche trend or has it already changed how buyers find companies?

Speaker B: Oh, it's already, it's already changed. It's changing and it's changing very, very rapidly. Um, AI traffic, I mean this is again, this is a little bit older data but AI traffic in the US grew 10 to 12 times between the middle of 24 and the middle of 25 or even early 25. And those visitors are converting at 4 to 10 times the rate of traditional traffic. Um, that's 400 to 900% more than if someone just went off a regular Google search. Um, you know, and at the same time Google puts an AI, ah, answer on the top of the page, the click through rates on everything below it drop. Organic and paid. Right. So the channel's shrinking, uh, while the new one is producing better buyers. And actually, I mean Google just made a big announcement um, that they're now, they're expanding the biggest, they're expanding their answer box uh, for the first time in like 25 years or something like that. Because it's gonna, it's basically going to all AI is what it amounts to, right?

Speaker A: Yeah. I'm sure Google has been feeling the pain from the growth in AI search platforms and this is probably, you know, one of, one of many, uh, coming responses to that situation. But let's go back to something you said. I just want to underscore it for the audience a little bit. Um, you said that AI referred visitors convert at four to 10 times that of other visitors, which I assume would be organic search or you know, that

Speaker B: nature, it's organic search. So somebody just goes into Google type, they type a, you know, whatever, and that's the traditional way you're found. Yeah, you get, you know, you get the paid stuff up top and then the, the first organic search and you just click through, you know, that's what we're talking about.

Speaker A: I, I have a theory about why, uh, why people convert better through or converted higher rates, uh, through, you know, AI generated traffic than other traffic. But I know you've researched this, so I'd love to hear from you, you know, before I offer my opinion, what do the research actually show?

Speaker B: And then, so yeah, so the, it's all about intent, right? A traditional Google search, it might be somebody who's casually browsing, maybe doing some early homework. Um, but when someone jumps in on an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Grok or something like that, or Claude, Claude's really coming and really exploding. But when someone does that, they're asking a very specific question, uh, and the assistant is going to recommend something that's very, very specific. Right. So basically the answer to the short answer is it's doing a much better job of filtering. So that when, when a client, or a potential client rather, uh, or investor comes to your website, they're already, they're, they're way down the, the road so to speak, when it comes to making a buying decision. So they're this, the data supports this. I mean chat GPT skews toward a deeper evaluation, decision, decision, say uh, decision stage queries. While Google search is moving, you know, well, Google search is going to be, as I mentioned, going to be moving in that direction. Uh, they already are. But the traditional search is, is just more about like casual, casual uh, browsing. I've, I've actually even talked to a number of, of clients and businesses, uh, or business owners and uh, investors especially investors are like. I had one friend who's a, he's a big Wall street guy. And he told me, you know, I used to have to do all this research, you know, look at the, you know, the 10Q or whatever it is, 10K or whatever it is, all this stuff. And it would take me hours and hours to do that. And now I pop it into chat GPT, boom. Um, and I have everything in like five minutes, maybe less. Right. So it's radically changing. And I mean this is, this is why it's really important financial for financial firms. Uh, anybody that has like high regulatory and a lot of, a lot of uh, traffic, um, excuse me, a lot of uh, you know, data that their people have to, you know, digest because everyone's just putting it right into, into AI.

Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and it does make sense that traffic that comes from one of these AI, uh, answer platforms or search platforms would convert at a higher rate because, you know, it almost feels like you're talking to a trusted friend. Right? It, it, it has like that kind of dynamic that word of mouth has, right. When you have complexity or Claude. You know, for a product recommendation, you're looking for a particular kind of service provider and they, it doesn't come back to you with a list of possibles like it would if you were running a regular organic search. It actually comes back to you with a list, um, of recommendations and you feel like, well, great, it's gone out there on the web and looked at everything that's possible out there and it's come back. It saved me from having to do that and it's come back to me with a recommendation.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And that recommendation feels like I'm talking to a trusted friend.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And in fact. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

Speaker A: No, so, so just to, just to finish the thought. So what that does. One of the biggest barriers to people buying is uncertainty. Is this going to be a good purchase? Is it going to make me. If it's B2B, is it going to make me look stupid or is it going to blow back on me internally in the organization, Right. Everybod is looking to remove uncertainty. So one of the biggest things that that AI search does for the buyer is it removes that uncertainty and that's going to instantly increase conversion rates. So we'll leave that one and move on.

Speaker B: Um, actually, could I say one thing about that because I, because I do find it very fascinating and the way people use their AI, um, assistants, it's very interesting. Some of them even name them and some of them even do like psychological. They're bouncing. It's like they're talking to their psychologists or something. I've had conversations with, with people. Right. Um, who are actually doing this. So it's, it goes. Yeah, to your point, it's like a trusted friend giving you really good advice that you, you know, you're gonna take.

Speaker A: Right, yeah. Uh, you know, and it starts to know who you are, know what other things that you have, or you use these forms. The more it will suggest things that say like, well, I know you already own such and such, or I know you already bought such and such. So the product that I'm going to recommend goes well with that. Right. Like it has that kind of historical knowledge about you as well too, which just sort of deepens that trusted friend relationship. Um, so what, what does being invisible to AI actually look like?

Speaker B: So being invisible to AI, you know, if you, if you ask ChatGPT, Grok or whatever, um, a question, you're gonna, you know, your company, if, if you're, if you're, if you got visibility, you should be in the answer. Um, but then again, you might not be and your competitor might be, or perhaps no one is, which means the playing field's wide open. Right. Um, because again, their AI is looking for very specific answers. And it doesn't just, you know, an AI, a regular Google search is just going to, you know, it may be completely irrelevant. Everyone's had many, many irrelevant Google searches come up when you ask a question. AI is getting away from all that. Right. So, so you know, either, so, so, so if, if you are invisible, um, you know, it's one of two problems. Either the right content doesn't exist, or it exists but the AI can't reach it. Um, we worked with a company that had a real community strength, but it all lived in discord and GitHub, uh, formats that the AI can't search. Right. And so even though they had really robust conversations and a community, they're basically invisible to the AI crawlers. So the, the fix there isn't. It wasn't to create new content, it was to make sure that content can be searched by AI.

Speaker A: And how do these assistants actually decide what to recommend?

Speaker B: So that's a good question. It's basically, it's two, it's a two pronged answer they pull from two different places. One is memory. So everything the AI learned during training. Right. And training is as, whenever you're using it. Right. Um, and telling it and giving it prompts and all that, um, you can kind of think of it as like AIs, uh, existing worldview it's sort of like you grew up and you know, whatever you were taught at home and in your community, that's what you know. Right. So, and then the other is real time search. That's where the AI goes out to the Internet. The AI is, is looking for the answers, um, before, before it answers you. Right. So, and then these things get blended together. So it's, it's relying on what it already knows and what it's finding and it puts those together and then um, and it checks to make sure it's accurate. And sometimes it's not. That's why, that's why AI will give you bad answers sometimes because it's not giving you, because it doesn't have, it doesn't have the right training or the, the data that it's looking for is not available. So you want to be in the AI's long term memory and you want to be in the sources that it retrieves. So if you miss both, you are invisible.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. And that's the real danger right now you've written a bit about, uh, a framework or something that you call the parametric knowledge flywheel. Do you want to explain what that is?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. Here's how it works. If your content gets picked up through real time retrieval today, say an article or your CEOs like, you know, he's on Bloomberg and he is, you know, uh, the Bloomberg's really good about putting everything on YouTube. Um, it's going to get, that's going to get archived. It's going to go into the memory. Uh, and so then the AI is going to know your brand by default. Uh, and then research suggests that when the brand is already in the AI's memory, it has an easier time citing that brand again or that person again because it's the starting point of the answer, right? It's the memory that it's pulling from. So that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the compounding part, right, where you have someone who, or you have an answer that if you want to be getting, if you want to be cited over and over again, getting into that memory, um, is really crucial.

Speaker A: Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. So why is third party coverage dominant in what AI sites?

Speaker B: So, so third party is, is dominant because AI wants to give you the best answer, right? It wants to, um, you know, it needs, it needs, excuse me, it, it wants to give you the best answer it possibly can and it needs credible sites to do that. So that's why third Party is super important. It will pull some things from your website, it will pull some things from your blog. Uh, and that's important too. But a lot of it's going to be third party. Whether that's a Wikipedia page or a, uh, huge amount of it is, is, is um, news sites. So whether that's again, you know, whether that's a TV clip on, on Bloomberg or excuse me, a TV clip on YouTube or it's you know, uh, a contributed article piece on MarketWatch.com or it's you know, a story in the Wall Street Journal or all that stuff gets, it gets pulled in because it's, it ranks very, very high. It's very, very credible. And the AI again wants to give you the best answer it possibly can. So it's not going to give you some, some like no name blog that, that has like you know, three readers. It's not going to pull from that. Right. It's going to pull from the most credit. Excuse me, the most credible sources.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, and that makes complete sense. Right. Just because just it's just basic, you know, human nature or logic. Right? What, what you say about yourself is not as believable as what somebody else says about you. 100 and that's, that's what this coming down to, right?

Speaker B: Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker A: It makes all the difference in the world. So the third party coverage is seen as more credible, more valuable than anything you could possibly say about yourself on your own website.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I think that's like a real game changer for a lot of organizations, particularly mid market companies that haven't really thought about third party coverage, don't have a PR, uh, team or someone helping them, you know, get third party coverage. They're just not thinking about it. And I think that's a real blind spot.

Speaker B: It really is. I mean these, these AI assistants, you know, um, like we talked about before, eventually it's going to be, I mean this is my own personal opinion, but eventually I think it's going to be all AI and traditional search is going to be out the window. And that's why these third party sources are so important. Um, because that's how people are going to find out about your business, where your locations are, what you think about, what products you have, you know, all those kinds of things. Right. You have to answer those questions in a credible way and have those answers be on a credible website. That's not you. Right. Because everybody knows, you know, and we've been talking about this in PR for decades is PR is great because it's a third party verification that you didn't pay for. Right. It's the New York Times writing about you in their, in their business section, you know, doing a profile on the CEO that, that's way more credible than the owner. The CEO takes out an ad and puts it, you know, puts it in some, some, you know, magazine or something. Um, everybody knows it's an ad. Right. Um, it's just not as credible. But because it's basically your own content, you're just paying for it versus you're on Wikipedia or you're on a third party site that, that people actually trust makes a huge, huge difference.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's really easy to understand when you kind of pull it apart and think about it in those terms. There's also a bias I think, that these platforms have toward, uh, recently published content. Can you talk a bit about that and how important that is or how it's factored in?

Speaker B: Yeah, so there's certain, there is a recency bias. It's uh, somewhere in the neighborhood of about 65% of sources cited on AI are, are posted or ran in the past year and about 80% in the past two years. Um, and actually Google, actually Gemini actually has the strongest bias which is about 85% of its, of its citations come from the last three years. So if you're, that if your stuff is m, if your stuff is more than a year too old, you're, you're not getting found most often now that says, you know, I mean, so the content basically has a short shelf life. And, and, and it doesn't mean that you're not going to be found. If you, if you did a paper or something, you, you have white paper or something that was like 10 years ago, but it's super, super, super relevant, but someone's going to have to do a very specific search on that in order to find you. Right. If you want to be, if you want to be found, publish a lot. Publish not, not so much a lot, but publish things that are important and do it, you know, more recent. I mean, I basically accelerates decay. Right. Um, that's why newsrooms and news sites, they're always, you know, if you go, um, to your favorite news site, it's going to have fresh content. And that's why you keep going, right? Because it's, it's, it's, it's something that's very, very recent. And um, that's why you go if, if CNN didn't update their website for a year, would anybody go, right? Of course not.

Speaker A: Yeah, and, and, uh, you know, I got to assume that these platforms are actually filtering out content that says nothing new. How do they do that?

Speaker B: So they, um, um, let me, let me say it this way. The substance beats style. So if you're adding value, if you're just regurgitating something that a hundred other people said, it's going to know that that's what's going to filter out. Right. If you're doing, if you, if you're, if you're providing real value, your, your quotes, statistics, original data, maybe you have a survey that you, that you just did, that's unique, um, and you have expert analysis. That's the stuff that's going to get cited above. Like, I'm just regurgitating what everybody already knows. Right. And again, the AIs, AI systems are looking for content that it actually needs. And if you can provide a perspective that it's, that is hard to find or maybe you can't even find anywhere else, um, you know, maybe it's data that no one else has published, that's what's going to get found. Right. Um, so this is why, you know, having good quality, you know, content over just slop. You know, you've heard the term AI slop. Um, this, you know, there's content slop too, right, where you just, you're saying something, but it's not really new, it's not really interesting. And you can find it on a hundred websites.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's what you, that's. Yeah. And again, you know, it does come down to are you adding value or are you, are you creating new value or are you just regurgitating something from before? Which is not to say that repurposing content is not a. Repurposing and recycling content is not a good strategy that actually can work, but you have to spin it, change it, do something a little bit different with it, update the point of view that you provided in the original piece, something of that nature to give it a little bit of a different flavor. And then I think, you know, it can, it can be effective. So.

Speaker B: Right, right. I mean, we do this in PR all the time where we'll take an old piece of content that's really, it's really evergreen and valuable, and then we'll add, we'll layer on, um, you know, some more recent data. Maybe there's a breaking news story, maybe there's, you know, a new angle, but it's. The core is the same. Um, and then that kind of freshness will really, you know, AI likes that kind of thing, media, like that kind of thing where you know, you got something fresh even though the core arguments are the same. You know, the core thing that you're saying is the same, but, but, but it's freshened up and dressed up nicely in something that's very, very current. And then you can also do another thing that we do that really helps. And, and AI tends to like, um, is you can invert it too. You can take, you know, things, things you should know about, you know, investing. Here are the five things you should know about investing. And then invert it and go, here are the five mistakes you should avoid investing. Right. So you can make it unique and different. Right. Uh, and that tends to work pretty well.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you've also said that brands that settle disputes get cited. What do you mean by that? What does that.

Speaker B: So, yeah, uh, so AI, AI doesn't know anything. Right. AI only knows what's out there on the Internet. It's only as good as what it's been trained on. Right. Like we talked about before, and what it can find when it does a search, when you do a query. Right. So they're not, it's not really good at synthesize, synthesizing, you know, or conflicting viewpoints. Right. So when there's a, if you can, you know, the research shows that they tend to favor whatever the majority says or the default of what they already believe. Right. So, so if your content provides a well supported resolution, the AI can use that as a tiebreaker. Right. Um, the, the, the data show that this pattern is especially strong and B2B, you know, where companies, excuse me, where comparisons, um, you know, in content get cited at a much higher rate than, than in other areas like B2C. So if you've basically, if you've, if your industry has an open question that nobody's really given a good answer to or the answers are right, and you've got credibility, right. You've got a CV, your CEO has been in the business, you know, 30 years, whatever it is, um, and you give a solid and very important, um, and you know, backed up by data supporting, uh, evidence, you know, that's where you can, you can, you can tip the scales in your favor.

Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, so we've talked about a lot of different types of content and the fact that we need third party content and um, but is winning AI citations really all about just producing more content, increasing your volume?

Speaker B: Uh, absolutely not. I mean the, the short answer is no. Volume is good. Um, but it's not necessarily all about volume. It's really not. It's about, like we said before, quality. Right? You want to, you want to, you know, if you've got one good polished piece with proprietary data and a very interesting viewpoint, I mean that's going to get picked up more than just, you know, something that you, that you, that you, that you just put into to Claude. And it's just basically AI slop. Right? Um, AI assistants really resist that shallow content that's being regurgitated. They want something unique. They want a real, a real point of view. Um, you know, and in, in your industry, if you can provide that, um, you know, you're going to be way ahead of your competition. It doesn't necessarily mean, it could mean, it could even mean you're producing less but better quality. Uh, it might mean that you produce more. Um, but you got to make sure that it's quality. Right? Uh, I'm hearing a lot of stories just anecdotally. Uh, my mother in law bought a book on Amazon on a particular, a particular topic. Um, and she was really excited to get it. She gets it. And it's just the, it's basically what someone had done. They put the query, they said, write me a book on, uh, it was on castor oil. On castor oil. The AI wrote it, they published it, put it on Amazon and somebody's buying it. And people are making money off of this selling AI slop. And it's ridiculous. And people are gonna, this is what's gonna, it's gonna change and people are gonna be very, very more, they're gonna be a lot more selective. So you've got all these people doing AI slop, selling books and putting it on their website and doing their blogs this way. It's not quality. And so the quality, the quality is what's going to set you apart. You know, as a business, as a thought leader, you know, as a CEO.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I think it's the quality. I also think that there's uh, or one of the things that I often counsel organizations that say, well, what kind of content should we produce or what should we be uh, going for? And you touched on a little bit with what you said there. I think one of the keys is to figure out what is it that you are uniquely qualified to talk about. And ideally that underscores the credibility, uh, underscores and gives credibility to what you do. That kind of the ideal formula. What in Pick a lane, right? Pick a niche. We're, we're, yeah, we're uniquely qualified to talk about this topic. So how do we then provide ongoing points of view around that topic? And that's a great way to begin to build out your content calendar.

Speaker B: 100. 100. Yeah. I mean, media won't even. You need to stay in your swim lane, right. You can't. If you're, if you're an expert on, on investing, you know, you shouldn't be talking about, you know, ancient history. Right. Unless of course, you have a degree in it and you actually know it. Right. But you need to stay and where you're focused. And what I always tell, you know, what I always tell, I'll tell clients is like what we're trying to do with PR and with, in this case, you know, content that's going to be cited by AI, right, Is what is it that you're qualified to talk about? It's a Venn diagram. What is it that you're qualified to talk about? What is it that's going to move the needle for your business or your, whatever your, your focus is, like, you know, whether it's a campaign or whatever it might be. Um, and then what does your audience care about or what does the media care about? Right. And where that Venn diagram, where that, where that overlap is, that's where you focus.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that formula. And uh, uh, hopefully have something like that on your website. We'll put a link to it in the show notes if you do.

Speaker B: Because I think we do. If we don't, I'm going to put it up and then you can look to it.

Speaker A: There you go. Um, so we talked a little bit about Google early on in the conversation and how Google search is now really leaning hard into AI. Um, can you fill us in a little bit more on what some of those changes are and what the impacts may be in how people are using these tools?

Speaker B: So yeah, the, um, the impact is going to be 100% at some point. Right. Everybody's using AI. Um, either they're already using AI or they're very soon going to be using AI. Um, because Google's pushing you. Google has, of course, Google is the monster when it comes to search. Um, and it's pushing everybody, like we talked about before, into AI. Like eventually you're not going to have, you know, they're going to figure out how to do paid ads within AI. Um, but you're not going to have, uh, you're going to have an AI answer for pretty much everything you search.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So it's changing the way, it's changing the way People operate right. I'll just uh, anecdotally I started using chat GPT, you know like maybe 10, 12 months ago and that dropped my, my Google searches by probably half overnight and now I'm with Claude and everything. Like I'm, it's uh, down to like 10, 20 maybe for me personally. Um, so it's changing and, and again you know if you're in a, if you're a B2B and you've got you know, selective buyers and you're, and people are thinking about what they're doing, you know, um, especially in those industries we've talked about before like finance or real estate or some other, you know, where people are, are very thoughtful about what they're doing. They're going to be, they're going to be using AI at nearly 100. So it's probably less you know, if you're, if uh, you're in an industry where you know, it's less about what people search online and more about like in person or you know people just aren't using AI as much as they might, as much as other people are. Then yeah, then, then that's when you like think about your, your, you would adjust your, your focus. Does that make sense? Did I answer that properly?

Speaker A: Yeah it does and it's always a little bit dangerous to think about, you know, to extrapolate your own personal behavior to the market overall. I uh, say this to companies all the time as well but uh, you know in my case like, like you hit the nail on the head. I almost never run Google searches anymore. I, unless it's like I'm trying to look up ah, where a particular restaurant is on a map or get their phone number or something like that. It's a very specific thing. Um, otherwise I'm doing it all in perplexity. Claude Chat, one of these other platforms and even down to, and this is I think a form of first party content that people should think about. So I will ask you questions about um, how to set up a camera or uh, tell me why my computer is not picking up this peripheral that I plugged into it and what it does there is it's going to actually look for documentation on those products online, um, read the manual so to speak so I don't have to read the manual and come back to me and tell me what to do. So I think that that's another area that companies need to think about when they're putting content together is what about the buyer journey or buyer experience? Do I need to explain and publish mhm. So that these tools can find it when my customers or potential customers have a problem.

Speaker B: Exactly. It. We always do this in pr, especially when we're starting out with a new client. We, we ask what are your buyers asking? What do they care about? Right. What is it that they're searching online? I mean, what questions do they have? You know, what are, what, what questions do your sales people get? You know, are there, are there ones that surface in guaranteed? They're like there are. Or uh, there are questions that are gonna, that are gonna float to the top. You're going to get a 5, 10, 15, 20 questions that people ask all the time. Right. How do I fix this? How do I do this? What if it's a product, you know, what's the best way to use it? Or if it's more complex, you know, how do I plug this thing in and make it work on my desktop? You know, because most people aren't really that technical. I'm not. Um, so I know that, that those, those kinds of. You have to, when you're thinking about content, answer the questions that your buyers are asking.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, 100%. And I think it's really those two things, if I had to just pick two, that are the most powerful, it's third party content and first party content about how your buyer can have an easier time with your product and service. M. And it's less about chest pounding. We're so great at this. We're so great at that. Uh, that's kind of going to get discounted a bit in the, in these tools, so.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. Because I mean, think about it, just think about it in like, make it personal. I don't mean personal like telling something that you don't want people to know. But I mean if you, if you know a guy who all he does is brag about himself, right. And he's always telling you how great he is, are you really going to trust that guy? Right. On the other hand, if you hear from like four different sources, that man, that guy knows what he's talking about when it comes to investing in gold or whatever. Right. You're going to trust that much more than if the guy tells you, I'm a great gold investor, everyone says so. Right. Uh, it makes a huge difference. And that's what AI provides. Right. It goes to those trusted sources. People like, you know, again, they name their AI sometimes. And I even saw one story where, uh, I think it was in Japan where a woman married her AI. I don't know, this is very weird. But like, but this is. The adoption is. It's like your buddy and your buddy tells you to do something, you're probably gonna listen.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I'm not running out to marry Claude anytime soon. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but yeah. I think having a relationship with your, uh, AI platform is, is, is still a little weird. As we've talked about, they do appear to be a trusted friend and they're, you know, more and more, uh, stitched into the fabric of our lives. So it is, this is, this is one of those inflection points, uh, that is changing a lot about how we behave and how we consume, uh, products and services. So how does a, like, how would you advise a CEO to test whether AI is actually helping or hurting their business right now?

Speaker B: I mean, go and punch your name into Chat GPT or, or, you know, Google Search, or Google the AI search portion and see what comes up. Uh, see who are your competitors coming up. Are you coming up, uh, you know, check your analytics, then go to check your analytics page, analytics page. And Google even has, uh, AI referred traffic section now in, uh, in, in Google Analytics. So you can actually see where is my traffic coming in from? Is it, is it coming in off of Chat GPT or other AI assistants? Uh, or is it coming in, you know, traditional search or someone just punching in my, directly punching in my website? Um, and so you'll know like, okay, you know, is it. And if you have a baseline, it's even better because then you could track, okay, what was it a year ago, what was it two years ago? And you'll be able to see, you know, how things are changing.

Speaker A: Yeah, that, that, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and, and now that it's available in Google Analytics, I think that's something that a lot of people in the audience will be familiar with. And you, you know, you can look for it just, just like you look for other types of inbound traffic to your website and how they're categorized. So that, that is one way that, that I think is, is very helpful. Particularly as you mentioned, if you have a baseline, you know, if you have historical data that you can compare it to and you can see, well, what have the trends been in the other types of search volume, and then what are they today? Chances are really good that your other types of search volume have been decreased or at least their growth rate has decreased, if they haven't decreased in actual nominal numbers. So there's probably an impact going on. And if you're not making up the gap with AI search driven traffic, then you're slowly beginning to fall behind your competition.

Speaker B: Mhm. Absolutely. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're dropping off the radar. And when we're seeing this, then this is supported by, by multiple different studies that they're looking, looking at where traffic goes and who's searching what and how many people are searching on this and that and the other thing. Um, and so yeah, it's depending on your, I've heard some horror stories, you know, depending on your industry. Like when AI rolls out and it gets bigger and bigger, then they're seeing their traffic just drop off because they're not on AI. Uh, right. They're not doing those things. They might just be doing Google Ads, you know, so, and if someone uses, uses chat GPT. Because right now chat GPT is the 800 pound gorilla. Right. I don't think that's always going to be the case. I think Claude's um, you know, and Claude's really coming up fast and of course Google's really pushing hard for, for Gemini. But um, you know, but so where are you going to find those ads? I mean they're going to figure out how to do it at some point. But um, but yeah, for. If you're trusting in the old way, it's not going to work for m

Speaker A: much longer and, and on that point. So how much Runway is left?

Speaker B: You know, I, I can't give you a date. You know, I said earlier, I think at the outset that I don't, I think this is going to change. I think everything's going to go to AI ultimately. Um, because it's just, it's just a better. If you can keep it from, get. And I'll phrase it this way, if you can keep AI from, from falling into your own biases, which it will do, they will tell you what you want to hear. Uh, you have to keep it honest. But if you can keep it honest. Ah. And you know, you got to do that so you can get good answers. But I think it does provide such better answers and it's more personable and you know, it's, it's going to go that direction. But um, you know, as far as a date, I don't know. But it's going fast. I've heard, I've heard, you know, anywhere from a year to year and a half, two years and the whole world's going to be completely different because you're going to be able to like tell your, tell your AI. Hey, can you do my taxes. Great. Can you file my taxes? Awesome. And it's done in 10 minutes. Right? Like, what? This is like, it's, it's going to transform whole industries. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, you know, that doesn't mean that you don't need an accountant. You certainly do, because you don't want to trust the AI to do everything right. And of course, those are very sensitive things. Um, but anyway, it's the, yeah, it's, it's, it's changing things. But, you know, every time, you know, your competitor gets cited, uh, that citation, or if it's you, that citation feeds the flywheel, right. It gets archived, it learns. So it's, it's future training data for the next time that question's answered or asked. Um, you know, and so if you don't, if you don't, um, if you're not, if you're not getting in there and you're not. The AI is not getting, you know, your customers aren't training the AI on who you are and what you provide and the problems that you fix, you know, um, you're. You're going to get left behind. And it's like, you know, traditional SEO, you know, back. You know, the old way is, okay, if I need to catch up, I'm just gonna spend 30 grand or 40 grand or 50 grand, whatever it is, uh, on, on, on paid ads and, and SEO stuff so that I can catch up, you know, maybe in a quarter, maybe two quarters. It's not like that with AI. It's the, it's the long term, longer term. Like, it's just training. It's training. It's training not to be confused with, you know, AI likes recency. Yes. But it's also training itself on what it finds in 2025, what it finds in 2026, so that in 2027, even though it's not pulling that stuff, it already has. It's already been trained to know, okay, that's a great restaurant over there. I don't even need to look it up because I know that it's got a thousand great, you know, reviews. Right. And, and so when someone searches it, they may not even tell you, oh, it's got a thousand great reviews. It can just tell you, that's a great restaurant and you should go.

Speaker A: Yep. And I think that's what it's going to come down to. And, you know, uh, it occurs to me, though, that that one of the things. This is a little bit off of the topic that we've been talking about. This is more about uh, how we are each, you know, ourselves personally using these tools. I think one of the biggest dangers, you mentioned it briefly and is confirmation bias, Right. It tells you what it thinks you want to hear. And when you hear something, you tend to be selective about choosing, you know, the answers that you've already decided about or that you're trying to, you know, prove true. Right. And I have found in my own use of these platforms that, you know, very often I'll ask it something and they say, well, that's a great idea, Rich. You should do it. Right? Or some, some flavor of that. Uh, that happens a lot. And I started, I start to question. Just sort of like talking about yourself, right? I sort of question, I start to question the platform's credibility when it does that too much. Like, if it's constantly telling me that I have all these great ideas. Well, I know, you know, not every idea I have is great, so it can't be true, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. That's why you got to keep it honest, right? You've got to say, answer me. You know, don't. Let me rephrase that. Don't tell me what I want to hear. Answer me honestly from an outside perspective. So you got, you've got to put the right prompts in, right? It's all about the right prompts.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Right. Find me the best car. Um, well, if it knows that you like Minis. I love Minis. Um, it may just tell you, oh, go buy another Mini. But I'm like, well, but I want it for off roading, right? So, no, the Mini's not great for off roading.

Speaker A: You need.

Speaker B: In a Jeep or whatever, right? So you need to, you need to make sure you put the right prompts in and make sure that you don't, you don't go down that bias hole, right? Because you will, it will, it will tell you. And it's not just about, like, products and things you want to find on the Internet or whatever. It'll be everything. Right? And you've heard those horror stories, right, where, where some buddy is mentally ill and they're like, you know, asking questions and then something really bad happens, uh, and then the family sues Chat GPT because it gave bad advice, right? You've heard these things, right? Um, that's an extreme example, but that's, that's what you have to avoid, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, it, it, it, it is really a, a, a big change in how we do so many different things. So, hey, this has been a great conversation, Ray. I think our audience is going to get A lot out of it. Um, just to kind of bring it to a close and wrap it up. Uh, if you had to advise a CEO on one step they should take this quarter, what would the first step be?

Speaker B: Start testing. Um, build a set of 100, 200 questions that your buyers actually ask, right? Talk to your salespeople or whoever's interacting with your clients. Um, and then do some, do some research, you know, uh, run them through major AI assistants. Um, record, you know, you know, record who, you know who gets cited. Look at where your buyers are. You know, you can do some clickstream data, um, searches or reports where you can find out, you know, what are my, what are my people reading, what are my people watching, what are they doing, you know, and see if you show up. So you get a benchmark, right? And then see if you show up on, uh, in those areas, right? Are you showing up on the, on, um, in the places, you know, in, uh, the searches, are you showing up in the places that your people are reading? Um, you know, and, you know, basically get a snapshot of what it looks like so that you can then decides, do I need to do this right? Or do I not need to do this just yet? You know, so, I mean, what is the adoption? And this is what clicks clickstream data will help tell you is. And um, we do these kinds of reports for clients. It'll tell you this particular group is, has a really high adoption of AI or this group has a low adoption, right? And then you can figure out, okay, well then how do they find my content? If it's high adoption, I really need to be in AI being found by AI, how do I do that? And if it's a low adoption, okay, I might have some time so you can make some better decisions once you have that information.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, uh, that's really great advice, Ray. And uh, hopefully, uh, something that people in our audience can really take and run with right away, because I think those are, uh, that's just a great activity to do regardless, uh, of whether you're, you know. And by activity, I mean putting together a list of the questions that your customers are commonly asking you. You know, talking to your sales team, talking to your customer success team, talking to your marketing team, gathering that information. That's a valuable activity in and of itself. M for a lot of different things. But as far as seeding ideas to drive your content strategy, super valuable and something very easy to do, right. This is not rocket science. It just takes some work and some intentionality. So, hey, uh, again, I really want to thank you for being here today, Ray. This has been a great conversation. I greatly appreciate your time. Uh, how can people find out more about you or your work and connect with you?

Speaker B: Well, thank you, Rich, for having me. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Um, and, uh, I think, uh, I look forward to further conversations. But, uh, to answer your question, how can they find me? Uh, our website is razorsharpr.com. that's razorsharpr.com. um, or you can email me, Ray, at, ah, razorsharp.com. uh, or, you know, all the contact info is on our website. So, um, you can see our blog posts and all that kind of good stuff. So, um, that's probably the best way.

Speaker A: All right, that's great. And we'll put that information in the show notes as well. So, uh, again, thanks for being here, Ray, and thank you to our audience, uh, for your, uh, attention today, and I hope you get a lot out of it.