How To Win In Search In A Post-Click World - Part 1

Speaker A: All right, should be live. Uh, check here. M. I'm alive.

Speaker B: Well you are alive, but I think we are live. Sometimes I think you're a robot, but

Speaker A: it's nice to be alive.

Speaker B: Similar story. All right, we are live. Sorry for the delay and the problems. We switched Zoom accounts and had issues getting the live stream to work because you have to check all these boxes in Zoom. So apologize for that. But I'm super excited. Um, we are here today with Marty. Marion, if you're not familiar with Marty, um, you should be very good friend of mine, known him for years and he is probably one of the smartest people in very uh, in the marketing space related to branding, SEO, um, and specifically what we're going to go over today, which is pretty exciting I will say it's kind of perfect timing. I was telling Marty last week I had actually someone ah, somebody reach out to me that had found me through chat GPT and they recommended me to them as an ah, an agency, um, through chat gbt. So this kind of ties directly into AI. Um, we're going to keep this probably to about 40 minutes and then this is going to be a multi part series. So Marty, why don't you give a um, 60 second, no longer than 60 second intro and then we'll, we'll dive

Speaker A: in you and time me.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Say go. Go. Okay. Every single thing about digital marketing has changed in the last 18 months. Some of you know a lot about it, some of you know very little about it. And nobody um, knows everything except for Google of course, who knows everything. Search, organic search, paid search, shopping, YouTube. Every single part of search has changed because of AI in search, generative experience and um, users are being manipulated. Searchers are being trained by Google to not care about clicking through to your website, not care about clicking your ad, not care about clicking an organic listing, not caring about clicking a direct uh, search answer. And we need to be able to get around that if our businesses depend on search Organic organization page. So that's what this series is going to be about. How to win in search and how to get the click in what Google would love to have is a completely zero click world.

Speaker B: All right. You have a presentation, right?

Speaker A: I do. Uh, let me see if I can share my screen now. Otherwise that will be a nightmare. And let me know if you can see my screen.

Speaker B: Got it. That does not look like you at all.

Speaker A: Oh come on. It's AI generated. It has to look like me. All right, good iron man of ah, search. Anyway, um, hey everybody, look, I'm really excited to be here. This is going to be a first but short intro and then we're going to figure out the glitches in Zoom and in Facebook and in the universe so that we can have longer sessions. Let me give you a very quick overview how this is going to work. Once a week, Justin and I are going to go live, do one on one, and we're going to talk about a different aspect, a different level of what we call the zero click world. It applies to organic, it applies to paid, it applies to absolutely everything that happens online when anybody searches for anything. So you're all used to, you know, what keywords trigger an ad and what keywords get us ranked and what are the ranking factors and all that's out the window. Is it, uh, no longer important? No, it's still important, but it doesn't get you any brownie points. It's the cost of entry. What we need to do is we need to understand what Google is trying to do to us, to brands, to advertisers, to SEOs, to agencies. We need to understand how to control it so they don't control us because our businesses absolutely depend on it. So welcome to the new search reality. You know, search has always been complicated. It's been algorithms and competitors and attribution models. But we no longer are competing against others in our categories. We're now competing against the search engine. And that's really terrible if you don't know how to control it. But there are ways to absolutely control it. So they want to manipulate us? No, no, we're going to manipulate them and we're going to turn this into our advantage. So welcome to the zero click world. As of this week, about 57% of all searches done by searchers, and this is a growing number now, result in no click through because Google has added a lot of new rich features in the serp. Like featured snippets have been expanded, search, generative AI knowledge panels, direct answer boxes. People also ask, people also ask for. And it goes on and on and on. And next 12 to 18 months, we're expecting to see about 80% of every search that takes place on Google result in no click through. And this fundamentally changes everything because you're going to notice traffic going down, you're going to notice click rates going down, which means that your cost is going to go up relative to your return, which is going to crush your ROIs, and it's going to make your reports to your clients look really terrible. So let's figure out how to fix that so let's talk about a little bit of history and then what happened. Featured snippets, which you're all familiar with, were introduced in 2014 and they were introduced as a kind of a quick answer to replace an extended need for someone to go look at a website. Well, in 2023 Google changed this. They elevated this model to use featured snippets to train their sge. And they're doing this kind of in a little bit of a sneaky way. Sorry Google, but I'm going to call you out here. Nothing that was introduced back in 2015, 2012, 2013, none of it was accidental. Everything was planned. This has been choreographed for uh, the last 15 years and for the next 15 years. Featured Snippets were always intended so Google could see what people do, so Google could learn more. So Google could use that information to further manipulate their ultimate objectives. We're going to get there in a moment. So last year SGE training became one of the most important aspects for Google in this whole world of LLMs and AI. And it gets to be a mess. People also ask everybody seen that introduced originally in 2015 as dynamically related questions that users could. Searchers could dwell on. Right? Or they could expand on. But now in the last year 90% of all mobile searches are uh, prominently showing. People also ask because again this fuels the SGE question flow. What are people looking for? What are people expanding to? Read more about this is training Google. Google is sucking the life out of the searchers behaviors out of your placements, out of organic listings so that they can achieve a very nefarious purpose. Well, if you were googled, you'd want to do this too. People also search for a feature introduced in 2018 which is basically a post bounce option to keep users on the search return page longer and longer. We're going to see this as a recurring theme. But in 2024 this became a proactive feature, not just a post click. This was meant to drive what we call entity expansion and I'm going to into that in a uh, future session in a very big way because that is everything. Knowledge panels, everybody knows what knowledge panel is. They've been around for a decade or more but last year they started to get implemented across maps, across Google Shopping in addition to the organic search. So you see where this is going. All the features that were introduced over the last decade in every aspect of search have been migrated into eliminating the need for a searcher to have to click and go away from the Google platform. SGE, ah, came in in 2023. What was it? Well, you know, quick AI written summaries that you know, replaced organic links. And you've all seen everything at the top of Google now is uh, AI direct SGE answers and it has pushed the traditional organic SERP down and down and down and down. And um, now we see that all of this sits above all the traditional search, but it's also sitting above ads now. Interesting right? Why? Because even though Google makes their money from the ads that we're all paying for and placing and clicking on, Google still doesn't want people leaving the platform. Google thinks that there's a couple of years where they can kind of get the most the best of both worlds where they're going to still make money from paid search placements but they're also going to start to keep people away from clicking through. So everybody's going to be paying for these, these paid ad placements. Let me show you something very interesting in a moment. But Google still doesn't want people clicking. So juggle that one. Why is all this happening? Follow the money. Every one of these features a uh, decade ago was planned to be exactly where it's going right now. Take a quick look at this. The paid aspect of search has also been impacted. Google shopping ads. They very often now lead to a Google hosted page Lead form extensions ByPass landing pages LSA Click to call hosted bookings. This impedes, not necessarily eliminates, but impedes the path to clicking through a website image extensions and search ads. The visual SERP native appeal is very powerful but it competes against image packs and discover cards. Again less and less incentive to need to click. YouTube overlays these are basically conversion focused ads within the content, not next to it. No need to click anymore. Smart campaigns Local extensions designed originally for, you know, a phone call, uh, direction request the map view. No need to click. Do you hear what I am saying? Over and over again, no need to click. No need to click. Price and promotion extensions. Now we're able to show the offer and the cost right in the SERP satisfies the need without needing a click. I don't need to go to the website to find out how much something costs. Product listings in in YouTube Discover Shoppable experiences are now directly in the content feed. Completely separated, decoupled from websites. So let's understand the why so that we can better understand what to do about this. Google wants to terminate all searches on the platform. Let me say that again. Google does not want searchers to click. Google wants searchers to stay because they want to reduce what they are now calling SERP leakage. I search, I go to the SERP return page, I click something. I am now gone from the Google platform. And this isn't good for Google because more time on the platform is increases the likelihood that the searcher is going to see some paid feature like a PPC ad for example, or others where Google is going to make money. Google doesn't make money from pure organic yet, but they are going to. Google is not a search engine. Let me say that again. Google is not a search engine. Google is an advertising sales brand business. The only reason they have a search page at all is to give themselves more real estate to place digital paid ads on. And now it's going to be moving into organic features that they are going to monetize. So this classical organic 10 blue links or that's gone, that's history, uh, is now all being replaced largely already, but even more to come with these rich features. So brands and advertisers now need to optimize for total search presence. You can't just do organic, it's not going to work. You cannot just do paid, it's not going to work. Google is now coalescing organic and paid into a single search experience. And if you're only doing one part of it, you're going to lose aggregate mass of uh, visibility for your brand or your client to competitors who are doing it all. So what happened here? Why is the click no longer the end game? Now it's an easy excuse to say, well, Google wants to make more money. They keep you on the platform longer, you'll see an ad, you'll click on it, Google makes money. And that's not really what's happening here. Obviously Google wants to keep their searchers, users on the platform for, you know, very surface level financial benefit. It boosts ad exposures, it lowers bounce rate, it increases monetization for them. But more importantly, it gives Google more, more control over the total searcher experience and the quality of the answer information that a searcher is going to see. Google wants to terminate all searches on the Google platform so they can train searchers over time more and more and more and more that there's no search need to click away. Why? Well, because first of all, more people trust Google than they trust you. More people trust Google than they trust the majority of brands. Because if Google has chosen a piece of your content or your client's content to show in an SGE or a featured snippet, the searcher's assumption Is, Well, Google chose this. It has to be important. It has to be credible. It has to be valid. It's got the endorsement of Google. Google is training searchers more and more and more. Trust us, uh, not those external sources and especially not Google's competitors. So Google has a whole mandate now called stop the search. Faster access to answers. Well, why? Because it gives users a higher sense of immediacy and satisfaction. And, you know, we all live in a world where we need everything right now. Where's my answer right now? Do I want to click and search and click here? Maybe that's right. Maybe that's wrong. Go someplace else. No, I want an answer. That's why I'm searching. Google also wants to be able to control the consistency and the quality of the answers that searchers see immediately to reduce misinformation. This goes back to an older concept of things like quality score. Right. And, um, bad neighborhoods and credibility of what you're clicking on. So here's the real big reason. Google, while they're still kind of a monopoly, they're terrified of competitors. Alexa, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Siri, niche information sites like Yelp and WebMD and Reddit and Quora. Google doesn't want to lose the traffic to them because if you have noticed, these platforms are now monetizing more and more and more and competing against what Google thought was entirely their own world. And Google is collecting. Google sees everything. You all know that. I've said this, Justin said this a million times. Google watches everything that happens. There's no humans at Google. They're all bots. Google collects all these data points to further train their LLMs and to improve the relevance of their AIs and their AI answers. And so Google is looking about, looking to the topic of monetizing attention across all these new formats. And they're testing. They're playing. Does this work? Does this not work? Should we enhance this? Image grids, voice results, sponsored panels, where's going to go next? And so what Google really wants to do is Google is trying to give the searcher faster access to information. Why? Because it makes the searcher feel more satisfied. I got the answer right away. I didn't need to go hunting for it. How? By clicking on a link or an ad, I got an answer. They're also strengthening the perceived trust imparted to the searcher. Because if the answers I see are more and more and more accurate and they result in a better outcome for me, I am going to wind up trusting Google, Google more and more and make Google my go to primary source. How many of you are uh, now using Chat GPT, for example, as a semi or complete replacement for a Google search? I've got ChatGPT open 24 7. Am I going to Google as much as I used to asking some question? No, I'm going into deep research mode. I'm asking chat GPT and guess what? I'm getting a better answer. I'm getting it faster, I'm getting it deeper, I can ask a question back and get it refined. This is not good for Google. Google wants me not to do that. So they have to prove to me that I'm going to get at least as valuable, accurate, deep and meaningful answer on the search platform that I could get from Chat GPT. Google also is very, very committed to engagement metrics. Now in the organic space, there's long been a controversy about, well, do click through rates matter, does bounce rate matter, does dwell time on page matter? And Google would come out for years and say, no, absolutely not. Not a search ranking factor at all. That's complete bs. It is absolutely a search ranking factor because it tells GO that the user is probably finding a helpful experience. And that is good because that tells Google, that website, that landing page, this brand, that experience helps our users. So we're going to rank them higher, we're going to include them, uh, let's see where we're going here. We're going to start including them in our SGE experiences. So even in the paid world, we need to look more and more at a different set of metrics, not just click through. Google wants to control information quality because if they can manage an answer, then Google is ensuring, at least in their mind, that users increase their trust in Google when they get better quality information. And it makes sense. You're going to go back to a source that gave you misinformation. No. And here's uh, the second aspect Google is aggressively researching to reduce misinformation. By very carefully selecting their sources, Google is going to combat further and further misinformation so they don't erode the trust that they're trying so hard to build by controlling what you see as a searcher. And the ultimate takeaway of all of this is Google wants to become your single source of truth, your most trusted knowledge provider. Oh, you don't need to use Chat GPT anymore. Come to us. Our LLM, our SGE is going to do at least as good, or if not better a job of giving you the information you need. Google's also competing against voice Assistants. Hey, Siri. Google doesn't want you to do that. For your information, Google wants you to come to Google. Why? Because when you're on the Google platform, I'm going to say this a million times over the course of the series. When you're on the Google platform, you are much more likely to take an action that makes Google money. You know, I come from the world of big advertising, right? The Madison Avenue giant ad agencies. And you know, back then, television and print ads were the lifeblood of agencies and advertisers before the Internet. So when one publisher was going to a prospective advertiser that they wanted the business from, one of the most important selling points was, look at our demographics, look at our statistics, look at our track rate. We have so many people and they engage at such and such a rate better than that other magazine or that other TV channel you're considering advertising on. Well, Google is doing exactly the same thing. Google is going to further and further monetize every single piece of the search return page. I'm going to say that again, mark down that I'm, um, the one who told you this. Everything on the search page is going to become monetized. Featured snippets are going to become monetized. Knowledge panels are going to become monetized. SGE direct AI answers are going to become monetized. People also ask is going to become monetized. Google is not about giving it away. Google's about bringing it in. Where's the money? And by reducing the usage by searchers of these niche information platforms and the specialized platforms like Yelp, for example, Google discourages searchers from going back there again. Because now I can find it all on Google. One stop m shopping, right? Because Google needs searchers. Not once needs searchers in the largest percentage possible to decide that Google is your first and your last and your only choice to find out information or to get answers. So let's talk about building a data set for AI and machine learning because Google uses this data to refine their AI models. So if Google is going to train their AI better and better based on what searchers do and what searchers read and, um, how much time they spend. You think Google monitors how much time searcher spends on your website? Think about how carefully they monitor how much time a searcher spends on the serp, how much scrolling they do, how long they stay on any particular ad or listing. Everything is being tracked. This isn't Big Brother, this is the biggest brother. Google's refining their language model. So by tracking and Absorbing all of this real time user data, it helps Google in real time live right now continuously adjust its language models. Why? To give you improved answer accuracy. Why? To give you more trust assumption in Google. Why? To keep you on the platform longer. Google needs to become the leader in AI. They need to harness everything that happens on their SERP platform to make them more money and to reduce the risk of their other competitors. So this whole game is about a sharp shift in trust. Google wants to and it's maybe counterproductive for them in the long run. Still to be seen, they want to have a shift trust from the user trusting the brand that they're looking at to Google being the trusted source. Google is now the brand. Google has stepped into the shoes of uh, 50, 60, 80, 90% of the websites out there who want to give you information and answers so that you can come back to that website and maybe buy a service or buy a product or hire the agency or engage the plumber or whatever it is that that website is intended to do. Google wants to do it for you. And um, so what happens here is that users are more and more increasingly trusting this presentation layer that Google is showing them more so than the source itself. Think about this. Google has a much higher perception of credibility than almost anybody else out there. So you can provide the insight. Your client or your brand or your website can provide the information. But Google owns the moment of trust. And what is the moment of trust? It's when I go there to look for uh, some information I'm searching for something we're to see in one or two of the next sessions that the whole model of search intent has also changed. It's not informational and educational and transactional commercial anymore. That's gone. Is it still there? Sure. But it's a remnant. It's a whole new model of intent. And I'm going to teach you all of that uh, during the series. And Justin and I are going to have some very intensive back and forth in several of the next sessions about this. So you don't want to miss those. But let's go back here. This fundamental shift is away from brand provided information and trusted information to Google endorsed or the assumption or the appearance of Google endorsed information. Notice what Google is doing here in shifting the credit. There's a searcher out there. The searcher used to trust ABC website for their information. But now more and more and more as generational changes move ahead and expand, Google is taking the credit. Google is showing something in an SGE direct answer that the searcher is saying, well, if it's up there, Google must have chosen it, it must be good, it must be credible, it must be important. So I'm going to trust it. And as that happens, it's a, uh, scratch itch cycle. The more people trust it, the more Google does it. The more Google does it, the more people use it. The more people use it, the more accustomed to it they get, the more they trust Google. Boom. Google wins. So what's happening here is that the serp, the search engine return page, which includes organic and paid and shopping and images and all the other good stuff, is becoming the final destination cert, the final frontier where frankly, your website isn't needed as much as it used to be. Thanks very much, everybody. The serps are now becoming, if they're not already almost fully contained, answers for most types of queries, where these rich features give searchers almost, if not everything that they're looking for. GMB local packs now provide information. You don't even need to have a brand site anymore. SGE goes a step further. It actually takes your content that you wrote, that your client wrote, and it sucks it into Google's own language and Google's own presentation capability. So this isn't about us as advertisers, marketers, uh, SEOs. This isn't about us earning the click anymore. We need to earn the right to be chosen and blessed by Google so they display us. And this is only going to happen if we behave. Google has a new set of rules for us and every single interaction with any searcher trains that searcher for what happens next time on serp, behavior gives Google training data for their SE which makes their SGE more effective, more accurate, deeper, better, bigger, wider, brighter, cleaner clicks, hovers, expansions. All of this helps refine language models in real time because every behavior and every sub step of a behavior and every sub, sub, sub, sub, sub step of a behavior is being tracked by Google in real time. And so the more users stay on that serp, the more valuable the data is that Google collects. And the more likely, because I'm spending more, more time on the SERP as a searcher, the more likely it is I'm going to see something that makes Google money and I'm going to click on it eventually. AI models are no longer being passively trained. They're being optimized through your audience, through your presentations, through your organic listings, your metas, your, your technicals and your ad constructs. And you're not getting the reward or the credit for it. Google's answer model now is being trained and optimized more and more for spoken delivery. The future is voice typing is going to go away evolutionarily. We're all going to lose our fingers, we don't need them anymore. Keyboards, what's a keyboard? Voice search favors short, abbreviated, conclusive answers. What is this, where do I find this, how do I do this, etc. So just like SGE and snippets are doing now, invisible SERP. Imagine what's going to happen when the whole world becomes more and more and eventually completely voice search driven. You hear, you obey. You hear, you obey. And the more you hear and the more you obey, the more you will do it again the next time. So as a brand, as an advertiser, as uh, an agency, your job now is to give an answer first piece of information, not just keyword triggered relevancy. This isn't a matter of what keywords are going to trigger my ad placements or what keywords are going to get my organic listing, uh, on position one, two or three. That's old thinking. The model is changing right before our eyes. Content from now on must be thought about and structured to be spoken, even if it's still presented visually in the m mind. You read it out loud.

Speaker B: Marty, we got about two minutes. Can you kind of just talk real briefly? Um, for about like what the next part of the series or how the series is going to look?

Speaker A: Sure. So the next couple of sessions in this series, we're going to actually present to you the exact specific prompts to put into whatever your favorite AI program is to get the information back that you need to make your organic better, to make your paid headlines work better, to make your content in organic and paid function and respond better. Because as I said. Now sum this up, Justin, by saying this. Google doesn't want the searcher to click away. Good. Let them continue to think that way. Let's give Google enough of what they're looking for so they choose us. They put us in that sge. As Justin said at the beginning, he got recommended by chat GPT to uh, a client. That's great, let's do that. But let's do it in such a way that the user is still compelled to click through. And we're going to teach you all of that and everybody's going to get all these completely proven and researched prompts. How's that, Jay? Cool.

Speaker B: How many parts do you think will be? How many? How many?

Speaker A: I think we're going to do probably someplace between 6 and 10.

Speaker B: Okay. Sweet. So, yeah, we'll. We'll, um, upload these. Unfortunately, with Facebook now, they only last, uh, 30 days, but we'll put these in the vault, and then I'll get these emailed out to all of the platinum members, uh, to watch these back. So we will release the schedule. We'll get something set up for probably same time next week, um, and get. Actually getting into the meat of the bone, so.

Speaker A: And also, um, at some point over the next couple of days, Justin is going to drop this whole presentation, even the part we didn't get through, and some prompt information for you in the groups, so you can just download it. It's all free. It's our pleasure. It's part of the benefit you get for being an Ad Leaks member. So tell your friends, tell your family, go out on the street, sell Girl Scout cookies, and with every box, you get an at least membership.

Speaker B: All right, I appreciate everybody joining. We'll get that out to you. Thank you very much. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks, Jake, for your time, Marty.

Speaker A: But.