This Is the Worst Year for Google Ads | Episode 214

Speaker A: Life sucks right now.

Speaker B: It's not a good time. I've been working with the team. We're just legitimately seeing CPAs rise a lot and they're frustrated, which means that it's not in a great place. What I can tell 2026 is the year of LSAs.

Speaker A: Something's weird. Something's going on. The numbers in Google Ads aren't aligning and they're not matching up. CPAs are insanely high. Some clients are spending $400 per lead right now, whereas last year they're spending like 90 bucks a lead lead. Why are they insanely high? Either our tracking just broke out of nowhere or there's something else going on. Everything has gone to LSAs and that's why they're only showing one sponsored result for search ads. Now whenever I search for landscaper near me, I see two to three local service ads, one sponsored ad. So it used to be like two to three sponsored ads and that one sponsored ad is just on an island. Why would anybody click on that sponsored result?

Speaker B: LSAs are blue blowing up.

Speaker A: They're doing really well for our clients. But that's based on perspective though. They aren't doing really well because the leads are getting, aren't necessarily service related because what was previously free organically is no longer free. Clients get a bit upset about that.

Speaker B: What did you think? What did you expect? You put money into the lead machine and it cranks them out and they're all amazing. If it was that easy, then why wouldn't everybody be doing exactly that? People come to me and they're like, the leads are weak. I'm going to say you're weak.

Speaker A: We post our annual averages on our website every year. Year you can expect an $85 CPA with Google Ads. Your next year's report is going to be like an average of 150. Those clients that were sold on the expectations have happened to sign on in the literal worst year for Google Ads in history.

Speaker B: It's going to blow up.

Speaker A: It's going to be insanely high also. Maybe we just suck.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's on the table.

Speaker A: Life sucks right now.

Speaker B: It's not a good time.

Speaker A: No, it's. It's really not a good time. Uh, I think I mentioned, I might have mentioned this in like, uh, some previous episodes, but how My wife and I are moving and we are moved. I don't know if I'm going to be like really echoey on the recording or not, but we are now in our new place and it's just like this empty, like this empty house. All of our stuff is here now in boxes. And then we have that pod, that storage pod that was sitting in front of our driveway of our old house. It got moved to the new house and everything is just sitting in there for right now. And so for this episode I got out. She does these epoxy, uh, glitter cups for Etsy and I'm using her table, her folding table that she used at the old house to have my laptop on, clamp my microphone to. And this is kind of like my desk. And it's like sticky like, like all the resin and glitter is like on my hands now. But, um, the weird part about this whole experience is that like, we don't even know if we're going to be here in a month because, um, she just got a potential offer for another job in Tampa. And it's a, I don't know, I don't know if it's necessarily like a promotion or an elevation, but it's with a much bigger company for the same role or job description. Uh, and so in my mind that's promotion. But they held onto her resume for like two years after a whole company wide restructuring and then called her back and were like, we haven't stopped thinking about you or talking about you. We want you here. We'll pay for relocation expenses and all this. And like, we just signed a lease, uh, on an 18 month, uh, house.

Speaker B: So hopefully, uh, you want it.

Speaker A: Yeah. How bad? How bad you want us? Um, so hopefully, uh, that's good and we know what we're doing. But the problem is they can't post that job online until July 1st. And because they're an equal opportunity employer, they have to have it live for three days. And with it being the fourth coming up and uh, the Friday being the third, that everyone is off of work, we're not going to know anything until the 7th. It's a weird place to live because I hate living in filth. And not that we're living in filth, we're just kind of living in box mess right now. I don't want to unpack boxes, but like, we have to because there are things in there that we need. And the problem, the worst thing is that these things that we take out don't have homes. Like I take out a spatula, I'm like, I don't have a spatula drawer right now because we haven't designated one because we don't know if we need

Speaker B: to just christen it right there. I dubbed the spatula Drawer from here until one month from now.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the worst part is, like, unpacking, like, the kitchen, like, every. Every time I move. I hate packing up the kitchen. The kitchen is the worst. Yeah. And, uh, that's the one thing that, like, I went to this tournament, I came back, and I saw, like, spices are in the spice, like, I guess the designated spice cabinet now. And, like, there's, like, a silverware drawer with silverware. And I'm just thinking this whole time, like, oh, uh, man, like, I didn't want to unpack any of this. And here we are with a kitchen that's, like, half unpacked, just so, like, we might have to just repack it up again in seven days.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's why I don't have anything.

Speaker A: I envy you, dude.

Speaker B: I do miss. I was gonna say I miss my first desk. Uh.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It was Jenny's grandma's. And the metal part was awesome. I swear. It was built during the war, Right? And then I refinished it myself. I just went to Hobby Lobby, got, I don't know, upholstery vinyl, and then over to Home Depot staple gun, and that was it. And that thing rocked. I loved it so much. Uh, but it got. It got a little sketchy when we bought the one house and we couldn't. Couldn't keep everything, so, you know.

Speaker A: Oh, you didn't get rid of it until you bought the house? The house in Iowa City after that

Speaker B: is like, we cleared out so much stuff because of that, because we were scared about mold.

Speaker A: I didn't even realize. I thought you got rid of the desk when you guys, uh, moved to Iowa City the first time.

Speaker B: So I switched desks, but we still had it. Just because I loved it so much, I wanted to have it around. And then. Yeah, you know, I don't know. Is the Stephen King thing right where he's like, yeah, I got the big desk now, but I liked it when it was in the corner, blah, blah, blah. Uh, I like this desk, too. It's. It's actually. It's great. But I don't know, something. There's, like, this middle ground where you want it to be crappy so you don't feel too cool about yourself. So you still hustle hard but not so crappy that it holds you back from working.

Speaker A: Well, yeah, I get it.

Speaker B: I think when you pimp it out too much, you start to feel too good about yourself. And you shouldn't feel that good because you should. You should still feel that hustle.

Speaker A: I get That I, ah, remember there was one time when I was working at my last day job and like I had like my three monitors that I normally had and then I had moved, I had bought my house. And this is all in the podcast records too. Like you can find the episodes where like I'm doing a podcast recording from my downstairs bar and there's nothing but boxes behind me. Uh, and that I only had my laptop and I had to realize that I kind of worked harder or I worked better with just one screen, just my laptop. Because you can't like, I'll use the word multitask because you can't really multitask on one screen. But really what the word really means is you can't get uh, distracted on only one screen. And uh, I've thought about like sometimes like when I really need to work hard, I will take my laptop out to like the backyard and go work on the patio or something because it's like I can't drag my 49 inch curved monitor out there.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I've, I've stripped things down a lot in preparation for a big move. And on the Germans big move, big that. Who knows at this point what will happen. But uh, I, uh. It's weird. It's, it's mixed feelings. Some parts you feel better about because you can be more free knowing that if you have to move, you can pack up real quick or stuff like that. But there's a lot about comfort. Um, finding that middle is just hard.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. You need two spots. You need like, you need like your, your Optimus prime desk and then you need like your humble desk. Yeah.

Speaker B: And then depending on the day, you

Speaker A: just check into Optimus prime desk. This is the Stephen King desk.

Speaker B: You wake up feeling like a loser and you're like, man, I gotta, I need my crappy desk. I need to feel bad about myself. So I get put in the time.

Speaker A: I've been feeling terrible at myself lately just because of living situation.

Speaker B: On the TikTok video days, you do the bougie desk.

Speaker A: Yeah, I haven't been really active, uh, as a good business owner, CEO of the agency lately just because we've been so busy with this move. And then also paintball season was

Speaker B: high.

Speaker A: Uh, what's the word? It was super active, I guess. Um, and so lots of practices, lots of traveling. Well, in the last 30, um, days I've worked, won one tournament and took third place in another. That's cool. But, um, but yeah, like now that I'm back at It. I'm sitting at my desk and I can actually work. I can do this for seven days until I figure out what's going on. And so now I, like, want to, like, crank it all out and try to get as much work done as possible. But it's also the week that, um, I'm writing an article for Moz and an article for Search Engine Journal. So it's like. Well, that week is basically just that, then.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot of time.

Speaker A: Yeah. All right, other business. Uh, before we get started, we should probably start doing this moving forward. But if you guys find any value in this podcast, please leave us a review or rating on Spotify. Uh, Ezra. Ezra. He was a. We interviewed him a couple episodes ago, uh, one of our competitors, but he was saying that we need to keep asking for reviews because we don't have any reviews on Apple. Uh, but then we reminded him that most of our reviews come from Spotify, which is cool, but he is right. We do not ask for reviews. And so this is me doing that. Yeah, please do it. But. All right, what are we talking about today?

Speaker B: Google Ads. Most recently, uh, I've been working with the team, and they're frustrated. They're frustrated with it, which means that it's not in a great place, the whole thing right now. I don't want to keep saying it. Uh, let me stay focused on Google Ads. M. Let's just start with. It's loading slow. That's always a great place.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You can't even get the information that you need. You need to refresh the page in order to get the data that you're looking for. The filters aren't working. Um, so. But not just that. I mean, that's. That's something that anybody can complain about any day, but we're just legitimately seeing CPAs rise at this point. A lot. A lot. Lot. And fighting it hard.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I'm saying. I don't hear other people saying it. So if I'm missing something, if I just don't have the right information, tell me. Send us a message through the website. But from what I can tell, 2026 is the year of LSAs. Uh, if you do local lead gen, then your Google Ads leads have shifted and they are no longer with vanilla Google Ads. They're still there. Some. But, man, like, LSAs are blowing up.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I. Man, I don't know. It's. It's. It's weird because we know LSAs are blowing up primarily from the fact that. For two reasons. One, they're doing really well for our clients. But, uh, well, I guess that's um, that's based on perspective though. They're getting a lot of leads for relatively low cost. So that's, that's the. They're performing well. Now. There's other, there's nuances to that that, you know, they aren't doing really well because the leads are getting, are not lining up with uh, like quality, I guess. But they're also getting like leads for services they don't offer, despite us not saying that they offer those. And then they have the, they put their notes in and they archive them, they rate the lead and then it's still not crediting them back. And then they're getting frustrated about that. But I don't know what to tell them because we can't like appeal them anymore because it's all AI based. Um, so it is what it is. But at the same time, like, we have to tell them and remind them that, hey, you don't get this transparency with regular Google Ads anyways. Like all these calls that you're getting from or all these like calls or emails or um, form fills from Google Ads could also likely be people who are not in market, who are like, um, asking for a service you don't offer or outside of your service area. Generally that's not the case. Right. We can usually pinpoint that it's not. But the problem with local service ads is because they're being designed to look like Google Maps listings. And when they're designed to look like Google Maps listings, you get people calling for all sorts of things that aren't necessarily service related because what was previously free, like organically is no longer free. You're not paying for it. And the fact that now you're paying for something that was once free, clients get a bit upset about that. But the other option that they have is, okay, then don't pay for it and don't show up in LSAs even for the good leads.

Speaker B: Yeah, sometimes the complaints, I just don't really know what to do if they're like m. When somebody complains and you can't tell if they're complaining with you or at you, right? They're like, oh, this thing sucks. I'm like, are you saying I suck? Or like you're implying that there is a issue with me that I need to address for you? Or are we just being buddies here and you're saying, man, this sucks and I want you to say, yeah, that it sucks too. And then that's kind of it because I don't know, uh, Jake has these combos. You have more of these combos when I have them, which is rare. That's good because if people come to me and they're like, the leads are weak, I'm gonna say you're weak. Right? Like, like what? What did you think? What did you expect? That you put money into the lead machine and it cranks them out and they're all amazing. Like, if it was that easy, then why wouldn't everybody be doing exactly that? Of course it's not that easy.

Speaker A: I noticed something today too that I wanted to talk about regarding Google Ads that I. That's kind of multifaceted and I wonder if other people are going through it. And uh, basically. Well, let me start off with a smaller thing related to local service ads. I mentioned this in, I think an email to you guys, to you, Lisa and Angie. And in the landscaping and lawn care industry, there are the different service categories, right? Like with LSAs, we have like lawn care category. Then there's like sub ca. Sub services that you want leads for. And there's like landscaping category and there's subservices that you want leads for that. And I'm sure like the roofing and plumbing and H vac industries all have these categories. Categories and services as well. If you run local service ads. Um, but in the landscaping category, I always found it weird that sod and seating was one service. Uh, toggle in that category.

Speaker B: They're combined, you mean?

Speaker A: Right, because seeding is technically a lawn care term. So if, if the, if the company does like hydro seeding, for example, they would need landscaping turned on to then, to then toggle on sod and seating. Uh, and I was like, that's just one of those weird nuances that like Google doesn't understand. Um, but then one of our clients is. Does lawn care and landscaping and a couple other categories or uh, uh, toggles in the landscaping category also include landscape installations and landscape, uh, design. And what we've learned from Google, like standard Google search ads, is that, um, you want to target categorically and if you target landscape installations or like landscape installation company, you and like a phrase match or phrase match, um, identity you will match for like sod installation near me because it's very similar. So Google does understand that SOD installation is a sub topic of landscape installation. So my theory is that when we have sod and seeding selected, what that actually means is Google is that is a category for sod and seeding sales and delivery of Materials. And the reason why I think this is because one of our clients has this toggled on, and he's been getting a lot of people calling him from local service ads asking about, like, sod delivery, basically.

Speaker B: Assuming that they run a greenhouse. Yeah, okay.

Speaker A: Or. Yeah. And so the only thing I can see in their profile and, like, Google's not crediting these back because they're putting in their notes, they're writing the leads or archiving them, and they're saying they're bad leads because they don't offer the service. But I'm thinking Google is not crediting those back because we have the toggle sod and seating on. And what Google is trying to say with sod and seating is that those are that category. That topic is related to materials, not a service.

Speaker B: Yeah. And they're probably never gonna get that nuanced enough to have us be able to do anything about it. It's just gonna be a tough noodles. Take the L hope that it pays, you know, pays for itself with the other ones that do come in.

Speaker A: So I think we should consider turning that off and seeing if, like, that stops. But this is like one of those weird things with, like, local service ads is because you don't get to see your keywords. Like, you don't get to see your search terms, as far as I know. Right?

Speaker B: Uh, no, we've looked. Yeah, I know.

Speaker A: Yeah. And you don't get to, like, pick your. Yeah. Pick the keywords you want to target. Just categorical. So I don't know what the sodded seating thing means. Okay, so let me talk about the. The broader thing that. That I brought up, too. The broader thing was, uh, CPAs are, like, insanely high. Like, for clients. There are some clients are spending like $400 per lead right now, whereas, like, last year they're spending like 90 bucks a lead. And it's like, why are they insanely high? So, like, either, like, our tracking just broke out of nowhere or there's something else going on. And, uh, I was just doing some, like, initial like, or just some basic research on my desktop and my phone. And whenever, like, I search for landscaper near me, um, I see immediately it's like two to three local service ads, one sponsored ad. So it used to be like, two to three sponsored ads. Now it's just one. And that one sponsored ad is just like on an island. Because above that, you have, like, the two to three local service ads, and right below that you have the map pack. Why would anybody click on that sponsored result when they have all these options that you can literally just click to call or just like, go directly to the part of the information that you need versus having to like, click on the ad and, like, maybe you'll end up on a landing page. You can't leave, you know. And so I think Google is kind of changing the expectation with Google Ads, especially the local service industry, and that's why people aren't converting anymore. Uh, now the other thing that I pointed out, and this goes like, hand in hand with that, is that Joy Hawkins had posted, I think, like, last week, that she's noticing in certain situations, like when you're in like, normal search mode and you search for, like, a certain business near you, it'll show the local three pack. But then as soon as you click on more businesses, it'll take you to AI mode. And as far as we know, like, the way to show up in AI mode is by running AI Max ads, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think you can technically do if you do pmax, but,

Speaker A: but we're not, right?

Speaker B: So, like, we're like, uh, don't do that, guys.

Speaker A: So we're just, we're just doing normal search ads, which means our ads are showing up less frequently, which means just by default we're not able to spend as much. Like Lisa, it was saying today, like, hey, one of our clients or, uh, she has a max CPC set to like $16 for one of our clients. And we're like, hey, that's like more than double what we normally do. And she's like, yeah, well, because they're not spending. Like, I've been walking it up just to get it to spend. And so it's like, well, I think the, I think the, uh, inventory for search ads has just absolutely plummeted. But what's weird is, like, the search impression share numbers based on budget is not changing. It's saying we can spend more. We can probably spend. I don't think. I don't know if it's like exclusive to the bidding type, though, because we could probably change it to. It's probably saying like, yeah, your impression share is higher, but you need to switch to AI Max or something. I don't know. I don't know. Something's weird. Something's going on where the numbers in Google Ads aren't aligning and they're not matching up. And then my physical user experience is. Is. Does not make me want to click on a search ad at all.

Speaker B: So this was years ago. Now that I remember, I, I remember sending this to you, it was coincidentally like maybe a week or so before I saw this. I renewed my Google Ads certificate thing. You know, you retake the exam and then it's got the question in there about like, how much do you pay for a click? And then it says one penny more than it takes to beat the other advertiser. And then there's this drop of the Google lawsuit that's 300 something slides. And I'm a passenger princess at the moment, so I have the time to just pinch and scroll. And I'm doing this on my phone for a legit like four hours. And I go through the whole thing and I remember reading the parts where it says basically like we're going to inflate CPCS to whatever we want to make the money that we want to. Right. And ever since then, I only half trust any of the numbers that they're giving us.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: I mean you can't have your test say that, that people take seriously. It's a legitimate qualification like they actually have. When you see it on a resume, it's supposed to have validity to it. And then you go and you read the lawsuit and you learn that that was a lie.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: The rest of those numbers that you look at, you're always looking at that wondering can I trust this? Really, can I actually expect this to be true? And we, we do because we don't have another choice really. You can't do anything else about it if you do disagree, unless you can make something magically happen that defies what the numbers are telling you. Um, there's not much else you can do. But I will say we're exploring, we have been exploring especially this month, a lot of new things in Google Ads. Um, they had the announcement, there's article about the new leads dashboard. So that made me want to go back and relook at lead forms. And so we have a lead forms test going right now. And actually if you take lead form ads and you set them up in a particular way, any clicks on the ad, so headline clicks will go straight to a lead form. They won't even go to the website. It's a Google hosted lead form on search headline clicks and then those get submitted. We haven't seen one yet, but that's something that we do have going on just as yet another way to try to get these CPAs down.

Speaker A: And I wanted to also say too because my prediction is that uh, uh, it just won't happen. Like I think, I think people are going to click on those headlines because they're so used to how an actual search ad works that they're going to get presented with a form instead of a website and they're going to be like, what is this? And then back out. I just, I just can't see it working.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was weird.

Speaker A: Maybe Google thinks that too. Maybe Google's like, yeah, it probably won't. Probably won't work, but we're testing it anyways.

Speaker B: Well, we only got a few impressions. We haven't gotten any clicks yet. And there's a part in there where it says you need to be approved or something like that. And I was going through it with Lisa and I just told her, ignore this. I don't believe it. I don't trust a lot of the things that it says in here anymore. If we do have to get approved, let's reappear, reach out to him later. And I actually did ask her to reach out to them today because we haven't seen enough. But we did get impressions, so I assumed that we weren't being held back. But who knows anymore? Maybe there's some sort of shadow secret man thing happening. But that's, that's one. That's one thing. The other two are kind of tied together. AI Max for sure. Uh, and I was looking a little bit around Reddit and some other places that people were talking about. It seems mixed. Um, and I think it's because AI Max can be multiple things. AI Max is trying to replace DSA's dynamic search ads, which you don't need it to do. You can just do AI Max expansion, which is a match type expansion. So it goes beyond your current.

Speaker A: Wait, what's the difference between, uh, a dynamic search ad and a responsive search ad?

Speaker B: Dynamic. They're writing the ads for you. You kind of just outline that was. Here are my landing pages.

Speaker A: That's what PMAX was.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't really. So you can just have AI Max expansion, which is what we're doing with the campaigns right now.

Speaker A: So we have search ads and then we have AI Max expansion on those search ads. Right.

Speaker B: Okay. So it's just, um, a match type expansion and that we've also switched over to target CPA with that. And everywhere. That we're doing that right now has been an improvement. Every single place.

Speaker A: Roll it out everywhere.

Speaker B: Uh, and we're at, I think week three right now. Um, Target CPA alone, because I met with them too. And you know, I, uh, I said this looks great. I think it's awesome. Do we know what it is here? Because we did Two things at once. Is it target CPA or is it AI Max? Or is it both? Is it the combo? So then we did just target cpa in some cases didn't work. It just didn't do anything. It didn't do worse, it just didn't do better. Whereas did.

Speaker A: Now you need to do that AI max without target cpa,

Speaker B: but I don't know if you can. I have to double check that one because I think you might have to. Oh, no, that was the lead form thing. I gotta look back into this. This is a weird thing too.

Speaker A: When I talk about it out loud

Speaker B: now, I'm like, I don't. I only know as much as I know. I used to know everything and now I just know what I need to, to help them.

Speaker A: You're so confident in knowing. You're like, I just. I knew everything. Yeah, I did, I did.

Speaker B: There was a time. There was a time when I knew, when I knew it all. Um, but so, yeah, I did tell them though, like, okay, keep going with AI Max. Do it. Because we're. This is the thing everybody wants to dream of. The time where they have every experiment controlled perfectly and then they're going to be able to look back and report on the data very cleanly. And, um, basically, what Jake was able to do with the, um, schema study, that was amazing, right? With ads, honestly, ads, people just don't think that way. They don't have the patience.

Speaker A: It was like direct money going out, right? Like, you can't just like, you know, with, with SEO, it's pretty, it's pretty simple.

Speaker B: So we can try to look back and fix it, but for the most part it's. Is this working? And if so, let it rip. Because we got to do something now and if it doesn't work, we're just going to lose the account. So slow rollout, we're keeping it going and we're going to see what happens with the target CPA AI Max expansion, uh, targeting combo, which I'm hopeful because everything else is not. It's not going great.

Speaker A: Well, after seeing Joy Hawkins, uh, post about how Google is kind of pushing people into AI mode once they click a CTA to see more or something. Um, I bet you're gonna have to be. I bet you're like, you're gonna have to be, uh, with like an AI Max expansion, uh, on your, on your campaigns.

Speaker B: I haven't seen an ad there yet, though. I can't think of a time where I was doing that and then actually saw one in the Wild.

Speaker A: I'm not. I, I tried to replicate what she was seeing and I couldn't replicate it. It would just show me more businesses like, like normally. So I, I don't know, maybe it's just rolled out in different places and, and maybe Google doesn't show us the new things. Right? Because like, they don't. They're like, well, these guys are. We don't want them manipulating new things.

Speaker B: These guys have a podcast. We're not gonna, yeah, we're not gonna give them anything to talk about.

Speaker A: One of these guys IP address keeps changing. Uh, the other thing I wanna talk about is Chat GPT ads.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that'd be cool if we were actually running these right now and like, we could have a whole episode on it. Uh, but we had just, I mean, we're just starting to explore them in terms of getting clients to test them. And I know you reached out to someone this morning about testing them because we have a few clients testing AI Max, and like Cody was saying they're doing really well, but I want to see how ChatGPT ads will work too. We just, we just talked to, um, a competitor who, who is looking at coming onto the podcast. He scheduled his, his episode for a couple weeks from now. Um, but he said he just started testing Chad GBT ads and got 11 leads. But he's like, I don't know about the quality of those. And I, I don't know. 11 leads for chat GBT is kind of unbelievable in my opinion. Um, but he's also questioning the quality too.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: And, and we don't. We have no idea either. We might be just as surprised when we try it.

Speaker B: I want to be that surprised. Yeah, I want that to happen. I want us to do that and then get 11 leads and be like, wow, all right, guess what we're doing now.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, he started saying something about pixel tracking and something or another, and I was like, you sound like a sales guy that doesn't know what's happening. And like, I was like, that's totally fine. Right? Like, that's, that's totally fine. But I, ah, would love, for what he's saying to be totally accurate, uh, because that'd be cool. But, um, one of our clients we had suggested, we're like, hey, do you want to give ChatGPT ads? Because he emailed us first about AI marketing, and it was more of an AEO kind of geo conversation. And so I just kind of let him down the path of righteousness and that good AEO is just good SEO um, 90% of it. Right. And then I started talking about topical authority and query fan outs and kind of got into this whole email and discussing this, um, also knowing that schema, local business schema, has an impact on local businesses. Uh, letting him know also that he was a part of that test and he was part of the test group, in which case he already has the schema on his site. Um, so good for him. But the other thing we started, I think you, you had mentioned this, you brought up Chad GPT ads and how he wanted to try to test them. And he, he wrote an email out, basically said, no, I think we're good because, like, our lead flow is still super massive from SEO and that when people go to ChatGPT and, and look for a lawn care company in his area, Chad GPT still recommends him. So I sent an email back and I had to explain to him, like, I don't think that's how ChatGPT ads are gonna work. Like, again, I don't know. I don't know this, but the, we have to almost start like pitching this differently now because people are like, engineered to think that, um, the ads on Google or ads on search platforms work. When people are looking for a very specific service and then you show your ad, you get that in front of them. I don't think that's how ChatGPT is gonna work, like, in the most cases, because they have to get volume in order to get like this in order to get paid, basically. So I sent him an email back and I'll just read it verbatim because I think if I explain this on the podcast and someone listening to this is hearing me explain this, I think it'll like, help resonate with how I think the ads will work. So I said, uh, um, the aim likely wouldn't be to show for. When someone writes, quote, find me a quality lawn care company in the College Station area. It would be like, um, someone typing in my yard has these brown patches in it and I'm not sure what they are. They keep popping up in mid summer and it seems like it's spreading. Then they attach a picture of those brown patches in their actual yard. Chat GPT would then explain that the cause would likely be from brown patch disease, but they should get the opinion of a professional first. And then it would insert an ad for you now, uh, or for your, you know, for your client. I think that's how the ads are going to work. Again, I don't, I don't know. I just, I'm just Making stuff up right now. But like if in my brain, like that's how it should work, they, what

Speaker B: I've seen when I see them right now, it feels very similar to discovery ads almost with Google, right? Like you will be uh, I don't know. It's relevant to the conversation, but it's not the answer to the conversation. So I've seen them where I'm, I'm doing something about education and then it'll be a university ad, right? That's not the answer to my question, but it is relevant to it. So I don't think it's going to be as banger as search because it's not. I mean maybe I, uh, that's the, the thing. Everybody's using it differently. Everybody uses Google differently, but they generally have an agreed upon understanding of how to search for something. But people are just doing crazy stuff with their LLMs, right? I mean they're having romantic relationships, they're finding where to buy chips near them. I mean that's, that's a very broad range in the same place. That's a big jump.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I've noticed LLMs having still like, still having problems like not being accurate. Um, lately, like I still feel like they've been, they've been progressing so fast that I'm like, okay, maybe they'll be accurate tomorrow or like yeah, or like next week, but they're just not. So like um, that was like one of the issues with ads that I was hearing about too was like they're not like, they're like slightly irrelevant but it's like it's still not click worthy and it's still more of like very top of funnel. But like the way that I described the ad would be absolutely perfect. But the problem is I don't think LLMs are there yet to be like, you should seek the opinion of a professional. Here's one that I recommend and that's a sponsored ad. Um, another one would be like um, uh, an example would be um, man, I found fleas on my cat and um, they're in my carpet. I need some home remedies to help me fix with this. And it's like, yeah, sure, here's some home remedies you can do. But also if you really just want to get rid of these, we would recommend a professional bug bombing. And then here's this. Um, I like ideally in the most ideal world, that's how they work. But I feel like they're not gonna work that way. I feel like, I feel like they're just. They're gonna be lazily sloppily pasted in. Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, that's how it's been so far. I know. Um, in the last. Did I say this out loud? I can't. Did I say this in my brain or out loud? Like, in the last two weeks, I've had probably four people around me start playing with chat GPT ads. Like they've. I've just heard the conversation happen where they're like, yeah, we're playing with it now. We're figuring it out. Uh, blah, blah, blah. So it's happening right now. Super fresh, super new. And they don't have any. They don't have anything to say. Not yet. Still. It's still too fresh, still too new. Don't know how to comment on it. I kind of. I don't know. I don't. I'm not the person who has to be first. So it's fine. I don't care. I think it sounds fun and it's exciting to go do. So I do want to do it for that reason. But we don't have to. We'll wait. The other thing that I want, it's not. It's not big enough. I know it's not big enough, but I want it to be. I just want to believe in Apple Maps. I want to believe that it'll never happen.

Speaker A: This is my prediction. Apple Maps ads will never take off.

Speaker B: I think it will.

Speaker A: Here's where I think they'll work. I think they'll work, um, for actual restaurants and places to visit. Um, I don't think there's a market for service area businesses and Apple Maps.

Speaker B: It's just not as fun to look around. Right. Well, your Apple Map or Google Maps is fun. If you're just doodling, you're just like scrolling.

Speaker A: And the reason why Google Maps works for service based businesses is because they own a browser. Right? Like they own a search engine. Uh, Apple doesn't. It's just, it's just an application. They don't have Apple search engine. So service based businesses are making sense.

Speaker B: Do they own Safari?

Speaker A: I don't think Safari.

Speaker B: A separate thing. I don't know how that works.

Speaker A: Hold on. I feel like we've asked this question on this podcast already. Uh, who owns Safari? Oh, Apple does own Safari. Okay. But they own the browser, but they don't own the search engine. That's the thing though. Like, Safari doesn't have its own search engine yet.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Until that happens. Until that happens, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

Speaker B: Um, but I think that'll be a crazy day.

Speaker A: So I think like Google Maps works because you can go to Google and type in like whatever near me and then it'll use the data from Google Maps. Whereas like nobody is going to Apple Maps and looking for a service company. Like they're all going to Google and then, and then using really the Google Maps, uh, um, knowledge graph. Right.

Speaker B: Uh, they're trying though because even I just. We, we looked at this recently. I gave her homework and she went and explored it. They have local guides now sort of. It's not the same. It's not Google local guides. It's not the same at all. But they've partnered with publications like other legitimate ones. You don't just get to. That's what we learned is we don't. You can't just do it as a user and show up. Which is what we wanted to find out. Because if you could we would go and do that. Like that would be a very cool way to get traffic. Right. It's just they're in this area. Here's the local guide for that area. So Google has added that recently. It's the type of stuff that'll be like, I don't know, uh, top things to do in the Bay Area. Right. Or like top tourist destinations for Japan.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's all destination though. Like it's not service based though, which is like that. Right, sure.

Speaker B: It's a step in the direction.

Speaker A: Yeah. But the next big step, Apple needs develop a search engine which is a huge step, you know. So like yeah, I think like um,

Speaker B: and this is Bing, like just, yeah, just slap your name on it. White label, don't tell anybody. It's fine.

Speaker A: Uh, I feel like Apple, I feel like Apple and DuckDuckGo would, would uh, could partner up because they're both really big into privacy but for different reasons. Like yeah, Apple's really big into privacy just to make their own sandbox. And then DuckDuckGo is just all into privacy. But um, I think uh, the way that I see ads working well on Apple Maps is like when I am on a long trip and I want to like, because I use Google. So like I'm on Google Maps. If you hit the search button, it says search along this route and you can type in what you want like a gas station, restaurant or whatever. I think ads are going to be um, real impactful there for Apple Maps for sure.

Speaker B: Like where is the nearest Panda Express? They don't need to ad because I

Speaker A: just asked for it and I Think when people plan, like, me. Yeah. And people plan their trips, too. They'd be like, okay. They'll see how long the trip is. And we're like, okay, well, we need to find, like, plan our stops then. That would be the.

Speaker B: I planned my stop at Panda Express.

Speaker A: I know, I know. There's a. There's a, uh, on from. From Chicago to, like, Indiana. There's a, uh. There's an Oasis overpass, and there's a Panda Express in it. And I stopped there two weeks ago.

Speaker B: Do they have one this way, too, like, coming towards me? Because I think they do the same thing.

Speaker A: Maybe. I think so. It's good. I think if they do, it's relatively close to Chicago.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, I would. I mean, you don't. You don't need the ad, but I.

Speaker A: I need to let you know.

Speaker B: Remind me.

Speaker A: In the last three weeks, I've had Panda Express three times.

Speaker B: That's awesome. That's probably.

Speaker A: You know why? Because it is. It is. It is my paintball team's, uh.

Speaker B: Um.

Speaker A: What. What do you call it? Ah, it's. It's ceremonial after. In a day of paintball.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like that.

Speaker B: I try to tell myself. I try to limit to two times a week. Sometimes I do less than that.

Speaker A: You know, I've been really getting into Jersey mics lately. Uh, Lauren introduced me to them last week when we were moving out. She's like, because we're moving out. We're packing stuff. I'm like, you want to get some food? She goes, yeah. I go, what do you want? And she, like, looked at me like, she always does, like, this, which just means Chipotle. And I'm so sick of Chipotle. Like, I could never reach again. I'd be totally fine. Um, but she's like. She's like, well, we could do Jersey Mike's, which is right next door to Chipotle. I'm like, I've never had Jersey Mike's. I know what it is. Like, it's basically a Subway or Jimmy John's or whatever. And, uh, I went, it's great. It's. It's so good. I like it. Yeah.

Speaker B: I have a thing number 13 sandwich places.

Speaker A: What's that?

Speaker B: I. I'm just skeptical of them. I don't know. They. It's like, I don't have a comparison. I was gonna say it's like pizza places, but I understand pizza places are actually genuinely different. Like, there's a difference between Domino's and Pizza Hut. And you go, to one or the other because they have different tastes. But to me, sandwiches like guys, it's a sandwich like what are you doing so differently that if I go here I'm gonna be like, wow, that's a crazy sandwich. Didn't expect that from.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's probably not that. I mean as long as you know the ingredients, you could go to any sandwich place and just have them make the sandwich you want. I would say the probably, uh, I would say probably the bread is the biggest difference. Cause like you go to Jimmy John's, you know what kind of bread you're getting, right? You got like one kind of. You're getting the Jimmy John's bread.

Speaker B: See this is a place where Apple Maps could get me someday.

Speaker A: Also Jersey Mike's has a gluten free bread. So that's why Lauren goes, okay, Jim, I don't think Jamie John's does and I don't think, I don't know if Subway does. I'm sure they do. They have like that spinach wrap but I don't know if they have like actual gluten. Gluten free.

Speaker B: Yeah. So say I'm navigating on Apple Maps, which I'm not because I'm doing. I'm using Google. But let's say that I am using.

Speaker A: Don't you have an Apple phone and uh, you still use Google Maps?

Speaker B: Yeah, that I learned that recently. Um, I mean not recently, relatively recently. About how big of a pain it is to send and receive addresses.

Speaker A: Because you can't. Lauren sends me Apple address addresses all the time. I'm like, I can't do anything with this.

Speaker B: You can't set a default, uh, navigation app. It's the most hostile built in feature that doesn't exist. They're like, no, you will use. And it worked. It is working. That's why Apple Maps is working. Because they're maliciously not supporting you using Google Maps unless you copy the address and then search it there.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. Every time Lauren sends me like an address to somewhere she sends it from like the share button in Apple Maps and I get the link for it. I'm like, I can't, I can't open this. There was a way I did it one time and I can't remember how I did it. My phone recognized it but now every now and then I can't. I'm like, I need you to send me the address because I can't. I need to plug it into Google Maps.

Speaker B: Yeah, I want to play with it. I do. Um, I also Know that tracking for this stuff is a huge pain. I remember I wrote probably the first. This is a long. This is many years ago now. We were running location extensions at the time. I think this is when we were working together at MUD before. Like, so this is a long time ago. And if you connect location extensions and run them as assets, then you know the click options that you can now have. There's so many different types. And the way that you see them is you segment by click type and then you can see, like, get location details or get directions or click to call. Like, all of those things are different click actions but don't count as conversions. They'll count in all conversions potentially. Right. But I don't know at this point, like, I wrote the article, pretty sure it still gets traffic.

Speaker A: Uh, did they take your name off of it?

Speaker B: Uh, no, it was on my personal site.

Speaker A: Oh, okay.

Speaker B: It might not even be accurate anymore because they probably changed things since then. I just never went back and updated it. But I know tracking is a huge pain to do it that way. And it's important. Like, it's very valuable if you are running. If your clients, like, if you're listening and your clients are local. Not just local services businesses, but like local service businesses. They have people coming to the store. That's like the primary action. They sell things there like a cafe. You gotta. You gotta do that.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: When you have to report on that segment type.

Speaker A: Yeah, we have two restaurant clients that we report on that. Um, yeah, the only ones that have the local assets turned on. I was just talking to Cody this morning about having local assets turned on for our landscaping clients. Because without a doubt, every time I search, there's a sponsored result in the map pack listing. And as far as I know, that. And LSAs are the only way to show up in the map pack listings. Because I know Google was testing LSAs in the map pack at some point. I don't know if they. They're not anymore, but whenever I see it, it's just a sponsored. So I'm like, okay, well, that's a local asset. But like, we can't. We can't track it. Cody, you mentioned you're like, yeah, but like, our. Our CPLs are going to look worse because we can't track the acquisition from it. We could just get charged really quick. And there it goes. That I'm like, dude, our CPOs are trash already.

Speaker B: They'll be super trash then.

Speaker A: Uh, we're not getting fired now. What's going on?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, if you if you do it, you will see if you haven't done it. Like, if you sign up, if you take your campaigns, you plug in a location asset and then you let it run. You'll see 60% of your clicks that were previously going to headlines. Now go not there and you're not going to know where they go. And this is like the biggest thing that shakes people up when they do that. First they're like, I'm getting all these clicks. They're actually a lot cheaper, but I don't know where they're going. It's like, yeah, they're never even getting to your website.

Speaker A: Uh, are we reporting on those click types in, uh, for Tannin?

Speaker B: I think we tried once and I think it was a limitation of, uh, agency analytics. And we told them and they were

Speaker A: like, yeah, I bet we, I bet we could do it and uh, Google sheet and plug that in. Um, but if we can figure that out, I am 100% opening to doing it to all clients and just being like, this is the new conversion action. Yeah, welcome to the future.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. People leave it out. They shouldn't. I mean it's. I don't know why reporting tools don't include that, but that's a big thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the only thing I can think of is that Google would have to create a second database for paid, uh, listings like paid Google Map listings, like a second knowledge graph. Be like this is. They have to overwrite the previous one with like a paid one so they know that each click from that generated. But maybe not. Maybe they just need. No, they probably just need some JavaScript on each button. If it's under a sponsored thing, if the sponsored result produces it, just add some JavaScript to it.

Speaker B: I think for the reporting tools, it's just they're.

Speaker A: Oh, you're talking about like agent, like agency analytics. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: I think that they're just banking on, not like it's a lot to include that not a lot of people are caring about and they should. They just don't know. This is if you want to get good at Google Ads. If you're listening to this and you're just like, I do Google Ads, but I want to get better. Go segment everything. Everything that you're running. Just you go to where it says segment on your table and learn whatever your segment options are for every view that you're looking at and you're going to learn a bunch of crazy stuff you didn't know existed. You're going to segment by Device type. You're going to segment by click type. Click type is the big one. I'm not going to keep saying more because I'm going to forget them and I don't spend enough time in it. But I'm telling you, go check it out.

Speaker A: Do you think Marcus knows more than you now?

Speaker B: Um, maybe. Wouldn't be surprised. We caught up. He's learning a lot. He was saying stuff too, where I was like, yeah, dude, I don't even care about that anymore. But I'm glad that you do because.

Speaker A: Yeah, but when someone like you says that though, then someone who is really into it, like him, was probably going to be like, oh, so should I not care about this then?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, no, yeah, I probably handled that wrong. Like, that's not the way, you know, it's like your role changes when you run the agency and then every time you're doing the marketing, like, if. If that's what you're trying to do is run it and then get people in positions to do that for you to stay. Like, that's awesome. That's exactly with where he's at. That's what he should be doing. If you want to be the subject matter expert for that particular thing, go figure that out and be very good at it. Be better than everybody else. But once you get to, like, where we're at, we're just trying to keep up while we grow. Yeah, it's. It doesn't help us as much anymore.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's. I say that, um, I say that,

Speaker B: but we were complaining about high CP CPAs, so what do I know, right? Maybe I do need to.

Speaker A: That's true. And every client of ours is seeing high CPAs. And it's just weird. Is just an email that I'm constantly sending out every single month or replying to or. Not every month. Every, every day. It's like a new client. It's like, how are we doing compared? I have a call tomorrow with one another client about. About performance. And it's like, uh, how do I. I don't know. It's weird. It's weird because, like, we post our annual averages on our website every year. Like, this is like you can expect an $85 CPA with Google Ads. Just full stop, man. That's just. That's an aggregate of all of our clients. I feel like this next year's report is going to be like an average of 150. Like, it's going to.

Speaker B: It's going to blow up.

Speaker A: It's going to be insanely High. Um, now we'll have a lot of insight in that recap or that report, but um, with like AI Max and LSAs and things like that. But it's weird when I'm saying that stuff in January or like December and January after that report has already come out, and then March, April, May, June, hit of this year and those clients that were sold on the expectations have happened to sign on in the literal worst year for Google Ads in local services in history. Yeah, also maybe we just suck.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's always, that's. That's on the table. That's the thing that I don't know. I, this is something that I don't get. It's an emotional thing and that's understandable because there's a lot of money online. But I don't get emotional about it because that's just my life. So I can, I can do like objective commentary where I can tell them here, like here, option A. Ah, we suck. That's possible, right? We can say it out loud because that's a viable, uh, reason as to why this is going the way it is. You know, other things, the economy, everybody wants to blame it on that. There's legitimate things in there. Like you, you have to say that out loud too as a, as a real thing because it affects conversion rates and stuff like that too. Google being absolutely crazy this year. We got to say that out loud. Somebody has to say it out loud. I don't think there's like, there's so much happening now at this point that giving things like this attention people don't want to do because it's not shiny anymore. It's old, it's kind of dead.

Speaker A: But I honestly think everything has gone to LSAs. I think Google is cashing in right now with local Service ads on LSAs and that's why they're only showing one sponsored result for search ads now. And um, people are being conditioned to being able to send a message or call and get someone to pick up right away because they have like, between LSAs and the map pack, they have six options right in front of them. And uh, I, that's why I think like, everything's just going to be speed delete now. It's not going to be a matter of like, can my ad influence. It's not going to be like when we worked at Mud, like the, the number that we got from Google because MUD was a premier partner, there were like, uh, um, Google would come to the office and they would, they would do their presentations in the um, in the. We had a auditorium, basically, and they were, uh, people Visit on average 1.2 car dealerships before they buy a car. And so the thought process was, if you weren't the one, you were the point to. And, uh, I like to use that number with landscaping providers back in 2018, when I was starting this, and I don't think that's the case. I think people reach out to like six now, and it's whoever gets back to them fastest, it's the 1.2 that reach out to them fastest.

Speaker B: So that's fair too, because half of them aren't going to respond to you at all. You're not going to get any response.

Speaker A: I think that expectation has also been set too, in the local service industry in general is that, um, most business owners just don't respond. And so that maybe that's why people are reaching out to more and more people at the same time. And that's why conversions aren't happening on standard search is because those speed, those very quick, like, message and calls, they're coming in like they're, they're, they're receiving a callback from the business as they're like clicking on a normal ad and just doing research. I don't know. These are all just like things in the air.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're still working on it. We're just complaining, but. Well, it's already going down. CPA is going down. I'm, um, optimistic it'll get better.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, gas went down this month too, so look out world. Yeah. Or beginning of this month, Chicago, where I'm at. We're over $6 a gallon. Uh, yeah. Now we're at like, uh, 399.

Speaker B: That's good.

Speaker A: I was driving through Indiana and there was a gas station. It was a loves, actually, and it was 298 a gallon.

Speaker B: That's magical.

Speaker A: I hadn't seen that since I was a child. Probably like three years ago, maybe. All right, that's all I got.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's all.

Speaker A: All right, everybody, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. See you.