Speaker 1: 0:00Hey everyone, this is Kevin Kerner with Tech Marketing Rewired. I don't know about you, but I've seen search traffic fall off a cliff and AI just might be the reason. I had the good fortune to sit down with Jason White, who's the head of SEO at PolicyGenius and really one of the sharpest voices I've talked to in search. Tim talked about how generative AI is reshaping his organic strategy, why server logs might be your new superpower and what B2B marketers need to do right now to stay visible. So if you care about the future of search, this one is definitely a must watch. Let's dive in. This is Tech Marketing Rewired. Jason, welcome to the show.Speaker 2: 0:38

Hey, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Yeah, I'm so glad to have you. I think maybe we'll just start by Jason. Just explain a little bit about your background and then what you do at Policy Genius.

Speaker 2: 0:48

Sure. So before I get started, I work with a variety of different people within our Policy Genius organization. One of them are lawyers and we have to do corporate good deeds and disclaimers and stuff like that. So before we get started, I want to make it clear that I'm speaking solely in my personal capacity today and that the opinions and views I share are entirely my own and do not represent or reflect that of Policy Genius, my company.

Speaker 2: 1:13

Now that we got that out of the way, I got into search marketing and SEO. Specifically, about 20 years ago I was working at a bike shop and was selling a lot of access to inventory on eBay. I was working at a bike shop and was selling a lot of access to inventory on eBay. Ebay was like a really popular site back in the day. Craigslist was like a thing, myspace was definitely a thing and like did really well with it. I was able to make rent a couple of times and realized there was acronyms behind a lot of things that I was doing on eBay and got into like a little bit more research and understanding that there was like this thing called local search and there was this thing called SEO and really just started learning all the acronyms, that kind of like built out from eBay. In understanding there was like digital marketing.

Speaker 2: 1:53

I was going to school at the time for phys ed and that's kind of where everything took like a hard right turn.

Speaker 2: 1:58

I thought paid was way cooler than SEO and content marketing Wanted to get into like an agency of some sort, and so I was trying to target a local agency where I was living in upstate New York at the time, couldn't get an interview on the pay team, but I got an interview on the SEO team and it like accidentally how it all went. I've worked with really large brands. I led SEO efforts at Hertz, dollar, thrifty, the Car and Thrill brands and I worked at boutique agencies where I got my start. I've also worked at really large global agencies servicing just dream clients that you would want to work with Kohler, ralph Lauren, tory Burch, motel 6, tiktok for Business was a cool blog that I helped launch and so in my current capacity now I'm back in-house and focusing more on just like understanding, like the depth of the business and how we can parlay digital marketing to achieve our goals, and a lot of it includes AI right now.

Speaker 1: 2:56

It's just I mean you and I talked about a month ago or so and it's just like since then I've been thinking about all the disruption inside of the search space. And since then I've been thinking about all the disruption inside of the search space. I mean some of the research I found. They say between like anywhere from and who knows what the number is like anywhere from 20 to 60% drop off in terms of the volume that some companies are getting, and you have, like the HubSpot example and you know how Reddit's doing really well and all these other. I'm just really curious, like, what's your experience? What are you seeing, either in your business or across the industry?

Speaker 2: 3:30

Like what's actually happening on the ground. 20% sounds pretty good. I would love to be 20% down right now.

Speaker 2: 3:36

I haven't really heard of anybody less than like 50% loss of traffic in the last 18 months to two years. I know a lot of brands that have lost 80% of their traffic, 90% of their traffic. I think the glimmer of hope is that the quality of the traffic that is coming to websites seems to be highly qualified. A lot of the people that I've talked to, a lot of the sites that I have access to, conversion has increased quite a bit and so, even though we're not sending as much traffic, the traffic does seem to be there, or the quality traffic does seem to be there. It's been just a wild, wild search or shift in search in the last 18 months. There really has not been anything like it and I think that it really kind of originated with the pandemic and it's a little bit of a correction that's kind of come out of the pandemic and our shift towards AI has definitely changed Google searches, definitely changed search.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Whether it's for the better or not could be argued, but but what's your guess on why the why the volume is dropping off?

Speaker 2: 4:37

AIOs yeah, the AI overviews that Google is putting on the pages. They're driving the cost per clicks up quite a bit. It makes the competition for for the real estate really increase and to have like an organic link anymore, like it used to be when I started, they don't exist. If you're not on page one, you don't exist at all, and even being like outside of the top three, you're going to see very little traffic from that, and so the search ecosystem is kind of you know, I think a lot of people want to say that like SEO is dead right now, but it's not necessarily dead. I think that there's like a lot that can still be gained. It's just a shift in strategy, and I think that a lot of people kind of had too many eggs in the Google basket and haven't differentiated where they're getting their traffic from, and those are the brands that are really getting caught out right now and are hurting the most.

Speaker 2: 5:27

I think in last year I think it was about March there was a big code release. Somebody within Google dumped all the Google secrets, and this was the second time in two years that we've gotten some view into the algorithm. I think the first time was actually Yandex, which is the Russian search engine, and it looks like they largely copied the Google search engine. But I think that that dump really showed what a bad relationship Google has towards SEOs and it's a little bit like we are abused by Google and we continue to come back and think that things are going to change. We trust what Google is telling us and is saying to us. In some cases we are communicating a lot of this stuff to clients and then Google burns us time and time again and does something different than what they've said before. So the environment that they've kind of created with a lot of these updates in the last year, in the last 18 months and definitely in the last four these updates in the last year in the last 18 months and definitely in, like the last four.

Speaker 2: 6:29

Yeah with AI, with AI, ai answers yeah, it's really made it hard to make good, sound business decisions based off of, like, how Google approaches the people that or the sites that want to be on Google search.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Yeah, it's the thing that we talked about a month ago or so, where it was like hey, you know, our site needs some optimization in these areas. Should we invest money in the Mighty and True site and making it better? And I thought you had a really interesting answer of how much investment you put into the old school site optimization. Is it worth putting any money into your site in terms of technical SEO anymore?

Speaker 2: 7:02

It depends on your goals. It depends on what you're trying to achieve. Usability is always going to win. Good SEO focuses on usability, and so if you are positioning SEO so that it can lift up all channels paid, crm, social the content piece is still important. I feel it's important to spread all of that out on social media, whether it's paid or organically. But SEO can be that catch-all. And SEO can help raise the other ships, and that's kind of how I'm pivoting it within my organization so that it can really be maximized and be enabled to connect the different pieces of the organization. Marketing always sits between sales and development. We're always trying to explain multiple different languages to multiple different stakeholders, and so there's a lot of value in that and we can raise all shifts to the people that we work with around us, and I still think the SEO is super valuable. The focus really should be on, like clean indexation and making sure that you're giving the best experience to the search bot when it comes, but also the user when they come.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Interesting. Yeah, cause especially now with AI, cause you really want to be cleanly indexed with AI, cause it's got to read the, it's got to read the site in a clean way. So now let's say you have to optimize now for this new generative search thing. What types of things are you doing to try to exploit this new environment?

Speaker 2: 8:26

I don't know that. I'm trying to exploit it yet. I'm trying to really understand it. I'm really trying to understand what drives it. I think it also originates at the goal of what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to get more visibility on some of these AI platforms, if you want to be seen more on ChatGPT, there aren't tools available to show you your visibility. There's no analytics for ChatGPT, and so how do you go back to the source or like, how do you understand what success looks like in gaining more visibility on an AI platform?

Speaker 2: 8:58

For me, it started with the server logs. It started with understanding what type of AI bots were coming to the websites that I get visibility into, what kind of calls were they making, what kind of files were they downloading, how often were they downloading those files? It also came with a lot of just like leaning into ChatGPT and asking it why. It gave me certain answers, and so when I'm looking for a recommendation, I'll often follow it up with a why did you recommend XY brand? And understanding what pieces of authority AI is using versus what pieces of authority Google has historically used. They're different. I think that Wikipedia is a really valuable piece of real estate. To this day. Google places emphasis on Wikipedia. Google places emphasis on your domain authority. They might refute it. They don't have. They haven't published that metric in 13 years or something crazy, but like that still holds true. We saw that in the code leak last year. But understanding what authority means to the platforms can be different on each platform, and so if you have a target demographic that's using perplexity and not ChachiPT, I think that all it all matters.

Speaker 2: 10:10

There. You're not going to see much traffic. There's all kinds of dashboards. I think Sierra is doing a great job at publishing a lot of AI data thoughts and, like you know, looker Studio dashboards are really helpful so you can see how much traffic you're getting. It's not super impressive. It's not beating out Google. Yet Understanding the server logs are giving you more of a metric of your share of voice. How often are you being shown on a chat GPT or within a perplexity, and so that is a branding piece, and that is where SEO needs to shift. Rankings are always just kind of like a bad metric for success. Share of voice matters in a world of chat GPT. If you're not being seen or you don't understand how often you're being shown, that is a core problem that kind of needs to get addressed, and that's amazing I would have never thought to to go to the server logs, but that's, you're right, like that's where it'll show up.

Speaker 1: 11:08

That's the place where you and I think share of ai voice in some ways got really interesting. Stat, like what channel are you in, like where are people finding you? And there is no tool right now to do that. There's no analytics, not that I'm aware of.

Speaker 2: 11:22

I will probably wish I didn't say this, but I would love to get bombarded with LinkedIn messages about tools available to me and ChatGPT that actually do what they say. But yeah, I think server logs have always been a magical place to go. They're always like the most accurate piece of data that you can gather. It's a record of an actual ping, of an actual handshake between one server and another server. A lot of our tools we just think that they're really accurate and they're not at all. Google Analytics is not an accurate tool. That's just the reality of the situation.

Speaker 2: 11:58

Server logs have so much to them. They can really help you unpack and uncover and view your site in a different way, and I found that a lot of people just don't want to take the risk. The best part of the time that we're living in right now is that ChatGPT can tell you and show you how to do the research on server logs, on how to do the research on ChatGPT and how you're going to find it. It can give you the code to use in BigQuery. So the barrier to entry on server logs is so low right now and it really takes a curious person that just wants to go after it and answer some questions and learn something new, make some mistakes, but there's all kinds of intelligent things and insights that come out of server log analysis.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Yeah, it's amazing you wonder. And insights that come out of server log analysis? Yeah, it's amazing you wonder, like you think, about those different channels people go to. So you have your search, you have your Chrome window that gives you the AI's answer, have you? I don't know if you've tried? Have you tried the ChatGPT search function?

Speaker 2: 12:55

That's all I used. I replaced it on my Chrome bar.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Really interesting.

Speaker 2: 12:59

I don't know what usability is.

Speaker 1: 13:00

I don't know what usability is. I don't know what adoption is of that yet, but I wonder which one will win out or they'll get integrated somehow. Actually, personally me, I don't find the ChatGPT search as useful as the AI answer that comes up, yet.

Speaker 2: 13:16

Yeah, I don't think it is. From a discovery standpoint. From an information standpoint, I think ChatGPT wins out. I must rather would go to the native environment than do it in my search bar. I feel like the answer is different or better when I'm in the native versus in my search bar. Mostly, I just want to immerse myself in it, and so that's why I made the change. I've heard for two years that nobody loves their Google results. I've hated Google results for years They've been awful.

Speaker 2: 13:43

And so, as, like a user, I just want something different. I want something that is going to give me a way to learn, as I'm doing my daily stuff anyway. I don't think that it's necessarily a better answer. I question kind of like the electricity usage of it and like I'm being a bad human and like promoting global warming by using chat GPT more often than Google search. I'm sure that Google search used a hell of a lot of energy in the early years.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Google has a lot of data centers too.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Yeah, so I don't know like what, to quite compare it to but I don't know if this is the answer.

Speaker 2: 14:18

I don't know where it's going. I think that this chat, gpt and AI in general is going to take such a leap in the next three years that people aren't ready for it. People aren't understanding it right now. They're really going to get left behind in this next iteration and this next big leap that we take in the next three to five years, and so I just want to give myself every opportunity. Now is where the playing field is, even for everybody. There's no analytics, nobody knows what they're doing. We're all just figuring this out and exploring, and so now is the best opportunity to get after it and just try to figure out what your spot is. I mean, I've heard for how many years that AI is coming for my job, and so I just started leaning into that more and more, and like I had to call me big fella, I call it my robot and it responds with some big fella, so we can have some fun with it too nice.

Speaker 1: 15:07

So from looking at these server logs and then querying inside of chat gpt, have you, have you tried any experiments where you're saying, huh, that that actually worked, like if you are you doing anything site side or content side, where that that is showing you glimpses of, hmm, this might be working?

Speaker 2: 15:25

I haven't done to the depth and level of some of the ideas that I have and I want.

Speaker 2: 15:29

Mainly, I've been trying to figure out how often it comes to my site and updates it and how I can display title tag information or metadata information in ways to make it more visible on chat GPT. On perplexity, right Time to indexation is something that I've been trying to understand mostly. We made an update on the page. How long does it take before chat GPT recognizes it? And I don't know. I don't quite know or understand it, but sometimes I'll ask it like how many days ago was October 1st or how many days ago was the election, and it will hallucinate and give me like 15 days, like a date from 15 days previous, and so I'll recognize that and I'll say no robot like you did a bad thing. That's not the actual thing. So it reruns it and I feel like the date that it's been giving me is the date of the refresh of whatever data that I've been looking at. I haven't been able to prove that out yet, but it's a weird loophole or anomaly that I've kind of scene.

Speaker 2: 16:33

So I've just been focused on clean indexation and timed indexation and understanding how quickly these models are coming back and updating.

Speaker 1: 16:42

That's mind-blowing because you're right, there will be an index time for probably each individual AI platform. That's completely different than anything that we know now. Is it a second? Is it 10 minutes? Is it five days? Is it a month, whatever Right? Minutes, is it five days? Is it a month, whatever Right? And that really is when you think about people coming back to your site. The mindset is always like how often is Google indexing? I don't think many people have really thought about AI index. I mean, certainly people at your level have, but business leaders. It's like, wow, that's a totally different concept.

Speaker 2: 17:16

Yeah, it's like wow, that's a totally different concept. Yeah, it's just different. And the thing that kind of is difficult to wrap your head around is it's already happened. Yeah, chatgpt has already consumed all of your website. They consumed it before you started worrying about it. It was already over, and so you're like starting from a place of being behind already. You don't really have a choice anymore. You can ask to be removed, you can block the bot, but they've already consumed all of their information.

Speaker 2: 17:42

They've already consumed your data, and so how do you work with that process?

Speaker 1: 17:45

That's incredibly scary and depressing.

Speaker 2: 17:48

It is yeah, but what are you going?

Speaker 1: 17:49

to do. What are you going to do? Well, yeah, you mentioned a lot of the sort of tool side, server side stuff. Is there any you know? You want to know when stuff is going to be indexed so you can and you can tweak the indexing on your side. You can tweak the structure of the site on your site such that it gets indexed. What about the role of content on the site? And is that? I don't know if. Is there any way that content can be structured on the site, way that content can be structured on the site like actual written content, such that the AI reads it and accepts it as true? Or is it just taking all the content wholesale?

Speaker 2: 18:25

and making its own decision. I think it's taking all the content wholesale and making its own decision. I think that the data that you supply is super important and the freshness of that data. If they feel like, if you ask it, why do you trust this brand, the brand that I work for you search like, why do you trust this brand? It comes back with pieces of information. I think that that's like really important to know because it's different for each of the brands, but I think that they're already consuming all of this, everything that's on your site. What I see is a lot of like localized data points being highly. They're just they put a high emphasis on on localized stuff. It makes me kind of wonder too about like current news events and things that are happening on a day-to-day basis. Oh, can you feed that to a chat? Gpt or perplexity, um, and understanding like indexation, and that's kind of where, like the speed thing comes from.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Then does that point to, from a brand perspective, being on not just on your own site, but on? Does it put more of an emphasis on third-party sites, research sites, you know, for a lot of our clients are tech customers G2, review sites, that type of stuff.

Speaker 2: 19:32

Yeah, I think review sites are very important again. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:36

And they always have been, but in a different way. As the reader reading the review site and making your decision now they're important as the AI reading the review site.

Speaker 2: 19:45

But how is the AI knowing what was like a bought review versus like a real review, like that's?

Speaker 2: 19:50

what I come back to is like how does it, how does it know? Yeah, I mean a lot of brands. They use NPS and will query their users and NPS scores are so when I was at Hertz, we focused on NPS scores. So so much, that is such a juicy data point to be giving to an AI engine, and I think that leaders and brands should be looking at, however they're collecting real world information and making sure that it's surfaced and indexable in a clean way, an efficient way yeah, regardless of whether it's on your own side or on, you know, a third party side or whatever.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Right, what is the? Do you have any opinion on the for a brand on the use of AI generated content, now that the bots are looking at?

Speaker 2: 20:41

Do it. Do whatever is right for your brand. I'm going to sound jaded and old, but I'm just so tired of listening to Google's recommendations and them doing the exact opposite of whatever they told us and coming back to just making sound business decisions on what's right for your brand. I feel like google is dictating business decisions way too much and telling brands what they should and shouldn't be doing, and it's the marketplace that should be deciding that, not necessarily google. And so we are, like everybody's competitors are facing the same challenges that you are facing, and content production and budgets are big, big, restrictive things. Yeah, and so if you need to use AI to generate more content, there are ways to do that. Where you're not spammy, you're providing user benefit. You are providing a service to a user and not just trying to convince them of something. I think that it's totally fine, and people should optimize wherever there's a search box. They shouldn't just be focused on googlecom anymore yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 1: 21:46

Have you tried I guess you've probably tried deep research, haven't you?

Speaker 2: 21:49

yeah, a little bit research.

Speaker 1: 21:50

Yeah, it's incredible. I mean it from a content perspective, like if you were a brand trying to create content. Deep research gives you a real hack to get a lot of data points in your brain like quickly and it's synthesized. I think from a content production perspective, it's just, it's a magic. It's just a magic tool. It's maybe not writing the final content, but it's. I mean, who would have been able to do all that research and get it to you immediately?

Speaker 2: 22:15

it's incredible yeah, I think claude does a little bit better job I've tried the 3.7, the sonnet yeah yeah, yeah, I like claude for creative things and like writing briefs and things like that. Um, and I think that, like chat, gpt does better from like a data aspect or just like a mechanical aspect of I get it to write like regex for me all the time because I can't remember or, like you know, dumb things like that.

Speaker 1: 22:37

I'm relying on it way too much these days, but it's definitely a speed. I have this theory that, like back in the when the Internet was first started, it was like, ok, it's going to take our jobs, and now we got our jobs done that much faster. But now we're going to get everything done that would have taken a day in like five minutes, which means that the work is going to be in and now we're going to have seven hours and and 55 more out, more hours to actually get work done and the companies will fill it in. We'll just be doing a lot more work a lot quicker. Our productivity is going to just go through the roof until the AI takes over everything.

Speaker 2: 23:15

That's my theory. I don't know. I don't know I'm trying to. Productivity is a hard one I've had to. You work in an agency. You have to track all your billable hours, but you have a great idea that gives the brand millions and millions of dollars of revenue. Is that really valued in just a trackable hour? And so this is enabling us to do more. But do we necessarily should we be doing more like? Should we be just making sure that we're doing better at the things?

Speaker 2: 23:47

that we're trying to get done now. I'm 40, so I'm in an interesting spot in my career like understanding capitalism and what I what I'm willing to stand for, not stand for, and very interesting spot with my views on Google too.

Speaker 1: 23:59

Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I think what is like what is an hour, like what is the value of an hour anymore? If you can spend five minutes doing something but you get huge value out of the thing, doesn't that have the value of an hour the same, or is it a lot less?

Speaker 2: 24:24

I get great ideas by going and riding my bike or taking a shower I get, I'm a shower thought person.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Yeah, can I bill my shower time.

Speaker 2: 24:27

It's not like you know, but that's where the idea came from. Yeah, that might be hard, so towards my day, it's, it's weird. It's weird.

Speaker 1: 24:30

The lines are definitely blurred okay, so let's, I'm gonna wrap up with you, because I've taken a lot of your time. This has been totally, totally awesome. I want to ask you a question, just a couple questions here. We talk a lot about the future of this stuff and how crazy it's going to be. What's the one thing you're most excited about, maybe in your domain, you know, in the next year?

Speaker 2: 24:49

I think that I'm like really just kind of amazed at where it's all going and just very curious, and like I want to know the destination but nobody knows that. Like nobody knows what to prepare for um, and I think that that's like kind of where I'm at. It's just understanding how I can connect it to more data points to automate more things that matter to me. I'm tired to figure out how I can automate it to do some of the stuff I don't like doing in my day. That's, I think, like a great place to start and just like where the curiosity lies. I have no idea. It's super interesting how fast everything is going, how different products are getting launched, how people are using different products. I think that like building community around some of this stuff is super important and being able to just share information, share different ideas, and like that's really where like the biggest value is, I feel.

Speaker 1: 25:48

Yeah, and I think what you're doing, jason, at the front end of this, it's like you're at the. You know, you're at kind of a pivotal point in digital. If you just take it back to digital and search, like what you're doing, I agree it's like there is no playbook for this stuff, so you just got to go out and try it and what you're the stuff that you brought up here is you're just experimenting because no one is the expert.

Speaker 2: 26:09

It's fun to be an environment where no one's the expert yeah it is fun to be an environment where nobody's the expert yeah, right, yeah right it's similar to when social launched, you know, or maybe when the internet launched.

Speaker 1: 26:20

You really just you had that unique opportunity at that point where you could be an expert if you just stayed a tiny bit ahead of the next guy, because no one, what, no one knew what was going to happen, and that was a much easier thing to wrap your head around than what's happening now. It's really. It's super exciting that way, but also a little scary it is.

Speaker 2: 26:39

I think that, like I don't know, it's a joke. How many once in a lifetime things have we lived through in the last 25, 30 years? Yeah, um, this is definitely one of those times in search in general and digital in general, and it's nice to just kind of lean into it with curiosity, um, and recognize that it's just wide open space. What can we do with this wide open space? How can we use it to our advantage? And like, just following that curiosity.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Yeah, this has been awesome. Jason, I could talk to you a lot longer. We'll have to. I'll have to be back on in another year from now, If we're, if both of both of us are still working we could see if the predictions are correct. Right, I'll get a little list of notes here of things that we said and we'll be like no, I didn't get that right, Didn't get that right Sounds good.

Speaker 2: 27:23

I'm here for it. I'm here for it.

Speaker 1: 27:24

If people want to connect with you, how do they get ahold of you?

Speaker 2: 27:27

I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn, jason White, like my slug or something like that. As an seo I'm kind of funny. I was in like uh, I was a guitarist in green day. I was a nascar driver for a little while. I won, uh, the heisman trophy out of oklahoma.

Speaker 1: 27:43

So I'm kind of hard to find but linkedin's the best yeah that's the way to find jason white you're nowhere else on the internet with those corrects right, I'm a little buried, it's okay okay, well, great. Thank you so much, man.

Speaker 2: 27:54

I appreciate you being on thank you, it was a pleasure, okay.