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Will Google's New Rules End Most Businesses? — Transcript

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0:00A directory site and a plumber do not
0:01die in the same way. Neil Patel just put
0:04out a video called The New Rules of
0:05Google. Most businesses won't survive,
0:07and the collapse he's describing is
0:09definitely real. HubSpot has one of the
0:12best SEO teams on the planet, but they
0:13lost 80% of their organic traffic in a
0:16single year. And their own CEO said that
0:19out loud on an earnings call. It
0:21happened. But every time he says
0:23businesses, I really want to know which
0:25ones he's referring to. Okay, so his
0:27diagnosis is correct. I'm obviously not
0:29going to argue with it. Publishers built
0:31their businesses answering questions
0:32Google could rank and then Google
0:35learned to answer them. This is very
0:36similar to what happened a few years
0:38ago. One of the clients I had was a
0:40mortgage company and they were
0:42hyperfocused on ranking for the term
0:44mortgage calculator. So, we ranked them
0:46for it. It was expensive. It's a very
0:48competitive term. Then one morning, we
0:51wake up and their traffic was down 80%.
0:54Uh, no ranking change, nothing. So he
0:56looked at the search engine result, type
0:58mortgage calculator into Google, and lo
1:00and behold, Google had added a mortgage
1:02calculator on the search page, so people
1:04didn't have reason to click anymore.
1:06This is basically the same thing that's
1:08happening with the AI overviews, except
1:10the AI overviews are answering almost
1:13allformational type queries. So the
1:16lists he gave, publishers, blogs,
1:19directories, media companies, and then
1:21businesses, those are not the same
1:23group. Okay, he mentioned them like they
1:26were, but they really aren't. Right.
1:28Local businesses, however advanced
1:30Google's AI is, it's still at least a
1:33couple of years away from being able to
1:34replace your water heaters. So, local
1:37businesses
1:39can't yet be replaced with AI overviews.
1:42Let's see what else he says. HubSpot is
1:44a company with one of the biggest SEO
1:46and content marketing teams on the
1:48planet. For a decade, their blog was a
1:50gold standard that everyone copied. Then
1:52according to data from HRES and SCM
1:54Rush, their organic traffic fell by
1:56about 80% in a single year. Their own co
2:00went on an earnings call and set it
2:02straight. AI overviews are answering
2:04people's questions now and few of them
2:06are clicking through to websites. Think
2:08about what that means. One of the best
2:10SEO teams in the world doing nothing
2:12wrong lost almost most their traffic
2:14anyway. So you're not getting worse at
2:17SEO. The ground underneath all of us
2:20moved. And HubSpot isn't alone. We
2:22pulled our own numbers at NP digital and
2:24the pattern shows up everywhere. In
2:262023, before Google's AI answers took
2:28over, organic traffic was still growing,
2:31up almost 6%. The year AI overviews
2:34launched, it dropped to minus 7%. The
2:36next year down more than 13%. So where
2:38did all the clicks go? Okay, so these
2:41numbers are across agencywide, organic,
2:44his whole client base, which means that
2:47it's blended, but it actually has very
2:49different impacts, right?
2:50Informationational queries and
2:52transactional queries uh do not have the
2:54same impact with AI overviews. They're
2:57not moving in the same direction right
2:58now. Uh for example, somebody searches
3:01how much does a water heater replacement
3:02cost? They're going to get the answer at
3:04the top of the page. They're not going
3:06to click anything. But if you're a local
3:09business and you talk in your area how
3:12much you charge to replace a water
3:14heater, you're very likely to be cited
3:16by that answer because not many plumbers
3:19in Gary, Indiana are talking in detail
3:22how much it costs to replace a water
3:24heater in Gary. So when somebody asks
3:26Google how much does it cost to replace
3:28a water heater, Google knows where they
3:30are. You're very likely to be cited.
3:32Keep that in mind when we talk about
3:34local content to get in front of
3:36searchers. even with the AI overviews.
3:38That being said, somebody searches
3:40plumber near me at 9:00 p.m. at night,
3:42uh, with water leaking through the
3:44ceiling, an AI overview is not going to
3:47help them with that. So, when Neil shows
3:50us the results from his own clients, it
3:52really tells us more about his agency's
3:54client mix, not about you specifically
3:58or what you specifically should be
4:00worried about. We now know that Neil's
4:02clients are mostly in theformational
4:05query national SEO space.
4:07>> 20 years SEO traffic is pretty simple.
4:09You answer a question well, Google ranks
4:11you and Google sends you a visitor.
4:13Google was the road to your website. Now
4:15Google is the destination. And the
4:16reason it can do that is the part that
4:19stinks. The AI answers at the top of the
4:22page is built from the pages people like
4:24you published. Google takes your
4:26content, sums it up, and answers the
4:28customer before they ever reach you. So,
4:30you're not competing with other websites
4:32anymore. You're competing with Google.
4:33And you're the one who handed it the
4:36material. And it's gotten more extreme
4:37every year. By early 2026, 68% of Google
4:40searches ended without a single click to
4:43the open web, up from about 60% just 2
4:45years earlier. A overviews are the
4:47engine behind that. They now appear on
4:49close to half of all Google searches.
4:51And when one shows up, click-through
4:52rates to websites drop by roughly 60%.
4:55The answer appears, people read it, and
4:57they stay right there. And the next
4:59wave, Google's AI mode, where there are
5:01no blue links at all. It's still small
5:03today, but it's doubling every quarter.
5:05Now, this doesn't hit every business the
5:08same way. Some almost immune, others are
5:11already finished. Yeah, not a surprise,
5:13right? If people can get what they're
5:14looking for on the search engine results
5:16page, just like the example I gave with
5:17the mortgage calculator, they're not
5:19going to click through. Google has been
5:21pushing what's called zero-click
5:23searches for decades. Uh including like
5:26embedding YouTube videos directly into
5:28the search engine page. All the things
5:30uh embedding the mortgage calculator, uh
5:33the knowledge panels, all of the
5:35information that they can possibly give
5:36people so they don't click and leave
5:38Google, right? Google makes more money
5:41if you stay on Google. If you leave
5:43Google, they lost your attention. Less
5:45of an opportunity for them to serve you
5:47ads and to make money from your
5:49attention. AI gave Google the ability to
5:52basically do this at scale. When we
5:55first at my agency, when we first
5:57started using chat GPT3 and a half in
5:59November, uh by January of the next
6:02year, January of 25, we'd shifted the
6:04entire agency. We weren't
6:06takingformational clients anymore. We
6:08shifted the entire agency to be focused
6:11only on local SEO for this reason. It
6:14seemed very clear at the time that uh
6:17with chat GPT even back the 3 and a half
6:20version Google was going to be able to
6:22use that technology and increase the
6:25percentage of zero click searches.
6:27>> So the real question is who gets hit the
6:29hardest.
6:31You can figure out with one quick test.
6:33If a 100 other websites already answer
6:35the question the same way you do, AI can
6:37replace all of you with a single
6:39paragraph. Answering questions was never
6:41the problem. People still lost billions
6:43of them every day. What gets you
6:45replaced is answering them with nothing
6:47that makes you the one worth
6:48remembering. The most generic version of
6:50the answer you used to win the click.
6:52Now it's the easiest thing for AI to
6:54absorb and hand back without ever
6:56sending anyone your way. Look at who's
6:58already paying for it. Forbes built a
7:00whole affiliate arm called Forbes
7:01Adviser on top of its reputation. Google
7:04hit it with a penalty for what it calls
7:06site reputation abuse and a big chunk of
7:08that visibility vanished. So a few years
7:11ago, if we wanted to rank for a given
7:13search query, we would analyze the
7:14content that was already ranking and
7:16emulate the language, the word patterns,
7:19the word usage that those articles used
7:22because those articles were being
7:23rewarded by Google. Google's algorithm
7:25was looking for more of the same stuff.
7:28That really stopped working uh in the
7:31past few years. Essentially, since chat
7:33GPT3 and a half came out, Google has
7:36been doing everything it could to get
7:38rid of AI slop to prevent it from
7:40ranking. And then in a more recent
7:42update earlier this summer to basically
7:44remove AI slop from its index. So if we
7:46think about how AI works, what AI slop
7:49actually is, AI slop is if you go to
7:51chat GPT or any AI model of your choice
7:54and say, "Hey, write me an article about
7:57weight loss or whatever it happens to
7:58be." chat GPT or the LLM is then going
8:01to write an article that is the
8:03aggregate of all the articles it finds
8:04on Google. Not very interesting. So,
8:07Google updated its algorithm to stop
8:10rewarding content that was very similar
8:12to already existing content. The
8:14phrasing that we use at my agency
8:16isformational additive. So, when we're
8:18writing content uh and we focus on
8:20local, but even if we are non-local,
8:22we'd have the same focus. If when we're
8:24writing content, we want to write
8:26content that isformationally additive.
8:28Meaning, if we look at the top three
8:30results uh for plumber near me, we want
8:33to write content about a plumber in that
8:36city that adds information that isn't in
8:38the existing content. What I'm saying
8:41basically is that AI content doesn't
8:43fail because it's bad. Most AI content
8:45is is fine, but it fails because without
8:49the right prompt sequence, without the
8:51right research, it's going to just agree
8:54with everything else that everybody
8:55wrote. Everyone can feed the same prompt
8:58into the same model and get back largely
9:00the same information from an AI
9:02generated article. That's what Google
9:04updated its algorithm to de-index. News
9:07brands like CNN have watched organic
9:09traffic fall by roughly a third year
9:11overyear, according to industry
9:13tracking. What puts you in the danger
9:14zone is sness. A how-to that reads like
9:17every other how-to. A definition page
9:19with nothing but the definition. A
9:21review where you never actually tested
9:23the thing. If your page has no
9:25fingerprint of its own, AI doesn't need
9:27it. It already has thousands just like
9:29it. And right now, you're running your
9:31own site through that test in your head
9:34wondering if it's you. For a lot of you,
9:36some of it is. But the real problem
9:38isn't losing traffic. That's just a
9:41symptom of something most business
9:42owners never noticed underneath. Most
9:44companies thought they owned a
9:45skyscraper, big, beautiful, millions of
9:47visitors a month. But they were only
9:49renting the land it sat on. And the
9:51landlord just changed the rules. Google
9:53traffic was never something that they
9:54owned. They were leasing it. Google
9:56decided who got the space, how much, and
9:58how long. And now Google's taking it
10:00back. The bleeding companies right now
10:02didn't lose because their content got
10:04worse. They lost because they only had
10:07one way to be found. And they didn't
10:09control it. They spent 10 years building
10:10demand for Google and almost none for
10:12themselves. They built dependency and
10:14called it success. And that works
10:16beautifully until the day the landlord
10:18changes the locks. Completely agree.
10:20What he's describing can also just be
10:22summed up by Google business profile.
10:24That's the profile that serves as the
10:28heart of a local business entity online.
10:31Almost every AI tool relies on the
10:33Google business profile as of course
10:35does Google itself and Gemini. Uh almost
10:38the only exception to this is chat GPT
10:40which basically just uses the Bing for
10:43business profile. The same thing but on
10:45Bing. So the entire local industry is
10:49built around the Google business
10:51profile. And this it's this is not
10:54theoretical. A competitor can go into
10:56maps, hit suggest and edit on your
10:58listing and then change things about it.
11:01If they have a decent local guide level,
11:03Google might just accept it. We've had
11:06clients who were personal injury
11:07attorneys that got their category
11:09changed to airline. Okay. When that
11:12happens, call stop uh basically
11:16overnight. So before we get too
11:19comfortable in local, there are of
11:21course ways to prevent that. Locking
11:22your Google business profile. There a
11:24lot of thirdparty tools that can allow
11:25you to lock up Google business profile
11:27so those edits can't work for you. Uh
11:30but even so, uh we're all very happy
11:32that Google removed the ability to edit
11:34location pins. Uh that was the worst
11:36tactic um that shady competitors used to
11:40use. But the point here is almost every
11:42local business who is getting traffic
11:44online is relying on their Google
11:47business profile. And if they're using
11:49ads, the ads are likely linked to their
11:51Google business profile. If they're
11:52using organic, then it's obviously their
11:54Google business profile. And even if
11:56they're getting traffic from AI
11:58recommendations, it's still likely their
12:00Google business profile. So, different
12:02mechanism, right? We're not watching
12:04publishers get destroyed. Different
12:06mechanism, same exposure. And it's
12:08important to note, Google hasn't made a
12:10significant update to its local rank
12:12algorithm in nearly a decade. But in
12:15March, a few months ago, Google rolled
12:18out Ask Maps. So the impact of that is
12:21now with Ask Maps, it's getting Gemini
12:23to talk to users about local businesses
12:26for the first time. In my opinion, and I
12:28don't have any evidence for this, but
12:30Google very frequently will roll out
12:32tests like this. So, in my opinion, this
12:35feels like Google is testing how well
12:37does Gemini help its users in finding
12:39and identifying a local business,
12:42potentially signaling a major map
12:44algorithm update, where it's going to be
12:46more reliant on Gemini and less on its
12:49base algorithm. Which raises the obvious
12:51question, if everyone's built on rented
12:53land, how can anyone survive Google's
12:56traffic collapse?
12:57Let's check back with HubSpot. HubSpot
12:59lost about a reported 80% of its organic
13:02traffic. By every old metric, that's a
13:04disaster. But over that same stretch,
13:06their revenue didn't fall. It grew more
13:08than 20% according to their own
13:09earnings. The reason is simple. People
13:11don't just search best CRM software to
13:14find HubSpot. They search HubSpot. The
13:16clicks left. Demand stayed. That's what
13:18the whole industry is missing. Clicks
13:20and demand were never the same thing. We
13:23just spent 15 years measuring the one
13:25that's now slowly disappearing. And it's
13:27not only HubSpot. Across 42,000 sites,
13:30the average website just gets 2.4% of
13:33its search traffic from its own brand.
13:34The top performers get almost 10%.
13:36Nearly four times, the winners aren't
13:39ranking better. People are searching for
13:41their name. So, there's the point.
13:43Traffic down 80% but revenue up 20%. His
13:45read is that brand demand carried them.
13:48And I'm not completely sure that's what
13:50happened. HubSpot's revenue growth comes
13:52from enterprise sales, seed expansion,
13:54pricing changes. The blog was a top
13:57offunnel for a premium product years
14:00ago. So, the blog losing 80% of its
14:02traffic didn't hurt revenue today, but
14:04that just means the blog may not have
14:06been producing very much short-term
14:08revenue in the first place. And I've
14:10seen this before on local businesses. We
14:13took over a client uh they were a local
14:15LASIC eye surgery in Chicago. They were
14:18paying over $8,000 a month for SEO. They
14:20were getting a 100,000 clicks a month
14:23coming in from Google according to their
14:25own search console. Beautiful traffic
14:27graph, everything up and to the right,
14:28the kind you screenshot and put in a
14:30case study. But they were barely getting
14:32any customers. All the content was
14:34pulling in readers from cities that
14:36weren't Chicago. Their local rank map in
14:39Chicago did not look very good. They
14:41were not getting local calls. Now, that
14:43could be analogous to what's happened
14:44here with HubSpot. Smaller numbers, but
14:47the same basic problem. traffic that was
14:49never attached to revenue. So when the
14:51traffic left, revenue didn't suffer. If
14:53you're selling four blog posts a month
14:56to a local business owner right now,
14:58this is something that you really need
14:59to sit with. A blog post that's, you
15:01know, top five ways to winterize your
15:03water heater. Maybe it might bring some
15:06traffic, but it will not bring any local
15:08relevance or local calls to your
15:10business or to your client.
15:12>> There's a clear pattern to who makes it.
15:14Roger Lynch, the CEO of Kai Nas, the
15:16company behind Vogue, GQ, and the New
15:18Yorker, calls it a barbell. On one end,
15:21brands that are large and authoritative
15:23in a big category, and on the other end,
15:25small brands that completely own a
15:27narrow niche with an audience loyal
15:29enough to pay. Both ends keep growing,
15:31though grows every year. The New Yorker
15:33just had its best year ever. The danger
15:35is the middle brands that aren't
15:37authoritative enough to be the name
15:38people trust and aren't focused enough
15:40to own a niche. Lynch even told his own
15:42teams to plan as if search traffic is
15:44going to zero. So the real question
15:46stops being who ranks. It becomes which
15:48end of that barbell are you going to be
15:50on and who would even miss you if you
15:52disappear tomorrow. And if the answer is
15:53brand demand, the next thing to work out
15:55is where you build it because it isn't
15:57just Google anymore. Search is
15:59everywhere.
15:59>> All right, let's talk about this
16:00barbell. Big authoritative brands
16:02survive. Small brands that completely
16:03own a niche also survive. Everything in
16:05the middle gets crushed. For local,
16:07that's good news on its face. A plumber
16:09with a service area, a verified profile,
16:11and 400 completed jobs in one city is
16:14sitting on the niche end by default.
16:16Nobody had to earn that. It came with
16:18the business model. And on the other
16:20side of it, multilocation large
16:22companies, something like Rotorooer for
16:24plumbers, uh they have the brand
16:26recognition, the brand awareness that
16:28they're going to get recommended by Chat
16:30GPT, they're going to get recommended by
16:32Gemini, uh because they have so much
16:35authoritative content. Search used to
16:37mean one box on one website. Optimize
16:39that box, you win. That world is gone.
16:42Now people search on Google, then
16:43YouTube, then Tik Tok, Instagram. They
16:45ask Reddit what's real. They ask Chad
16:47GPT Gemini and Perplexity. They read
16:49reviews. They listen to podcasts. They
16:51open up newsletters. Chad GPT alone is
16:53handling over a billion searches a day.
16:55That's not a side tool. That's a search
16:57engine. And one in five people now start
16:59a search inside a social app, up from
17:02about 1% in 2021. Most people here
17:05search everywhere and picture being on a
17:07dozen platforms at once. That part is
17:09just noise. The real goal is to be the
17:12brand people already look for when they
17:14go to each of those platforms. Stop
17:16working to be found and start working to
17:18be remembered. Cold recall for customers
17:20is the holy grail in marketing. It
17:24really doesn't happen outside of a
17:26handful examples. And those examples are
17:29basically worth a fortune because
17:31they're able to create cold recall. This
17:34is one of the greatest moes that a
17:36company can create against its
17:38competitors. The classic example, of
17:40course, is Warren Buffett's investment
17:43in Coca-Cola because he saw Coca-Cola
17:46had spent generations building cold
17:49recall. Um, if you are a local business
17:52owner, please don't take what Neil is
17:54saying here to mean that you need to
17:56create cold recall with your customer
17:59base. That is exceptionally difficult to
18:01do. Not a reasonable goal for a local
18:04business. Your name is the one they
18:07type, but being the brand people look
18:09for is one half of it. The other half is
18:11refusing to let a single platform own
18:13your revenue. The best example of both
18:15is People Inc., the publisher behind
18:17People, Better Homes and Gardens, and
18:20Investopipedia. Over about 2 years,
18:22Google fell from 55% of their traffic
18:24down to 25%. A overviews now show up on
18:27nearly 70% of their top 10,000 keywords.
18:29By the old playbook, that's a death
18:31sentence. Instead, their digital revenue
18:33grew 8% last quarter to $253
18:37million. They grew their off-platform
18:40audience on Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube,
18:42and Apple News by more than 60%. They
18:45signed licensing deals with OpenAI and
18:47Meta to get paid for their content
18:49directly. And they built their own app
18:51so people come straight to them. They
18:53stopped waiting on Google and started
18:54showing up everywhere their audience
18:56already was. And you don't have to guess
18:58whether that's working. You can now
19:00watch how AI engines actually talk about
19:02you. Whether Chad GPT, Gemini, and Quad,
19:05>> okay, uh Instagram and Tik Tok and
19:07YouTube and Apple News and licensing
19:08deals, none of that exists for a
19:10business with one location and three
19:13trucks, right? Your local business is
19:16not licensing content to Open AI. You're
19:19not going to build an app that anyone is
19:22going to actually install and use. So,
19:24what does search everywhere actually
19:26mean for a local business? Because
19:28there's a version of it, but it's a
19:30shorter list than it sounds. Of course,
19:32the Google business profile filled out
19:34completely. Every category the business
19:36qualifies for, every box maxed out,
19:38every service, all of it. Don't keyword
19:40stuff, but put them all in there.
19:42reviews, specifically the language
19:43inside the reviews. Not how many stars,
19:45but whether anyone actually names the
19:47service you performed and the outcome
19:49hugely important in this AI world
19:51because AI will read all of those
19:53reviews and attribute match what people
19:56are asking AI for against what your
19:58reviews are talking about. Whether the
20:00business gets mentioned anywhere on the
20:01internet that isn't on its own website
20:03and your own website built so the
20:06entity, your business entity is
20:07completely unmistakable. a page for
20:09every category, a page for every
20:10service, the city and the title tag on
20:12all of them. Everything pointing back at
20:14the exact structure that your Google
20:16business profile has. That's what we
20:18call the core 30. It's the same
20:20architecture that I've been building for
20:22local clients for years and it works
20:24almost identically. Whether the thing
20:26reading it is Google or Gemini or Chat
20:29GBT, there's a massive overlap. The
20:31difference is review language, branded
20:33search, and getting mentioned in
20:35highprofile places depending on the
20:38competitiveness. If you're a plumber in
20:39Eclectic, Alabama, you don't need to
20:41worry about it. If you're a plumber in
20:43Houston, you might want to focus getting
20:45mentioned at the Houston Herald or
20:46whatever the local newspaper in Houston
20:48is. I made up the Houston Herald. So,
20:50this is what he means by search
20:52everywhere. You'll want, of course, your
20:54Apple Maps listing, your Bing for
20:55Business listing, your BBB profile. All
20:58of these things will help you uh create
21:00your online brand presence. Um and yeah,
21:04if you can score a licensing deal with
21:06OpenAI for your plumber in Eclectic,
21:09Alabama, I mean, go for it. That sounds
21:11amazing.
21:12>> That one shift changes what the three
21:13letters SEO even stand for. Because
21:16you're not screwed because Google
21:18traffic is down. You're screwed if
21:21Google was the only place people could
21:23find you. HubSpot proved it. lose the
21:25clicks, keep the demand, and the
21:27business still grows. That's a line
21:28between the companies that disappear
21:30this year and the ones that get stronger
21:32while everyone else panics. So, those
21:34three letters don't stand for search
21:36engine optimization anymore. They stand
21:38for search everywhere optimization.
21:41>> Okay. Okay. I'll I'll I'll take the
21:43reframe. It's It's a good line. It's a
21:44good line. It's I kind of wish I'd
21:47thought of it, but good.
21:48>> And for your name, in every place people
21:50look, the traffic was always temporary.
21:52The brand is the part you actually keep.
21:54And if you're already building it, there
21:55are early signals that show it's working
21:58long before the revenue does.
21:59>> But when we talk about that barbell,
22:01that's exactly where it stops working
22:03for local. Right? If you're a publisher,
22:04the two ends on the barbell can't
22:06overlap. Vogue can't be a niche
22:09newsletter. It has to choose one. In
22:11local, they do in fact overlap. You can
22:14be both. One of my clients uh has like
22:1645 different locations, and that client
22:18comes up in chat GPT constantly. It
22:21beats every single local mom and pop
22:23shop in basically every local market it
22:25operates in. Nobody ran a campaign for
22:28that. It happened because when you get
22:2945 locations you get written about. Uh
22:32you also have the budget to source these
22:34uh local papers, business journals,
22:36association directories, uh 45 chamber
22:39of commerce listings, case studies,
22:41hiring announcements. All of this
22:42happens with that many locations.
22:44Authority just accumulates as a side
22:46effect of being that large. A on one
22:48location business in the same town is
22:50not nearly as newsworthy. So the chain
22:53is the authoritative end of the barbell
22:55and the niche end of the barbell at the
22:57same time in 45 cities at once. And the
23:00only reason it doesn't already own every
23:02single map pack it touches is proximity.
23:05Google hands the small business uh a
23:07handicap. Right? Distance from the
23:09searcher does a huge amount of the
23:11rankings work. which is why a mediocre
23:13shop, a small mom and pop business four
23:16blocks away can outrank a 45 location
23:19business uh that that's 3 miles away.
23:21Everything we focus on in local SEO is
23:24trying to stretch that radius, building
23:26geographic and topical relevance to rank
23:28farther and farther away from the GBP.
23:29That's the whole game. Now, I mentioned
23:32that in March, Google shipped Ask Maps,
23:34Gemini sitting inside Google Maps. Type
23:36a full question somewhere good for a
23:38group with outdoor seating that isn't
23:40overhyped and it just chooses it
23:42recommends places for you. Personalize
23:44against your own Google search history.
23:47Now, you don't have to panic about this
23:49today. It's a separate tab under the
23:51search bar that almost no one ever uses.
23:54It's minuscule in comparison to the
23:56traffic that your Google business
23:57profile is generating from map pack
24:00results. Okay, so not something to panic
24:04about. But like I mentioned, um when or
24:07if Google introduces Gemini into map
24:11pack rankings, when the map pack ranking
24:13starts to match attributes instead of
24:15measure distance, proximity goes from
24:17deciding the order to deciding who's
24:21eligible. Distance will likely still
24:23matter. Nobody wants a taco place, you
24:25know, 100 miles away, but it stops
24:27carrying you. And when distance when
24:29proximity stops carrying you, whoever
24:31actually built the online presence, can
24:34take the whole radius, can take the
24:35whole city instead of just their
24:37neighborhood. This cuts both ways. And
24:40that's why I don't want to sell panic
24:42here. Chain authority is generic. It's
24:45press about the brand, not about the
24:47Tuesday emergency surgery at the Boise
24:49location. Review language that names the
24:52specific service and what happened. a
24:54real page for every category and service
24:56on the profile instead of one service
24:58page with the list and real local press.
25:00Almost no one does the local press part,
25:03including videos on YouTube about your
25:06local business. A massive way to help
25:08train Gemini. These are the levers that
25:10are available today. And every business
25:12currently coasting on proximity is not
25:14doing any of it. And when Gemini starts
25:17recommending local businesses in more
25:18volume, they're going to feel the pain.
25:22Neil says most businesses won't survive.
25:24For publishers, he's describing
25:25something that's already finished
25:26happening. For local, it hasn't gotten
25:29started just yet. So now is the time to
25:32make sure your local presence is strong
25:35enough that you can survive not getting
25:38the proximity boost anymore.

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