#475 – The Mail-Right Podcast Show:Google unleashes ‘AI Mode’. What Does This Mean For Realtors?

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Google unleashes ‘AI Mode’. What Does This Mean For Realtors?

Discover how Google’s new AI Mode transforms realtors’ workflows. Learn what this means for real estate pros today.

This week’s show delves into Google’s groundbreaking ‘AI Mode’ and its implications for the real estate industry. Discover how this innovative technology can transform the way realtors market properties, engage with clients, and streamline their workflows. We break down key features of AI Mode and provide insights on how realtors can leverage these advancements to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

#1 – What is Google AI Mode?

#2 – How does AI Mode impact SEO?

Traffic

Expect Even Fewer Clicks

Visibility

Analytics

#3 – If You Don’t Shape the Narrative, AI Will Do It for You

#4 – Becoming Super Local Become Super Important!

#5 – Paid Placement Is Coming

Episode Full Show Notes

[00:00:09.760] – Robert Newman

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 475. Today, we’re going to discuss the new Google AI mode and explore what we think it might mean for you, the Realtor, or those in real estate-related fields. Before we get into that, though, my tremendous, fantastic, pugilistic co host, I love calling him that because he used to be a boxster a million years ago, is as always, responsible for the choice, the selection, the notes, the thought that goes behind the production of the show. And I, as usual, show up and word vomit into your ear. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, let me introduce you to Jonathan Denwood. John, please take a moment to share a word or two about yourself. Yourself.

[00:01:01.450] – Jonathan Denwood

Oh, thank you so much, Robert. I’m the joint founder of mel-right.com. We’re an easy-to-use CRM with a range of lead-generating functionality included at a competitive price, starting at $49 per month, month-to-month. What more could you ask for? Back over to you, Rob.

[00:01:24.010] – Robert Newman

Beautiful. And in case you don’t already know, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inboundrem.com, or Inbound Real Estate Marketing. And generally speaking, I am one of the top real estate SEO guys in the country, if not the top guy. So without any further ado, we’re going to talk about. We’re not going to talk about SEO today, though. We’re going to discuss AIO, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Optimization. So get used to hearing the term aio. It’s all that you’re going to be hearing for the next few years. Google unleashes AI Mode. What does this mean for realtors? John, why don’t you kick us off? What do you think it means? Discover how. Like, I don’t know you, you have a thing. I’m curious to know, though. Literally, what do you think it means?

[00:02:06.370] – Jonathan Denwood

It means in practical terms you’re going to get fewer clicks to your website, but those clicks if, if it’s done in the right way, should have more relevance. A significant portion of the website’s traffic was generated in bulk, or, depending on the type of SEO or the content on the website, it could be pretty shallow. What I mean is, it wasn’t going to do anything even if it got to your website, where you know, only the top five results are probably going to show in AI mode for Google. So it’s becoming even more winner-takes-all. But in reality, the top three got over 70% of all traffic anyway, so. But that’s the main thing. And these language models are becoming increasingly sophisticated, producing results that are more accurate. And Google’s in a tricky spot. But they’ve got the money and they’ve got the technology and they’ve got the data. So they’re still in a powerful position.

[00:03:33.370] – Robert Newman

Interesting. So there’s two separate sides to this. When you, when you wrote the title of the article, John, I gotta tell you, I, I actually misunderstood what you meant and I usually get what you mean. So, ladies and gentlemen, who are listening, that’s unusual. That’s not common at all. What I misunderstood is I thought you wanted to talk about Gemini and it turned out that you didn’t want to talk about Gemini, that what you wanted to talk about is the new feature where you can sign up. For those that didn’t know, because I didn’t know and I specializes in this stuff. John, I’m going to take a moment and say, for those of you who didn’t know, there is an actual AI mode and you can click try it. And then the actual search experience that you’re having changes. Now. I clicked try it so long ago, I didn’t remember. And so I’m getting these AI results the whole entire time thinking that it was a standard search thing because I forgot the steps that I took to do it. But it turns out that it’s not standard. You can click it. And when you do click it, what Google is doing is they’re offering six or seven interesting AI features, but because they’re Google, they’re giving you a link to the source.

[00:04:43.370] – Robert Newman

So like I did Google AI mode as a search, my AI overview has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, like 10 links in it that take you back the content. But each link is only taking you back to a single piece of content that had the best answer for detailed responses. Interactive search. It’s really fascinating the way that it’s changing. And I do not disagree with, with your summation, John, that it’s going to be less traffic but higher quality. But I do want everybody to understand why it’s going to be higher quality if you happen to be lucky enough to be one of the eight links in an AI search result that Google has presented. Google is literally saying that you’re actually the top resource for that subsection of the overall response. No longer is 1 through 10. No longer do you have to figure out who Google thinks is top. They’re telling you, I think that’s groundbreaking, personally. So AI mode Again, because number one on our list to explain here is what is it? It’s a different search experience. It’s a search experience based on artificial intelligence where you’re not going to get a list of 10 websites or you are and it’s going to be below the AI result.

[00:05:51.740] – Robert Newman

So Google has just extended their search page once again, but AI gives you the option to deeply change the way that you’re consuming search. And frankly, even though this does not play out in my favor, I love it. John, what about you?

[00:06:10.870] – Jonathan Denwood

I think the elephant, I totally agree with what you just said. I think the elephant is that the the response is back is going to be much. It’s going to be customized depending on what Google knows about you and what your searches have been before. So every person is going to have a much more customized search environment and response to their searches.

[00:06:42.000] – Robert Newman

And this leads to the question that you posed, which is a fascinating question. Well, how does this affect people like me who have careers or lives or websites all dedicated to SEO search engine optimization? Well, so far what we’ve seen is you’ve seen about 10 or 15% drop in traffic and I’m a leader, so that’s a big number. We do expect fewer clicks and the visibility has dropped and my analytics look not as good as they used to. So these are all ways AI has impacted my SEO. Now here’s what we’re not talking about a lot though, that and I need everybody, including you, John, to understand that I am easily one of the top 10 real estate news based, kind of like content based sites in the world at this point. Like no doubt. So when I say the following, understand that most people couldn’t replicate it. While all of the things I told all of you are true, I would say that of my last 10 leads, fully six of them were generated by AI. And what do I mean by that? My last 10 leads, when I asked people where they found me, four of them hands down were chatgpt.

[00:07:56.230] – Robert Newman

The other two were questionable gray area. I’m going to assume they’re like Gemini or something similar like another type of artificial intelligence. And when I asked the question John did okay, did you do any further research? Like did you call somebody? They’re like, no. It is crazy to me how many people are just saying choppy. GPT gives you one answer, but because they’re presenting it as the best, like this is the top person, this is the best SEO guy in the country. This is the best real estate website, whatever it is, right? They just go, they’re not Questioning it at all or doing any further shopping, which is blowing my mind. Blowing my mind. So I suspect strongly that AI is going to AIO and is going to impact SEO in a very big way. I don’t think it’s like I’m not a doom person. I don’t think, John, it’s going to take us out of business or me out of business specifically. I think there’s still a big spot for SEO inside everybody’s marketing strategies. However, is that spot going to be the same size that it is now? No way. No way AIO is going to take that over.

[00:09:09.080] – Robert Newman

And as a matter of fact it probably should be. Like you should immediately do 50 AIO. 50 SEO, like immediately in my opinion. What do you think?

[00:09:28.200] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t break the two up really. I really see, I, I really see if you, you, if you’re producing some decent content and it’s bit slightly more in depth and Google actually thinks you actually know what you’re talking about and you’re producing quite a bit because I, I kind of hit it with WP Tonic, my other company. I’m terrific. You know, I’m doing two podcasts. I’ve got a channel that’s got over 10, 000 subscribers. We’re getting close to it. I’m producing content every week. I do a fair bit with the mail. Right. As well. I’ve increased what I’m doing there a bit. So hopefully I’m giving the signals to Google that. Actually, no, it’s probably Google, probably. And that’s what I think you got to do. You know, like I put on as number three, if you don’t shape the narrative, the AI will do it for you. So, so we’re gonna have a, we’re.

[00:10:39.820] – Robert Newman

Gonna have a show. John, remember this and bookmark this show because, because the. There is enough data out there now that we’re starting to understand how chat, GPT and other things like at work, it’s not even remotely related to SEO. And so we should have a conversation about generative, like generative language inside your content in order to rank for artificial intelligence. Now me and my guys got very lucky in that I have so much content and so much public commentary surrounding my content that that is the reason I’m doing so well in AI models is that I had, and what’s more, I’ve had that out there for years, which meant that whenever those models were built they picked up that stuff. And I’m getting a surprise gift in the form of AI results currently. So let’s Talk a little. Let’s just officially move into. If you don’t shape the narrative, AI will do it for you. Now I think I know what you meant, but why don’t you just go ahead and illuminate it for all of us. What is your fear? What is your concern around that? John? Like what, what is your concern that AI is going to do if you don’t do it yourself?

[00:11:55.260] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s getting, it’s a large language model, it’s a pattern recognization technology using very well, this is my take on it. I’m not expert but I have, I’m interested in the subject and I know a couple of people who are AI scientists and basically it’s using very sophisticated forms of mathematics and pattern recognition and a lot of data is the recognization of patterns and this is on a different league. Its ability and language is a pattern much more than we’re probably aware of. And it’s, and I think Google was, you know, you, I don’t know what your response is going to be that they were utilizing this technology in the background about two, three years ago to actually index the content that they were showing people that, you know, and my understanding is that AI and that large language models have been around since the 1950s, but it had become a kind of looking for the right term. You know, there were people still in that area, but it wasn’t a particularly very dynamic, well funded part of science. But that changed after 9, 11 because the government had enormous amounts of data. You know, it wanted to monitor people’s phone calls, email zooms and it built, and it has built a group of very large data centers where all this information is stored.

[00:13:48.740] – Jonathan Denwood

And it needed a technology that could filter through this enormous amount of data and highlight words, sentences, conversations which it feels are a danger to society and you know, terrorism. So it invested enormous amount of money in this form of science. And it, I don’t think people are aware of that actually. Robert but that because like the Internet itself, the Internet was developed by enormous government investment.

[00:14:32.160] – Robert Newman

True, but my understanding like definitely the government Internet are all historical fact. So the my, my comment or thoughts to what you just said was this is one of those rare occasions in which government has actually influenced tech. Instead of tech influencing government, it’s usually the opposite way around. I agree with that, I agree with the history of it. What I can add to that conversation is the comment on Google introduced a form of a logarithm that everybody’s been copying and I am absolutely friggin Gobsmacked that of all the things that Google was doing, this is the thing that people copied. So part of the first delving into kind of like a large language model, including in front of their Gemini efforts and all their AI efforts four years ago, they’ve now gone on documentation and said the first thing that they did to say, I wonder if we can sort the relevance of somebody’s brand mentions into the actual ranking algorithm. That was their original thing, but like you just said, that required a massive, huge data filter because they’re like, we’re gonna read the Internet. All of the Internet go. How many times somebody mentioned Melrite, like all the Internet that we can get get our hands on.

[00:16:02.980] – Robert Newman

When you think about that, that’s trillions upon trillions of pieces of information bytes.

[00:16:08.660] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s terabytes.

[00:16:10.180] – Robert Newman

Yeah, it’s a crazy statement. When I read it originally I thought they were fucking nuts. But it turns out that no, it was Robert that was just not thinking big enough. They’ve gotten to the point where they can do that. And that is, that was the basis of like you’re saying, large language models. And it was the first application that Google applied and then they started building beyond that. They just didn’t hit mark though. They just didn’t get to market first. ChatGPT did. And ChatGPT used the data that they could find about all the development without breaking massive laws. And they basically said, okay, we know that Google’s doing X, Y and Z with brand mention, so let’s just use that inside Chat gbt. So of the large language models which, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, all work differently. The Chat GPT and Gemini are both based heavily in, in terms of their ranking, based heavily on brand mentions, not links. So major difference, John, major difference. We’re gonna go to break. When we come back, we’re gonna continue forward our conversation. We’re gonna start off with basically we’re gonna give you some moats, some things that you can do and some ways that you can, you can protect yourself and your business against the storm of AI.

[00:17:34.520] – Robert Newman

Or maybe if you’re forward thinking, you can pivot to try to get in front of it. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever you’re at and however you’re doing, we would really, really, really, really if you would click that like or comment button. By doing so. Our previous audience members have made us the number 86 show in the world for real estate agents. Thank you very much, we really appreciate it. And let’s keep the Momentum going like and share. Like and share. Like and share. Thank you so much. We’ll be right back. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 475 of the Mailwright Show. You have found the number 86 show. Today’s show is sponsored by mail-right.com and inboundrem.com if you are a sponsor and you would like to give John and I loads of money to have us mention you on the show, I have to tell you we are receptive to that idea. Moving on to the. At least I assume we are. I’ve never talked to John about it, but he’s never actually refused the idea of loads of money as long as it’s ethical.

[00:18:53.830] – Robert Newman

So here we are, we’re going to talk about becoming super local to become really super important. Now. I have so much to say on this. So let’s start with you, John.

[00:19:06.470] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Because it’s kind of linked. I don’t think I really, I gave some history but didn’t really answer the question of free but question three and four kind of linked and it’s about being active on social media. It’s about actually posting content that has value to people that’s actually looking for property in the niche. You know, we’re constantly talked about finding a niche if you can and then utilizing video. It’s giving and you mentioned brand and you know, having you on social media doing video writing content, giving those signals and then you’ve got the map placement which I think they’re also changing as part of AI mode. I didn’t delve into that you all that but I think they’re going to be changing that to some degree. But you know, being super local and is the way that as agent or a small brokerage can really compete with the big guys and it’s giving those signals. So when people are doing localized search that your content comes up in the AI snippet, isn’t it?

[00:20:30.590] – Robert Newman

Yeah. So what John is saying is right. More and more and more and more focus for rank for all the things that we have traditionally come to understand such as, oh, I want to, I want to rank for SEO. Okay, great. Well now more and more and more your reputation as a realtor in your local space impacts ranking across the board. Already does with Google in traditional and has for 10 years. It just was not a massive metric. It was a small metric. But now we’re talking about AI and AI. There’s no question AI is looking at your reviews, your published online reviews. They look at them. I can verify that they do. They also look at your brand mentions. They look at both. That’s crazy. That means that your Zillow profile has added value, your Google profile has added value. Your website has added value. Every place that you house. How’s reviews? And as I have always said, the authority lies with the bigger portals. So most likely, even though you would like to think that posting your. Your, your reviews to your to directly to your website is the smarter, best idea, I’m here to tell you it’s absolutely not.

[00:21:40.350] – Robert Newman

You want your reviews on, and I don’t like this website, but you want your reviews on Yelp, you want your reviews on Google, you want your reviews on Zillow, you want your reviews on realtor.com before you want them on your profile. So you pick some places or all those places, and you get your clients to post reviews about you there. Because guess what? Not only does it count for your traditional SEO results, it counts for your local SEO results now. And that’s not even counting the idea of how people are buying and selling services these days. It’s no longer like, John, I still have people call into me and say, I’ll go anywhere in California and sell a house. It’s like, dude, what year are you living in? Starting to sound antiquated to me. It’s like, number one, the person that lives in Pacoima is not calling a Los Angeles realtor. The only circumstance in which that makes sense is like, John, if you’re my cousin and you’re like, Robert, can you do me a massive, huge favor? Get licensed out here in Reno and. And then come out here and just help me with my real estate stuff?

[00:22:48.950] – Robert Newman

Because I’ve just had all these terrible experiences with realtors. I’d really appreciate it. Other than that extraordinarily extreme scenario, I do not see where the logic lies in trying to get a realtor, because everybody knows John. If you had to guess, how many licensed realtors do you think there are within 10 miles of where you’re located?

[00:23:12.440] – Jonathan Denwood

Where I am? Oh, I have no idea. Basically a couple hundred at least. Yes, I would say so.

[00:23:21.320] – Robert Newman

Okay. And that’s. That’s in a much smaller city. I’m In Los Angeles, 10 miles radius square from me right now. A couple thousand. Yes. Best guess, maybe more. So, couple thousand realtors, you. You think to yourself, like, within 10 miles of my house, I should be able to find one that can do a little short drive over here and do all the real estate work. Does that make sense to you? John, because it sure does make sense to me.

[00:23:48.370] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:23:50.930] – Robert Newman

So that’s what we’re talking about when we say about local. Now I really want to get into these final subjects because they’re great and I don’t have a lot of time left. So I’m just. If John, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to fast forward into the next thing that you put on here, which is paid placement is coming. What makes you say that? I mean, I don’t disagree. I’m just curious.

[00:24:10.410] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, you know that’s, that’s like generates 80% of Google’s income or, or very, very to that level. So this has been one of their problems, isn’t it? So, but it’s coming, you know, that’s how open AI is coming, going to generate more income that they’ve been the first to get people to sign up for different paid plans. But is the main way Google plans to monetize this and keep the company one of the most profitable businesses in North America is that when it does AI snippet search, you can. I don’t know how this is going to work out with the regulators. I have no idea because it’s a bad enough situation as it is. But this is going to put it on steroids. But they’re, they’re. Some of those snippet recommendations are going to be paid for.

[00:25:18.100] – Robert Newman

It’s an interesting. Yeah, I guess. I mean anytime a business monetizes, that’s going to be true. Google is currently monetizing these results the same way they always have, which is there. If you go to the higher or lower parts of the page, there’s still their traditional sponsored results. They have a page. But you are right in the sense that other people are not doing that. That gives Google a chance to potentially move in behind them and do exactly what you said. Exactly. I hadn’t even thought of it. It’s so egregiously commercial. I hadn’t even thought of it. Which is embarrassing because I think you’re right. I think, I actually think that that’s a very, very solid point that you’re probably right. Like, like wherever money can be made is generally where, where it’s going to get made. Now the AI responses that Google is doing, they allow you to save to overviews and then copy and paste to like a sheet. Currently, because of all the rules and regulations dominating Google, they’re not nearly ahead of the game as other tools are when it comes to exporting transporting information. Okay, but they are. Gemini has proven that Google has the, has the tech, they’ve got the ability to do it.

[00:26:38.160] – Robert Newman

You just have to sign up for it and pay a subscription. Whereas ChatGPT does all sorts of fascinating things where it just allows you to Download, you know, PDFs and stuff like that and just like crazy what you can do. And why do I say that? Because Chappie GPT, as far as I can tell, is the biggest company at just begging for a lawsuit. A hundred of them. I don’t know how they’re not just at full stop in court. Like, I seriously don’t know. Nobody asked me or anybody that I know if they could use our information now that, now, in theory, that we put it out onto the web because we allow it to be read but not used. It’s curious they’re saying they’re reading it anyway. It’s, it’s. I agree with you, what you said, and actually I agree with you in the thing that I think is fascinating is where are we going to go with the law as it relates to all this stuff?

[00:27:42.710] – Jonathan Denwood

Because I do think, I know you’ve got to be off in a minute. Still, I believe they will have to back off a little bit, because what I mean by that is that if you’re taking people’s content and generating answers. There’s no benefit for the people who create the content; in the end, the content will dry up because I’m not getting into general intelligence. And this is about the super mind, because the. I want us to concentrate on these large language models because they’re fantastic technology, but it is only pattern recognition at an impressive scale. But if people put things behind pay walls and do not produce, because there’s no reason for them, because they’re not going to get any traffic, no benefit from it, so people will stop making it. I think they need to motivate content generation in some way. And I might be wrong about this, but it will be interesting to see how all this works out.

[00:28:55.120] – Robert Newman

Robert, I couldn’t agree with you more. Motivation, like, listen, you take away all my drive, all the possibility of ranking everything. I would happily keep what I’ve got up on the Internet, but I’m going to save myself the $60,000 to $100,000 a year I spend on content. No doubt about it, no doubt about it. Starting tomorrow. And with a sigh of relief, to some degree, even though it’s my business, I love helping and producing it. But there is always the piece of my mind, John, that looks at it and goes. At least in theory, I’m breaking even on the effort. Like, I’m not just spending money to educate everybody altruistically. Like, there’s a reason you know your business. Yeah. So if you take away that. That element. Oh, I’m out, man. I’m out tomorrow. Good point. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I’m so sorry, John. I’m so sorry. Audience. I’ve had a hard day in and out today, and I apologize to everybody. It’s a real brief show. Well, it’s just no bonus content today. It’s the same length as always. My name is Robert Newman. You can find me at inboundram.com and do us a favor.

[00:30:05.200] – Robert Newman

Remember that you are listening to the number 86 show in the world for real estate. We’re so grateful. If you do us a favor and hit the like button or comment button, we’d appreciate it. It does make a huge difference in our ranking. And. And it costs you nothing. Zero. Nada. John, how would you prefer people to contact you?

[00:30:22.920] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. You know, if you want to support the show, go to Robert’s YouTube channel, inbound marketing, and subscribe, and also go to the Mail-Right YouTube channel and subscribe to that channel. That’s the best way that you could show your support for both of us. Go to those two channels and subscribe, and that’s the best way. If you would like to contact me, please visit the Melright website and explore what we have to offer. You’re going to be blown away by the value that we’re offering. And back over to you, Rob.

[00:30:54.580] – Robert Newman

And don’t remember, it’s mail hyphen. Right. When you go to John’s website, Mail-Right.com. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of your time, and I hope we provoke some thoughtful discussion amongst yourselves today. It was. I love the subject. John, keep them company. Coming. It’s on a lot of people’s minds. I hope we found that it was on our audience. Goodbye, everybody.