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Marketing Technology Insights and Intelligence from Go Local Interactive, a technology marketing company.
Shane: [00:00:00] This is the Go Local Brief, brought to you by Go Local Interactive. Every episode, we dig into digital marketing, technology, and AI, and pull out what self-storage operators actually need to know. Today, we're sitting down with Go Local's organic product owner, Thomas Adams, to talk organic search, content strategy, and why the rise of AI in search is changing the game for self-storage operators.
Let's get to it. Welcome back to the Go Local Brief. This is, uh, the part of the show where we talk about the news. Uh, I'm Shane Adams. With me is Jason Barrett, as always, uh, our co-founder, and, uh, we're gonna talk about three stories that we have today. Uh, the first one w-we're, we're gonna brag a little bit.
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, uh, our, our very own Melanie Terschak was published in, uh, Inside Self-Storage. Yep. Uh, her story was really, uh, like a primer on GEO and- Yeah ... and its implications to storage. Yeah. Which is, I think, sort of a follow-up from, like, her presentation [00:01:00] at ISS. Yep. Jason, you've talked a lot about, uh, the, the importance of GEO as we kinda go into, uh, th- as this, uh, technology evolves.
Yeah. Uh, talk about, like, the way in which, uh, smaller and medium-sized operators can think about GEO in a way that is important for them and, and easy for them to step into.
Jason: Yeah. I, I think, um, it's interesting because the, uh, to-- I would set it up by saying Excuse me. Um, think about how you're doing your own search activity now, and I think it's changing a little bit.
And I, I just, I, I start there because if that's true, then we know, well, well how is it changing? Well, a little bit, uh, less, um, Google, Bing, et cetera, with 10 results and scrolling through to find the one you want, and quite a bit more of at, at a minimum, the AI, um, suggested result at the top. Mm-hmm. Um, and a lot of [00:02:00] people are just going to ins- like starting with ChatGPT, maybe Claude, Gemini, whatever it might be.
Mm-hmm. And if, if that's the case, then I, I guess what I'm trying to say is then that, that establishes the, the, the kind of a newer norm. Yeah. Uh, yeah. It's going that route, and you can just see it in yourselves out there. And so, um, I, I would just say i- if that's the case, then what do we need to do to become the answer that those models are providing?
Mm. Now, um, we had talked about it in the past that thankfully, um You know, these models will be dated. So, like, right now we're on, uh, ChatGPT is on 5.5, Opus is on 4.7, just to date Yeah ... this podcast. Right. I'm sure it won't last long. But anyhow, that's where we are. And those were current, and, and the model was built up to a certain point.
I don't have that memorized. Yeah, I know. It changes too much. Uh, [00:03:00] they've built in a lot more skills and tools and whatnot, and these things can now go and, uh, and they've been able to do this for a while, but crawl and get, like, recent results, go look at a webpage today. And so, um, in order to become the result, y- you know, it, it's the same sort of base that it was for SEO.
Mm-hmm. Which really comes down to content. Yeah. It just... There's no better way, um, you know, if you're doing or, the right thing from a content perspective, you're off to a good start. Right. You know? So do you have your location pages built out? Have you, have you noted all of your amenities, your amenities by location?
This is where it gets to be a little bit more, um, it scales a bit- Yeah ... you know, because location times amenity times, you know, whatnot, and all of a sudden what was 10 pages becomes a couple hundred- Right ... maybe 1,000.
Shane: Well, and I, I, I think- Mm ... one of the important things, uh, i- i- in addition to, uh, ensuring that your pages are built out and, and have the content on them [00:04:00] is, is ensuring that, like, structurally they're clean so they- Yeah
can be crawled, uh- Yeah ... more easily. And I, we, we kinda gloss over technical SEO a lot of- Yeah ... times, and it's, it's a super important part of the- That's right ... of the process is, is ensuring that your, not only is your data there- Yep ... but it's structured in a way that makes sense and, and places- Yeah ... the right amount of importance and, uh, crawlability- Yeah
to, uh, the, the bots that are, that are ch- that are crawling it. And for, just real quick, because w- we, we kinda jump into this and, and always, I always- Mm ... gloss over what, what GEO is. It sounds like SEO. It's not. It's... GEO is generative engine optimization, which, uh, is, is like the AI Gemini. We... And you should've been able to figure it out based on what we were talking about.
But- Yeah ... uh, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity. Right. It's, uh, optimizing your content so that you appear in those results. So just... Sorry. Go ahead and continue, uh, before I interrupt you
Jason: again. Yeah, and, and, and I would also say I apologize for what [00:05:00] is supposed to be a news segment turning into a bit of education, but at the same time, this is, um, it's that time- Yeah
in, in the world right now. And so, um, so content's super important. Page, uh, like you said, technical side and, uh, site, uh, factors, super important. In the past, we used to try to, um, block agents, bots, et cetera, and nowadays you really wanna think twice about that. Uh, my, my personal opinion would be to open it up, let them have it.
Yeah. You want them to digest the, the content. Um- There's something that's, uh, you know, kind of closely related. I, I, I have a website, uh, houston.com, and I just bring this up because on that particular site, I want anybody and everybody, I want the engines there- Mm-hmm ... I want the agents there, I want the bots there.
And so what I end up doing, and I think it's relevant right here, is I actually use markdown, [00:06:00] uh, files for each page. So you all will experience, um, the human version. Mm-hmm. But if you were an agent, you would just pull that same page .md. Oh. And you would be given a really stripped down markdown version- Right, right, right
of that page. And it's, you know, it's literally built for the agents so that it will rank. Right. Yeah. I want them to know exactly what we've got and where it is.
Shane: Well, and I've run into, I've run into that when I've been trying to input a, a, you know, a, a long article into Claude 'cause I don't wanna read it, and I'm like, "Hey, summarize this."
I, I, I'm lazy. I, I know. Mm-hmm. Uh, but, but, you know, th- I've run into places where they're like, "I'm sorry, I can't pull that because of the way that it's structured." And I'm, and I think to myself- ... "Why would you do that?" Right. And I, and I, I mean, like I get it, like sometimes you're paywalling things and, and you're, you're trying to protect the content and the- Right
but at the same time I'm like- Oh, you wanna open it up ...
Jason: come on now. You know, and so again, I was, I was looking at my analytics this morning just to give you all, um, a, [00:07:00] a real world example. So a site like Houston could bring in millions of visits a month. Mine parti- I just, I just launched it not long ago, so I'm not getting that, that amount of visits.
I probably get 300 to 500 visits a day.
Shane: Mm-hmm.
Jason: Um, if you had gone a year ago, I might get a couple, uh, that are coming from ChatGPT, and then you rewind maybe six months ago, and it was maybe, uh, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight. I looked this morning, it was 42. Mm. You know? And that doesn't sound like a lot when you, when you lay it up against, you know, say 500, but it's 10%.
Right. You know? And so you're all of a sudden, uh, I've, I mentioned this, you and I had this discussion, it's growing exponentially, but the number that it's growing on is so small. Mm-hmm. Like let's say it's doubling.
Shane: Yeah.
Jason: But it's that whole, that thing where y- you know, you fold a piece of paper seven times and you get to the sun.
Yeah. Seven. Yeah. You know, just because those last folds are, uh, enormous. Right. Right. You know, [00:08:00] so we went from one to two, two to four- Yeah ... four to eight, and now here we are at 42. Right. And we're just steps away from it taking over. Yep. You know? And so, um, that's why it's important. That's why the article went out with Melanie.
That's why she talked about it at ISS. That's why it was m- my roundtable topic. Yeah. It's, it's really, really important.
Shane: Well, uh, yeah, and, uh, uh, GEO will continue to dominate, I think, news cycles because I, I, I think storage is, storage is m- really q- quite advanced when it comes to, you know- Believe it or not
is stepping into AI. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of technological inve- uh, uh, investment there, and I think we're gonna see more and more stories about, like, how, uh, our operators that we know of can take advantage of AI on that topic. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice transition. Well done. Into, uh, yeah, I thought, I thought that was.
Yeah. Uh, so our next story is actually about one of our partners, Anytime Storage, uh, who is partnering with another of our technology partners- Mm-hmm ... uh, Patchwork [00:09:00] Labs. Um, they announced, uh, this past week that Anytime is now, uh, using Patchwork's AI call, uh, software to answer operations calls. That's
Jason: pretty cool.
Shane: Uh, I, one, I think it's neat that we have two of our partners working together in that way, but two, I think this continues a conversation that we've been having, I think, since ISS, which is AI, you need to s- let AI do the things that AI is good at, which is these kind of repeatable tasks- Yep ... like answering a phone, ensuring that somebody gets a, gets an answer, and then in 80% of the cases, I think that's the number that Patchwork uses, 80% of the cases, the AI can answer the question.
Yeah. Yep. In the other 20%, Patchwork has a really nice, you know, handoff feature.
Jason: Yeah, you were talking about that.
Shane: I, I, I think that th- th- that you can build the rules in to allow, uh, a, a, a fairly easy [00:10:00] handoff- Yeah ... to go from AI to a live person. Um, but, but I think that is an example of what is happening, which is AI is enabling people to remove some of these repeatable tasks- Yep
so that they can focus their human tasks on the real person-to-person relationships. Yep. Uh, and I think, uh, this sounds like, uh, and, and, and is, and is example of, uh, one of, a Go- a GoLocal client who is taking advantage of, of this in, in a, in a good way. Yeah. So kudos to, to Anytime, 'cause I think it, it's great.
Jason: Yeah, and I'll, I'll just throw in, I mean, you, you covered it there, but the guys at Patchwork that I've spoken with, that team over there, they're, it's sharp. Yeah. And, uh, you know, they're operators, they're owners and operators themselves. Right. So they built it, and it works, and they know that because they use it for themselves.
Yep. You know? And, and this concept of, um, uh, you know, just, like, operating without humans in the [00:11:00] loop has been around for a while. Mm-hmm. You know, there were, uh, kiosks there for a while. Mm-hmm. There are, um, some folks use, like, a remote, like, literally a kiosk where you could put somebody's face and, and you'd be talking to somebody, but they're not physically there.
This is kind of that next iteration or the next phase. Um, and to your point, it's really good technology, and when it gets to its limit, its current limit- Mm-hmm People step in. Yeah. It's real intelligent. The, uh, for those of you at home, the analytics, the dashboard, the reporting is really good. Um, and I say that coming from a, a marketing agency perspective where we have really good dashboards-
Shane: Right
and really good analytics. Well, and, and we're- Yeah. And I think one of the, on the roadmap for, for GoLocal is if you are somebody like Anytime- Yeah ... and you are a, a Patchwork partner- Yeah ... we're gonna be able to pipe that, uh, that data into, uh, Essential Insights. Yep, exactly. So that, uh, you can see that, uh, [00:12:00] all in one reporting dashboard.
It's all in the GoLocal cloud. Right. Yeah. Really, really cool stuff, and- It's slick ... I, I was just talking with the Patchwork, uh, guys today about, uh, a, another cool tool that we're partnering with them on, uh, on the paid side, but- Yeah ... we'll keep that on the down low- Yeah ... 'cause it's, it's, it's a secret right now.
Uh, all right. Uh, third story. Um, consolidation is happening. Yeah. Right? And it's not just happening here. It's happening all over the world. Yep. Uh, the number, uh, one, uh, o- operator in Australia and New Zealand, uh, is, is looking to potentially be acquired. It's, uh, a REIT in, in, uh, New Zealand and, and Australia gonna be acquired for $2.6 billion.
Oof. Now, th- that's chump change to, you know, Public Storage- Sure ... who, who just bought NSAT for, for 10 billion. Yeah. But, but still, it's still pretty big acquisition. Yeah.
Jason: I think the ne- ah, I say, I say ne... Like, it's, it's gone on forever. It's a very, uh, [00:13:00] M&A heavy area. There's a lot of capital. Um, I think the interesting piece here is how far up it's happening.
Shane: Mm.
Jason: I mean, to, to, to have, like again, back to the Public and NSA/T or add T, I can't think of them any other way than NSA, but that's a huge transaction. Then you roll down there to Australia, and you're looking at another multi-billion dollar transaction. We're not talking about, like, a, a- Mm-hmm ... you know, just a, a group of folks that are buying 10 to 20, you know- Right
or maybe a, a bigger portfolio of 100. We're talking, like, this is substantial. Right. And so- It's thousands
Shane: of locations. Yeah.
Jason: And, um, and so, you know, I think it's just one of those unique times. There are only so many times the top can consolidate. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Shane: Yeah, yeah.
Jason: And so we're at a, at a point here where it's happening a lot all at once.
Um, but interesting. You know, I know several of our own, um, [00:14:00] clients are out there, you know, very active right now- Right ... pull- pulling together, you know, new, new- purchases and whatnot, and so, um-
Shane: Well, uh, back to the story we were literally just talking about, Patchworks one of them. Like, uh, Patchworks, th- th- their, their operator side, uh, I think they're, they're trying to acquire one to two locations every single month.
And what's- Yeah ... incredible about that is because the- they're, they're enabling their technology- Yeah ... they've been able to scale at this really incredible rate where I think- Yeah ... they're doing, like, 20 locations per live person or something like that.
Jason: Yeah. Yeah, and, and you know, and then it's our job on our side to, to be ready to handle all that, you know?
Mm-hmm. And that's, that's the, the, the key for us with the technology and the innovation, the automation, the AI that, that we're doing is we're trying to be right there in lockstep with, uh, with the industry so that, you know, we're an easy, an easy choice for them to make,
Shane: so. Yeah. Well, th- that's all we got for the news today.
Any- anything you [00:15:00] were thinking about that you wanna talk about?
Jason: I don't think so. Nothing that I, I would add. I'm, I'm anxious for, um, you know, some, some news that's, uh... it seems like it's consol- consolidation every time we get on here. It's all consolidation these days. Yeah. Um, AI and consolidation, but you know, it's, it's good.
I'm glad to bring it forward, and, uh, yeah, we'll see what comes up here in a couple weeks.
Shane: All right. Well, thanks for joining me, Jason. Uh- Thanks ... that's the news. That's the local front, and, uh, let's get to the rest of the show. We're gonna talk to Thomas Adams, who is the product owner for organic, uh, which is nice- That'll be a good one
'cause we're gonna be- we're gonna talk about GEO too. That'll be a really good one. Yep. So, good. All right. All right. Welcome to the Go Local Brief. This is the main section of our podcast today, and today, we are talking with Thomas Adams. Thomas Adams- Hello ... is the organic product owner here at Go Local. Uh, we are not related, despite the fact that we are both bearded.
Yes. Um, and, and I, I think sometimes people get mistaken. I, I get it all the time. Yeah.
Thomas: Like, "You're, you're Shane's cousin, right?" Yeah. [00:16:00] Brother, cousin? Right.
Shane: Right. But, but we wanted to bring Thomas in because th- there's a huge movement right now, uh, in this a- area of AI and SEO and GEO and organic content and everything that's going on.
So, so Thomas, uh, before we get into all of that- Sure ... I want you to just give the listeners just a quick, like, kind of background on what brought you to Go Local in the first place and kind of your background.
Thomas: Yeah. Um, so I, I got started doing SEO, uh, way back in ye olden days of 2014. 2014? 2014, which- That's a good year.
It's a great year. Yeah. Yeah. Um- Pre-COVID. I s- yeah. Uh, it's, it's wild. It kind of occurred to me, I'm like Yeah, 2014. I, I got married in 2016. That was 10 years ago. Yeah. That's,
Shane: that's
Thomas: wild. 12, actually. 12 for 2014, but yeah, my... I celebrate my 10 year anniversary. Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah,
Shane: yeah, yeah. I,
Thomas: I'm jumping around.
No, yeah. But, uh, but yeah, I... So I got started in [00:17:00] 2014, um, and really, like, you know, I just graduated college, was working at a grocery store, and, uh, I did what any broke college kid would do. I went to the internet, and I typed in, "How do I make money?"
Shane: Hmm.
Thomas: Hmm. And, uh, uh, after I got scammed a few times- ... and joined a couple MLMs, um, literally, true stories.
Um- Selling Melaleuca and, uh- I literally got approached by Melaleuca. I'm not kid- not kidding. No, of course. Um, a- and Amway and a bunch of other ones. But, uh, but no, but I, I was just kind of looking around, and, um, one thing that I landed on was, um, building, uh, affiliate websites, um, which I don't have to necessarily get into that, but if you know, you know.
Um, but basically, it involved building websites using WordPress. Hmm. And from there, uh, I would build the website, but then you had to get traffic to come to your website. [00:18:00] Yeah, yeah. And so at that point, um, I was looking into, all right, I could go the paid media route. Kind of scares me a little bit- Sure
'cause I could overspend or what... You know, like, that, that whole thing just seems a little scary. Uh, or I could go the SEO route- Mm-hmm ... the organic route, and so I, I decided to go down the organic route. Um, and so I just started kind of teaching myself, and so I did that for about a year, and then, um, quit my job at the grocery store.
Uh, and then I got a job, uh, an entry-level job at another company, um, that allowed me to start doing SEO for them. And then from there, actually, uh, my second SEO job was here at Go Local. Oh, wow. Um, yep, and so then I worked here for about a year and a half, then left, bounced around, and then inevitably came back in 2023.
Nice. So, um, as a, uh, as a senior SEO specialist, and then I worked my way up. I became supervisor, and then I was the manager, and now I am the, like you mentioned, the [00:19:00] product owner, which is I'm overseeing, um, you know, the productization of organic, um, working on building automations for the team, working on, um, AI integration within our, our product for the organic side.
Um, yeah, it's just kind of a role that I've been evolving into, and, um, yeah, it's, it's been cool to kind of be that next step to allow all of my expertise over the last, you know, decade or so to be able to get integrated into the overall product. So- Isn't that always,
Shane: like, a cool... I, I, I've, I've, I've found it to be a cool part of a, a way a career can of- A way a career can evolve is, uh, is, is to kind of, it, it, it, it...
Not to bastardize the term. Sure. But it can evolve or- organically. It definitely can. Uh, and, and I, I think that's, that's a really interesting, uh, like dynamic of the way that, uh, that careers, uh, [00:20:00] progress is- Mm-hmm ... is sometimes, uh, opportunities open up. Like, did you think that you would be a product owner, like, in this, in this kind of environment, uh, maybe five years ago?
Thomas: No.
Shane: Nope, had no
Thomas: idea.
Shane: Yeah. A- and, and I think, uh, part of that's... What would you, what would you attribute that to? I think, I think some of it's, like, tools are becoming a little bit more easy to
Thomas: develop- Yes ... and stuff like that, but. So I would say, yeah, great question. I mean, I, I think a big part of it is, um, with the advent of AI, um, it's allowing the bar of entry to kind of get more in the weeds with, like, development- Mm
and that sort of thing. Uh, it's a lot lower, because you can utilize, like, Claude Code, uh, Google Antigravity. There's a bunch of these different tools. Um, so it allows somebody like me, who I, I have some, like, very minimal, um, experience with the development. You know, like I said, I would build WordPress sites, so I kind of understand, like, you know, obviously HTML, CSS, a little bit of JavaScript.[00:21:00]
I'm writing Python scripts- Mm-hmm ... and, like, all this stuff, and I'm just like, "I could not do that-" Right ... "without AI," you know? And then, uh, so then it becomes, it's more so now, like, if you have the idea, you can utilize AI to help build that out. Mm-hmm. And, you know, obviously, like, we have a whole developer, development team that I work with to make sure, because AI can be wrong, and so you wanna make sure there's, you're having troubleshooting from true development professionals.
Mm-hmm. But, you know, I don't have to rely on them to get a lot of the, like, grunt work done. I can have an AI agent do that for me.
Shane: Well, yeah. You know? And, and I think- So ... I think even getting to, like, a minimum viable product is faster. Right. Right? Like, if you ha- I think that's one of the coolest things about w- where AI has kind of taken us, especially recently, is w- we're, we're taking folks who have, like, i- immense amounts of, of product knowledge, like in, like SEO or organic.
Yeah. And if, if they wouldn't necessarily be in a, in a [00:22:00] product owner seat normally. Mm-hmm. But because they have the ability to then think a little bit more creatively about that and go, "I, I'd like a product that could do this-" Yeah ... how cool would that be? Yeah. Right? And, and then you can now actually find a way to make it
Thomas: so.
Uh- Yeah. It, it's, it feels like magic. I'm not even ki- Like, it's, it's wild, 'cause I think back to, you know- tw- 24-year-old Thomas. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, he could have only dreamed of the ability to use some of these tools. Yeah. You know? And, like, it's just, it's crazy how, how fast it's moving.
Shane: Well, I, just this, just this week, this is, this is, uh, third week of April?
Uh- I think so, yeah ... Claude, or Anthropic, released- Mm-hmm ... Claude Design. Yeah. Which is this, like- I did hear about that ... really cool iteration on, like, product development- Mm-hmm ... and, and site development that I think is really neat. Yeah. Um, I haven't really played around with it a ton yet, but I think- Mm ... it, I think that there's gonna be a, an interesting...
I- I- I saw a LinkedIn [00:23:00] post from one of my friends who's a UX developer. Mm. And he said, uh, "This is, this is just the next iteration. If you, if you are a good product designer already, this is going to 10X you," right? It, exactly. It's not necessarily going to remove your job. Yeah. It's gonna give you a tool that can make you more efficient and, and effective.
Thomas: Right. Almost like, you know, you on steroids to use- Yeah ... a more of a crude term. But, like, it's, it's true, you know? Like, um, I mean, that's, I think a big misconception that people have is, you know, thinking, like, there's a fear of embracing AI because they think AI will take our jobs and, you know, I, I think that it's not so much that, like, AI will take your jobs.
It's more so that, like, ano- a- another person that is using AI to 10X themselves- Mm-hmm ... could take your job. Yeah. You get what I'm saying? So why not be the person to embrace the tools to use it, you know what I'm saying?
Shane: I, I, I, I, I agree completely. So. I think that that's the, th- that's the, it- it's the line that we have to, we have to really [00:24:00] e- encourage people to, like...
Look, somebody out there is gonna be using it. Right. That we can't, we can't shove Pandora back in the box. Yeah. Uh, shout out to Pandora, the, uh, original streaming music service, by the way. My, my wife still uses Pandora. A lot of people still use Pandora. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's, uh- That's great ... I can't, that, that seems str- crazy to me, but- Yeah
it's true.
Yeah,
yeah. Uh, and honestly, Pandora had some of the better mixes. Like, I, like- Yeah ... I feel like I discovered more stuff. Like, I feel like Spotify really does a, like... I saw something th- this morning even that- Mm-hmm ... that, like, there's promotional suggestion. Oh. Which I did not know. Did not know that either.
And I was like, "Oh, that's why that one song keeps coming up every playlist that I have." You're, you're in the
Thomas: demographic for those ads. Yeah.
Shane: For, apparently. Apparently. All right, let's, let's kinda move on. Sure. Let- let's talk a little bit about, like, AI and, and content and- Mm-hmm ... or content in the AI age.
Uh, [00:25:00] obviously, um, we work in a space where AI is, I mean, I just c- came back from ISS and- Mm-hmm ... AI was everywhere. That, that- Yeah ... that sounds weird the way I phrased that, but, like, it just was- Yeah ... it was just something that a lot of people were talking about, a lot of people were, uh, focused on, and, and figuring out how it was going to impact their business.
Mm-hmm. Uh, in the content world, obviously, uh, we have a lot of AI, uh, advancements that are happening. Um, how is it impacting y- you and y- your area of the business? Like, w- like, talk a little bit about how you, you've kind of stepped into AI- Mm-hmm ... in a bigger way.
Thomas: Yeah, with respect to content? Yeah. Or... Yeah, so, um, you know, uh, when it comes to AI content, um, and SEO, you know, there was, over the last several years, you know, Google's kind of done a little back-and-forth thing where they're like, you know, "We, it- we like AI content, now we [00:26:00] don't, now we do."
At this point, it sounds like the only thing that Google really cares about is if, is the content helpful? Um, does it provide value to the end user? Whether it's written by a human or not, at this point, again, it, it doesn't particularly matter, um, is, is my reading on the way that Google looks at these things.
Mm-hmm. So we definitely leverage AI with our writing, but we still always make sure to have a human in the loop. You don't want to just willy-nilly, you know, generate content without having some form of human, you know, QA, if you will. Now, I think the human QA element is becoming less and less of a need over time as the AI writing just gets so much better.
Right. I mean, I think back to, you know, 2023 when, you know, uh, ChatGPT was, I think, probably the, the only tool out there, and I was using that to just generate some content, and I'm like, "This is, this needs some work," you know? Yeah. And now, like, in 2026, it's like, it's, [00:27:00] it's crazy. Like, I, I can, I could line up a fully human written and AI, and in some cases it's very difficult to tell the difference.
So we definitely try to leverage it just for that purpose. Um, for scalability, um, you can build into the prompting, um, you know, good SEO best practices, which actually, funnily enough, it's what I've been working on today, um, for some of our products, is, you know, a push-button content generation approach that, again, still leaves room for the human to go in and, and, you know, QA it.
Right. Um, but building into the logic of it for some of our, um, you know, so for our CMS product. You know, like making sure that we have the ability to quickly get content generated where it's referencing all of the amenities that a particular location has, the nearby, like, landmarks, geographical targets, all of the local SEO things that we've done- Mm-hmm
over, that's all worked for decades at this point- Right ... or [00:28:00] however long. Um- But getting it built into a system- Mm-hmm ... uh, uh, yeah, that's kind of the name of the game now. It's more like thinking in terms of, like, building systems rather than just, like, one-off, you know, tasks, if you will. Like, building a system that can do those tasks for you.
Right. I
Shane: guess.
Thomas: So.
Shane: So, uh, uh, I, I heard somebody reference this at, at ISS, uh, it might even have been a Go Local person, but, uh, the, the idea that GEO- Mm-hmm ... is, is really just, like, the next iteration of SEO. What do you think about that?
Thomas: I... So I go kind of back and forth. So I think there's... GEO is, it's not, like, in my opinion, it's not, like, a brand-new thing necessarily that is decoupled from SEO.
I think that it is, uh, to your point, yeah, it's, it's sort of like an evolution of it. You still wanna have good SEO fundamentals. Like, is your website crawlable? Do you have right keyword placement? Do you have optimized content in general? Like, do you have proper semantical, you know, [00:29:00] heading structure?
Mm-hmm. Like, all these things. Is the content helpful? All that is super important. Um, but, like, when it comes to GEO, it is kind of that next level where rather than trying to just optimize for general rankings, now we're trying to optimize our partners' websites so that they can be th- the true source for the AI search results to pull from.
Mm-hmm. If that makes sense. Because it's, yes, we still want to make sure that we're ranking very highly, but there've been studies out there that have shown, you know, you can rank number one, and sometimes the AI search results that populates above you in Google or what have you, or even just in ChatGPT, uh, sometimes it won't even reference you- Hmm
if you're, if you're ranked number one, right? Um, sometimes you could be ranking number four, number five, it'll, and it'll reference you, right? So those are, those are decoupled- Yeah ... uh, is something that people have been noticing. Now, the trend tends to be, you know, if you're on the first page, you tend to get referenced more, but it's not in every case is, is what [00:30:00] some of the studies I've seen recently have shown.
Shane: Yeah. Jason and I were talking about this w- w- uh, in the last episode, uh, about how there's opportunity for even smaller operators in self-storage to, uh, if, if they embrace and, and get into, uh, providing good, uh, l- local SEO and- Yeah ... and, and writing content that is helpful- Mm-hmm ... uh, that they might appear even in those, uh, AI results because, and I, I'm, I can't remember exactly how he phrased it, but he said something like, uh, th- there's value in not just being the obvious answer.
Right. And I, and, like, uh, and I'm like, "Really?" That, that feels- Mm-hmm ... like, counterintuitive to what we know about, like- Sure ... first page ranking and stuff like that.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's almost you wanna really, like, double down on your niche, so to speak, you know? Yeah. Like, if you're... Yeah. So, um, yeah, it really is about, again, being that- [00:31:00] reference point rather than just trying to get you to rank on the first page.
Like, are you truly the expert, truly the source- Mm-hmm ... that the AI can reference as a reputable source? So really, like, brand monitoring is now, I mean, it's, it's been a thing, but I'd say it's even more important. Like, how are, how is your brand being referenced on other websites? Mm. Right? And not even, and I'm not even talking about just, like, backlinks.
Like, backlinks are obviously important, so another website linking back to your website.
Shane: Sure.
Thomas: But even if, like, you get referenced on another website, um, and there's no backlink, like, that s- that still plays into- Mm-hmm ... the GEO component, like how you're getting referenced. Because again, the LLM will crawl that other website, get an understanding of your brand based on the text on that page.
Right. And then that plays into their algorithm. So it, yeah, it's kind of another, again, it is sort of another iteration of that. Yeah.
Shane: Yeah, so, uh, just for those of you who don't know, uh, I, I ref- we referenced GEO, which is generative engine [00:32:00] optimization. Mm-hmm. Also, some, some people are calling it AEO as well, I think.
Yeah.
Thomas: Answers- Ans- answer engine optimization ... answer engine optimization. Yeah. Yeah. There, there's a lot of buzzwords out there. Um, I mean, it's effectively just you're, you're doing SEO for AI. Yeah. Right? Like, you're, you're trying to optimize to show up within AI. Whatever we call it is whatever we call it, you know?
Right. Um, I, I remember that, like, couple years ago it was, it was SGE, search generative experience. Now nobody even says that term anymore. Now it's, now it's more like GEO- Interesting ... AEO, AIO.
Shane: Well, and, and so, so this was-
Thomas: EEIO.
Shane: EEIEIO. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so one of the things that, uh, w- w- I, I think that leads us into w- uh, w- where is organic traffic going?
I mean, like- Yeah ... the trends certainly suggest that, it, and, and it's small right now, but, but, but GE- uh, but, but generative answers and- Yeah ... uh, [00:33:00] A- AI answers are certainly eating into, uh- Yeah ... traffic- Yeah ... on, on sites. Mm-hmm. Do we think that there's, like, a hockey stick effect about to happen?
Thomas: Oof. That's a great, great question.
Um, I don't, I don't know about that maybe. Um, but I know that what we've been seeing in the organic space is that, you know, uh, you're, you're exactly right in that AI search results has been eating into organic search results. So because of that, we are seeing a lot of general organic traffic, like, just raw numbers have tended to be trending down.
Uh, not just for our, our op- storage operators, but, like, all verticals that we manage. Um, it's, it's a industry-wide thing. Mm. Because people are, again, the way that, uh, within Google, like, the AI search results works is, and, and we all know this. We, we've all, if we've all done this, you do a search You get your answer right at the top, similar to [00:34:00] how we had the, the zero search result.
That was a big thing from, like, you know, 2017, '18, something like that. Um, maybe even earlier than that. Uh, the zero search result, you just get the answer at the very, very top. Mm. But now, it's that is AI, and you can take it a step further where you can then start conversing i- within Google- Mm ... asking the AI bot, "Okay, yeah, like I see that this particular location offers climate control, but do they also offer five-by-five or five-by-ten or, or whatever?"
Mm-hmm. You know, "Do they have, like, what promos? Do they have what specials?" And you can get all of that within the AI search results. Mm-hmm. Now, the, the thing with that is, you know, um, people would, before, have to click into the website, do the research themselves, and s- people still, still do, admittedly. I mean, I'll do that too sometimes.
Sometimes I won't read AI, I'll just click in. But a lot of people are, like, m- doing their analysis there. So that traffic that was going there, that was doing their research, and then they might leave, like that's just no longer happening now. So [00:35:00] if somebody does come from the AI search results, there's clearly a very high amount of intent there because- Mm
they've whittled down through the AI bot, you know, chatting with them, "Okay, yeah, like now I know for sure this is exactly what I want, so that's when I'm gonna click in," versus them having to still be in that research phase, which could potentially have them drop off because it's top of the funnel. So the further down they get, the more likely they are to convert, right?
Yeah. And so that's why, like, we've seen with a lot of AI traffic, the conversion rate tends to be really good. Oh. Yeah. The... I- i- it's minimal at this point in a lot of cases, at least based on how we're able to track it. Uh, 'cause there's... That's not to get too in the weeds, but there's another thing with Google-specific AI traffic.
There are some limitations within our analytics tools to be able to tell exactly if that Google-specific traffic was AI or, or just traditional organic- Mm ... because of just some limitations with Google Analytics, um, and how the data's getting parsed from [00:36:00] there. But we can see, like, if somebody came from ChatGPT Perplexity, like that's just referral traffic.
Very easily can see that. But we see that traffic that's coming from these AI search results, like, uh, from like ChatGPT Perplexity, very high, uh, conversion rate. Well, that's huge. Um, so- A- and
Shane: I think, I think that, that to me gives even further reason why it's such an important, uh, practice to get your, uh, your GEO, AEO, uh- Yeah
process kind of dialed in. Right. Because if it's converting at a higher rate, man, if you can appear in those results, that's, that's what you want. Right. Um, all right, let's pivot a little bit. You've been building some really cool tools. Internally right now. Mm-hmm. Uh, you referenced a, a, little bit earlier.
Let's, let's talk about the tools that you're building- Sure ... for our internal teams, 'cause I think that those are really neat, and you've showed me some of them, and I think it's... Th- they're really cool, so. Sure.
Thomas: Well, not to give the secret sauce away necessarily. Yeah, yeah. No. [00:37:00] Um, no, so basically, like, a lot of the tools that I've been working on building, um, for the team is, uh, a lot of content generation components, so ensuring that we're getting high quality, localized content, location pages, market, market amenity, static pages.
So obviously heavy focus on storage. Um, similar on our non-stored verticals, kind of a similar thing, like market pages, static pages for those. Um, all built with the logic of our, of content that we have written in the past, that humans have written, that has done well and that has converted. So again, we're building systems, so we're basically taking all of what has effectively worked with the formatting, the structure, getting that built into a brain, right?
And then that brain then is able to generate this sort of content at scale. Yeah. Um, and we've seen that, yeah, it's, it's, it's worked well. Um, and, you know, just continuing to, um, build those tools out [00:38:00] to allow things to be more scalable. So that's, that's a, a big one that I've been working on. Um, and, uh, yeah, another, another one is, um, we have a product called Local Lift- Mm-hmm
which is, effectively it shows, you know, where a particular location is ranking within, like, a, you know, two to, to five mile radius, depending on what radius you, you wanna show. Uh, ranking specifically for local, um, like GBP rankings. Mm-hmm. Um, so we're able to show that to our partners. So I've found a way to, um, you know, again, writing some really cool Python scripts, and never thought I'd be doing that.
Uh, being able to leverage that to be able to, you know, effectively generate some high quality, you know, reviews, or sorry, uh, reports for, uh, for our clients and, you know, again, utilizing that tool. And not only that, but for our team to be able to have these reports generated, and then we can take action.
Mm-hmm. And we can effectively see, like, okay, report's generated. Here's some issues for this location. [00:39:00] Let's take action. Let's, you know, try to make updates for, you know, like, whether it's, like, business description or categories or, okay, we need to update the content to be more like this- Mm-hmm ... to help with local rankings.
So a lot of that, like, actionable steps where the AI is able to generate- Rather than the human beings spending 12 hours digging into the tool to pull all this data, like the AI ... It doesn't actually take 12 hours, that was exaggerating. But it does take, like, four to five hours, let's say. Yeah. Sure. Um, but, like, you having the AI just do that for us.
Yeah. And then we as the experts, the humans, use our brains. "Okay, we see this data. Let's make these, these, you know, fixes or make these, um, updates." That, I- So that, that's kind of the name of the game. So. I think, I think
Shane: that right there is, is the, the important part of this, is right? Like, I think that there's a lot of, uh, appetite for data.
Thomas: Yeah.
Shane: But, but what gets lost is the most important thing that you have to have with that data is [00:40:00] analysis, right? Like- Yeah ... the, the, the now what question. Mm-hmm. Right? So w- what, uh ... And I think that's where the human touch comes in- Yep ... a little bit more on, uh, at least from, from Go Local, right? Right.
Where we're taking, we're ingesting this data, this, this immense amount of reporting, and we're giving our clients, like, "Here's what this means, and here's what to do with it." Mm-hmm. And I think that's where, uh, where we can give people an advantage. Because y- you can do reports all ... E- everybody has access to Google Analytics, right?
Yep. Like- Free tool ... it's a very f- very free tool, but if ... I mean, I, I had access to Google Analytics at my last gig, and I had never looked, I never looked at it 'cause I didn't know what to do with it.
Thomas: It's, uh, I would say Google Analytics 4, it's been out now for a few years. It's not, not particularly intuitive.
Um, does require a bit of an expert to go in there and tell you what the heck's going on. It's not
Shane: even a little intuitive. So. No. You would think that, like- Yeah ... they could figure out a way to make that a little bit more intuitive.
Thomas: The old, the old Universal Analytics, GA3, [00:41:00] was, was better. I think that's the consensus in our industry.
But Google does what they do. They do what they do. So, yeah.
Shane: All right. So, uh, w- we, we've been talking about SEO, been talking about content a little bit. Sure. Um, the, the, the products that we're building I think are part of this bigger ecosystem that we're, we're trying to provide to our clients. This is kind of the marketing tech
It's like the, the, the, the meeting of marketing and technology together. Yep. Uh, I, I, I think ... I'm old school, so for me even, n- n- the, the, the step into that, often I'm like, "Oh, man, this is, this is nerve-wracking" a little bit b- Sure ... just because the, the, the amount of te- the, the, the ... Sorry. The speed with which we have to keep up with the technology is just so rapid.
Mm-hmm. Uh, but, but I think our responsibility as a provider of service to our clients is, is for us [00:42:00] to Uh, give them, uh, access to tools and technology that are gonna make them better, right? That, that are gonna a, a, make available to them better marketing tools. Right. Um, where do you stand with the way that technology enables marketing and marketing to enables technology, kind of how we can use them together without losing the human element?
'Cause that was a big- Yeah ... theme that I heard from, uh, from ISS, which was y- yes, AI, so that people can do people things.
Thomas: Yeah.
Shane: I mean, what was your, what was your take be- on that be? Yeah,
Thomas: no, I mean, I... It, it kinda goes back to, again, the whole thing where with, with my role, like what I'm doing, um, a big part of what I'm doing is, is exactly that.
Like, we have a lot of partners that, you know, um, there's certain elements within the marketing [00:43:00] side that requires, you know, really in-depth data analysis, right? Um, but a big part of the analysis is you have to pull that data. You have to go to five different tools to cor- try to correlate a specific thing, um, before you get the human analysis of all those things.
So a big part of what I'm trying to do is, you know, allow for the data collection component to be automated as much as we can, right? To have m- potentially like a centralized spot where, you know, whether it's an AI, whether it's scripts, pulling from all these different data sources from one centralized spot to allow us to get a good map viewpoint of, okay, why is this location struggling?
Why are rentals down in this particular location? Well, here's all the data that normally, again, across these five different platforms would take hours and hours, and it typically does. It's all there. Now we can spend more [00:44:00] hours analyzing it, d- you know, uh, executing on- Mm-hmm ... the fixes that need to happen.
So I think, I mean, that's, for me, like, yeah, the, the data pulling component, uh, in my industry is probably the, the biggest pain point. And to have a lot of that more automated, which is, uh, uh, clearly the direction that we're all going- Mm-hmm ... um, to allow for the human in the loop to analyze that data is, I mean, that's, that's the key.
And that's how, that's I think the differentiating factor on how a marketing agency could, you know, differentiate themselves so they don't get left behind because, you know, if we're able to leverage AI for that purpose, then again, we can really, really double down on ensuring that we're providing high quality, you know, human analysis.
Right. You know? So like, yeah, I would, I would say that's, that's the biggest thing where those two can really meet is, at least for me, like that's, that's a big part of it. So,
Shane: so last question. I, I, I think this is a, th- th- [00:45:00] this is a tough one because I think the, the landscape is changing so rapidly that it's gonna be really tough to answer this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway.
I'll do my best. The next 12 months, the l- the landscape of SEO, AEO, GEO, content, et cetera, do you have a, a sense on what you think the next 12... Like, just your best guess, like, what's the next 12 months gonna look like?
Thomas: Oh, man. I was hoping you wouldn't ask me this question. Um, I think Bing's gonna take over.
No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Um,
Shane: no, I mean- I mean, Bing's being powered by ChatGPT at this point now. Yeah. So, I mean, you know.
Thomas: Yeah. And how is ChatGPT doing lately? It
Shane: seems like they're doing all
Thomas: right. Eh. 700, $800 billion valuation. I mean, it's- I mean, they're, they'll, they'll be around, but I- I've noticed, not to go down this rabbit hole, I've noticed pretty big shift more towards, like, Claude, Gemini.
I personally have-- I used to use ChatGPT all the time. Now I'm using Claude probably the most, as well as Gemini. [00:46:00] Um, not to discredit OpenAI. No. I think they're, they're gonna obviously keep doing what they're doing, and I think, I think I saw a video about the more recent model that's gonna come out from ChatGPT, from OpenAI, is gonna be pretty cool.
But, um, yeah, I, I wish I had a crystal ball. I, I would say, like, to predict... I mean, the direction we're going is, like, you know, um, more and more, like, AI is just going to be, like, taken for granted with the amount of, like, work that we do. Mm. Like, it is just an integrated part of our overall workflows. I would say, like, Google is clearly bought in on it, so I think that more and more, um, you know, the, the demand for not just ranking highly, but being visible- Mm
in the search results, being the source, like I mentioned, is just absolutely paramount. And so that's the direction that we're going as an agency, is not just trying to focus on rankings, but [00:47:00] also focusing on, um, again, that, that visibility aspect- Mm-hmm ... showing up in the, in the AI section. Um, that's clearly going to be the, the direct-- That, that is effectively the direction we're going.
I think that's clearly gonna be the, the winning factor, is, um, being that overall source and how you optimize for that. Mm. Um, again, still a lot of the general SEO components are there, but it's, it's a little bit of an extra thing, um, where you gotta make sure that you're clearly and cohesively answering the, the qu- the long-tail queries that people are, are asking.
Shane: This is only our fifth episode of- Mm ... of this podcast, and I think the very first episode we were talking about Open Claw. Yep. Which, for all intents and purposes, it's not dead, but, but at some-- It's basically been, like, the, the, the- The amount of work that has gone into cl- cowork- Mm-hmm ... and, uh... I mean, even, even OpenAI is, is kind of releasing their version of that.
[00:48:00] Yeah. And- Well, I think OpenAI bought Open Claw. They did. Yeah. They did. Well, they, th- that's actually not true. They hired the guy who built it. Oh, is that what it was? Yes. Okay. And he, and, and I think he said his intent was to keep it open, but I think Open Claw is... It, it... I wouldn't say it's dead, but, like, it's, it's, like, the past already.
Sure. And we, and, and we went through this with, uh, with, uh, Melanie Turczak's, uh, presentation at ISS- Mm-hmm ... where she did a presentation on, uh, SEO to GEO. Yeah. But she had to submit it, like, six months in advance. Yeah. And- So a lot of it might not be relevant ... and so, like, being able to pre- So the, the, the truth is, is the reason I say this- Yeah
is 'cause I feel like asking where is, uh, GEO gonna be in 12 months is a trick question. None of us know. Right. Like, the acceleration with which these things are going is just, it's so rapid, it's so fast. Yeah. And, uh, I, I, you did a good job answering it. I just was... I, I, [00:49:00] I, I just... It's, it's almost like a joke question because the truth is- Yeah
is I don't know where it's gonna be
Thomas: in three months. Well, and that's the thing, too, is, like, AI, the timescale is so different. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, ChatGPT came out in 2022. That was four years ago, almost four years, 'cause it was later in 2022, so let's say five years ago. Yeah. When it feels like, I mean, that feels like over a decade ago at this point with how things have advanced, you know?
Yeah. And, like, I mean, uh, they say, like, uh, if you look on YouTube, like, uh, the, the test for where AI is, it's, uh, people generating a video of Will Smith eating spaghetti.
Shane: We talked about that on our first episode. Did you? Yeah. Love that.
Thomas: So if you look at it from 2022 and 2023, it, it's, like, it clearly just looks like a fever dream.
It looks horrific, right? It, yes.
Shane: It's terrifying. You can
Thomas: see, like, the watermark from, like, stock, iStock or whatever- Yeah, yeah ... 'cause the AI was trained on stock images. And then, [00:50:00] like, 2024, it was still canyon valley, but, like, better. 2025, it was just like, "Oh, is this AI?" And now it's like you, you can't even, like- Yeah.
You, you- It's just so, so advanced. I, I think
Shane: we can tell because we've been, our, our, we've almost trained our eyes to see AI. Yeah, 'cause if it's, like,
Thomas: too perfect,
Shane: you know? Right, if it's too per- Yeah ... but, but I agree that the, the, the distance that they've come on that- It's crazy ... in just a short amount of time is so insane.
Yeah. And- It's wild ... uh, I know Hollywood's worried about it, but, like- Yeah ... you know. Uh, the, the, I, I... My hope is that, and I think this is true, especially in, when it comes to content, and, and we can, we can maybe end on this- Mm-hmm ... is the, the idea is y- and you said it earlier, is it, it matters if it's helpful Yeah.
Right? And, and I, and I, I, I used to talk to, to, to student, uh, groups all, all the time when I was working at the university, and the thing that I would always tell them is good stories always win. Mm-hmm. And I think that's the same [00:51:00] idea, is like as long as it's helpful, how, where it comes from doesn't matter nearly as much, but, but it definitely does matter that you have a point of view that is helpful.
Mm-hmm. And I think, uh, everybody's worried that, you know, AI writers are gonna take over Hollywood. Well, A- A- AI ain't coming up with Fight Club. Yeah. You know? That's right. Uh, at least I don't think so. Great movie. I mean, I, I love you, uh, Claude, but- Yeah ... m- maybe not. Right. Celebrating its 25th anniversary- Wow
I think this week. That's wild. I know. Yeah. My nephew wants to see it. Yeah? Yeah. He's- How old is he? 15. Oh, okay. He never seen it? He's ne- he's never seen it. It's a great film.
Thomas: Can't talk about it, though.
Shane: No.
Thomas: First and second rule. First, first and second rule. Awesome. All
Shane: right, with that, uh, we're, we're gonna end the, the, the show.
Uh, thanks, Thomas, for being here and for being- Thank you, Shane ... part of the, of the Go Local Brief. Uh, we will, uh, be back, uh, with another conversation in the future. So,
[00:52:00] thanks.