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The Whitespark Local Update is the go-to podcast for Local SEOs and Marketers who want to stay ahead of the curve in local search and the local visibility space.
Join industry experts Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw for a lively, insightful roundup of their carefully curated selection of top “must-read” and “must-watch” links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
[Claire Carlile]
Well, hello everybody and welcome to the White Spark Local Update with me, Claire Carlile.
[Darren Shaw]
And with me, Darren Shaw. This is the podcast where we will tell you what's happened in local search over the last week or two, usually a week. And Claire, what happened?
Anything exciting happen?
[Claire Carlile]
Oh, nothing. Nothing happened. Well, not really.
You always say the last week and then I always find something really old that I missed.
[Darren Shaw]
That's why I say last week, because it's kind of supposed to be kind of like newer stuff. But then there's like, sometimes there's really good old stuff that we want to talk about.
[Claire Carlile]
Yeah, it's not that old. Anyway, I was poking around on the Sear Interactive website, which I am, want to do. That's what I like to do.
That's what I want to do with my life. And so I saw something from May. It was a little, it was very short, but it was talking about how they had partnered with Trustpilot to do a study on how review profiles impact brand AI visibility.
So this sent me down a little rabbit hole. One, Trustpilot, obviously, a review monitoring platform. So what a great outcome for them that that's what they found.
But anyway, apart from that, just some useful stats. So Sear found that brands without a Trustpilot review profile have a median AI citation rate of 1%, while brands with a robust profile saw a citation rate of 75%. Blah, blah, blah.
Whether or not we're talking about Trustpilot specifically, we know that reviews impact visibility in AI. We've talked about it lots of different times. But because this sent me down then a little rabbit hole thinking about those things, I went off to another post that Will had written where he was talking about where often we're monitoring the wrong things with our prompts in AI.
He talks about monitoring your brand prompts. And that might be a versus, or it might just be tell me about whatever services using the brand. So he talks about how AI overviews, they're going to give a pro, they're going to give a con.
And even if the con is like one negative review from 10 years ago that pulls out one thing, it is going to amplify that. He made this little thing in GitHub. I don't understand how to use that.
That's not my forte. So I will have a look at that and see if someone can set that up for us, because that looks like a jolly thing to do. And then it just carried on talking about those types of things in terms of monitoring, controlling the narrative around your brand, making sure that you are on the right review platforms and you are owning your own content about your reviews.
And then making sure you know what people and what the AIs are using in those review parts that they push in with the citations. I really like this as well. I'm not sure if this was Will, but he was talking about Capterra, G2, whatever the review platform of choice is given your marketplace.
These review sites are the truck stop bathroom wall of how to pick an agency. So that was brilliant.
[Darren Shaw]
For a good time, Carl Waitzberg.
[Claire Carlile]
That's what happens. You just look on those walls in the toilets. And again, a little quote from Amanda Nativitad, who's also my new favorite person.
We're entering an era where third-party content about you may matter more than the content you produce yourself. So again, just a big push towards, please go out there and see what is being said about you. Does it fit your own narrative about what you would like to be out there with your brand?
I think it's just that big picture marketing that we were doing when we were thinking of our businesses as an entity. Everything doesn't live on your website. You just need to think more carefully.
And also, review sites are a big deal for your presence in LLMs. The end.
[Darren Shaw]
I have a question. Let's say you have 1 million glowing five-star reviews, one trash review on Trustpilot, and AIs just keep referring to that one trash review. Anything you can do about it?
[Claire Carlile]
So yeah, Will was talking about being proactive with the information that you're putting out there. So they started to be a lot more proactive about having content on their website that talks about... So say the issue was with they have poor retention for staff or something like that.
So let's think about what the retention actually is, and let's make sure that we have content on our website that reflects what our retention rate is, if that's a good thing. So then the next time those LLMs refresh their training data, you've got training data, but then you've also got, when they're using RAG, you've got new content, which is going to be pushed into the AI SERP or whatever. So yes, you can.
Let's not call it a PR piece, but it's more a management piece of what information actually exists around that. If that's just the one review that talks about retention in your organization, and they're pulling that in, then give another angle on retention in your organization and make sure that you're creating and owning the narrative around that topic.
[Darren Shaw]
That's, yeah, super interesting. So like, one, what are they saying about you? You got to know that.
And then two, oh, we don't like this negative thing, so change the narrative. Smart. Love it.
Love it, Cyr. Well, Randall's good, smart people. Speaking of good, smart people, I'm going to talk about Amanda Natividad.
She's great. Love her. So she wrote an article on the Sparktoro blog.
The click is now optional. Here's what isn't. So Rand did the research on, it's all zero-click marketing.
You know, Rand and Amanda, the zero-click marketing crew, they found that in 2026, 68% of US Google searches end without a click. And this is not like, okay, I clicked your website. This is what I click to anywhere, to any website.
That's kind of amazing. That's a huge percentage. So someone goes to Google, they search, they get their answer, they don't have to leave Google.
That's pretty amazing. And she also talks about the growth. So in 2016, it was only 45%.
In 2024, it was 60%. Now it's 68%. Basically, Google's trying to keep you on Google.
You know, they make more money when they do that. So makes sense. And of course, AI overviews are a big driver of this.
So what do you do if your business model has been dependent on traffic from Google, which is kind of the way SEO is? Yeah, we're on an SEO podcast here. So it's like, oh, dang, what do we do when Google's not driving the traffic anymore?
Well, the strategy is to make your brand, according to Amanda, make your brand the moat. Strong brands, brand sites, one at two times the rate of unrecognized brands. So be the brand in a local context.
I've talked about that before. It's like, if you had to name a plumbing company in your city or a... Bob.
Exactly, Bob. Everyone knows Bob. So just be recognizable somehow, which means kind of like, offline marketing, like getting into people's minds, which is an interesting thing.
Own what you can. So email list, community, first party data. Don't just trade Google, which is a property you don't control with something like LinkedIn, which is another property you don't control, because all that can go away at any time.
And measurement over attribution. So a correlation dashboard, not necessarily traffic as your only scoreboard. You want to be measuring just visibility across these places, because that visibility is a reflection of your brand, which I think is smart.
And then I like this quote, Google has moved past rewarding good content and started rewarding what AI can't replicate. And that's the commodity stuff, non-commodity content. Yes.
Okay. So yeah, Amanda. Anyways, the moral of the story is SEO is getting harder.
Clicks from Google, less. Build your brand. Yes.
That's the takeaway from that article.
[Claire Carlile]
Love it. So this is a thing. I think this was from the Sterling Sky newsletter.
So it is a post. This would be of interest to you. I don't really work with anyone personally in this sector.
Jason Hennessy, Colorado is banning lead generation companies from selling legal leads to law firms. If you are a law firm, and then the price per whatever was 6 million pounds or dollars, because you're in the States, because these lead gen companies were bidding on these relevant search terms for you. So who has done this, Darren?
And why have they done it?
[Darren Shaw]
You're asking me? Apparently, it was some kind of German thing. Yeah.
Germany? Didn't Germany do something? No, this is Colorado.
Germany and Colorado have done something. It's big news in local search.
[Claire Carlile]
So if you are a law firm, also it's a state level thing. So the state of Colorado have made this decision. It actually gives a little link to the bill summary, which is obviously from Colorado.
So go and read it. Who else is going to do this? How nice.
We love this. But whether or not anyone else will stop people doing it, remains to be seen.
[Darren Shaw]
I just came across in my competitive analysis, a business that I'm like, what is happening here? So we're very close to launching it. It's off launch right now.
Our new Analyze tab in local ranking grids. And as look, it gives us amazing competitive insights. So I could see this one business and of course, they got the keyword stuffed business name, which is of course helping them.
But holy, they have just absolutely dominated the grid since about December. And then I look at their Google business profile. Trash.
Hardly any reviews, no photos. What's happening here? I look at their website.
More trash. Even worse. I was like, what is happening?
Why is this business absolutely dominating in an extremely competitive space? Personal injury. And it's a freaking lead gen company.
I was like, there's a mystery I'm trying to figure out. It came out of nowhere about three months ago. And now they own freaking space.
And I'm like, I gotta figure it out. But anyways, they are lead gen and it's related to your article because Colorado is doing something, and Germany have gotten together to sort out this issue with lead gen. So good news.
Great job, Colorado.
[Claire Carlile]
And Germany.
[Darren Shaw]
Thank you. Thank you to all the Germans listening.
[Claire Carlile]
Okay, your turn.
[Darren Shaw]
My next article is from a brand you may be familiar with called Apple. So Apple introduces Siri AI, a profoundly more capable personal assistant. Here's my problem with Siri.
Hey Siri, how many articles has Barry Schwartz published?
[Claire Carlile]
I found this on the web.
[Darren Shaw]
It's the most stupid AI.
[Claire Carlile]
I'm like, give me a number.
[Darren Shaw]
It's 320 or whatever. Actually, it's more like 10,000, I think. But I'm like, this is so dumb.
So thankfully, Siri is better. Coming soon. So I think they're rolling it out.
Siri AI has connected with Gemini. So now it's Gemini-powered. And ideally, it's going to respond to that kind of stuff.
And it was crazy. I watched the whole demo video on WWDC, where they announced stuff. They would ask a question, and then they would just read the screen.
And I'm like, I really need Siri to just talk to me, because I often don't have my glasses on. And I was like, what? I'm trying to read on my watch.
And so, but then I found another video on YouTube where Siri will actually just respond with audio. That's what I need. I want it to be like the movie, Her.
I'm waiting for this. I'm like, hey, how many...this is a question I want to know all the time. How many articles is Barry Schwartz published?
And I want a verbal answer. And so anyways, it's coming. It's way better.
Personal context that they promised back in 2024. Then they delayed forever. It never really materialized.
Here it is. It's finally coming. What it's going to do is you can ask it a question, and it'll search your messages like, hey, what is Bob's address?
And then it'll grab it. It'd be like, oh yeah, Bob texted you the address. Here it is.
And then do you want me to plug that into maps? You'd be like, yes, please. So that's pretty good.
That stuff is coming. It actually can browse the web now, which is amazing. And I think it synthesizes the web.
When you go to your AI chat of choice, and you say, hey, I have a question, it goes to the web, gathers information, gets the answer, and then delivers it verbally, Siri is going to be able to do that. So that is a big upgrade. The other thought, of course, for this podcast is what does this mean for local SEO?
And I do think we're getting closer, especially once Siri is good, people will start to use AI in a way to replace Google searches. I could just see people being like, hey, my personal assistant, I am looking for a plumber in Denver, and please recommend one. And Siri will do the job.
And so it'll give you like, oh, here are the ones. And then based on your past history, you probably like this. Oh, and I noticed a text message where Sarah said that they used this plumber back in 2018.
Do you want to call them? Getting to that level, they're interesting. You kind of sidestep Google completely and you're just doing things in Siri.
[Claire Carlile]
Because it's using Gemini. So it's basically just using Google.
[Darren Shaw]
Exactly. Our optimization strategies don't change.
[Claire Carlile]
Yeah. No, Siri doesn't get good. Siri just becomes Gemini.
[Darren Shaw]
Exactly.
[Claire Carlile]
So good news for us. So cool. All right.
So my final linky link is part two of Near Media webinar. So we had Cindy Crumb, Crystal Tang, Greg Gifford, chatty chatting about... It was post-Google IO.
I just really liked the bits, which was little top tips at the end, which were nice, but it was a little bit of Crystal and Greg talking about, and this is sort of going back to what we were talking about, reviews in AI overviews and how the importance of reviews and stuff like that. What Greg and Crystal were talking about was using your knowledge and information that exists internally in a business. And that might be sales demos.
I think that Crystal was talking about leveraging the information that your sales team and other internal pieces of the team know, getting that out in some sort of way, which might be textual, it might be analyzing video, it might be the recordings of internal chats or whatever it is. Using AI to find those common themes and then making sure that the themes and the things that are important, especially with your positioning and your messaging and other stuff like that, is you reflect that back in your content that lives on your website, but also that's going to be important for your messaging strategy in general, in lots of different places. But it comes back to that idea that on your website, yeah, of course, AI and people are using lots of different information from lots of different sources.
They might not ever actually go to your website, but what appears on your website is still very, very important because that is where the AIs or whatever LLM it is, are going to take that information in either its training corpus or RAG, and then they're going to push that into some sort of format that people consume, which may or may not end up in a visit to your website. So it's just another really nice, very actionable, you know, go and get that data, go and get that internal knowledge that exists, and make sure that that is appearing somewhere because we have all this gold in terms of knowledge within our organizations, but we don't necessarily use that in our marketing and we need to do that.
[Darren Shaw]
Very interesting. I've been thinking about this lately because, okay, we have a similar problem at Whitespark, right? So we have all of this knowledge that would come from our sales call.
Someone asked me, like, oh, how are you different from this competitor? Oh, what do you offer this thing? And like that information, we can verbally give it on a sales call, but it doesn't exist on our website.
And there's actually a reason it doesn't because you don't want to barf 20,000 words on your landing page for a piece of software. And so I'm like, how do you do it? How do you actually execute on this?
And the idea that I had, and I don't know if it's valid or not, is I've seen a lot of people like Steve Toth talking about this markdown file that is really specifically for the LLMs. And so what if you put all of that information, that extra information, the 20,000 words into a markdown file, and then you just link to that from the landing page? And I don't know, I'm speculating here, but what do you think, Claire? Good idea?
Bad idea?
[Claire Carlile]
It sounds like white text on white background because it's just going back to gamification. And what I was talking about specifically is taking that knowledge and basically you take it and you distill that into key messages. So what are the key things that people are experiencing as problems?
How do we make it very clear we can solve those problems? So it's not like here are 60 million words about the features and what we do. It's actually using that to answer people's questions, emotionally draw them in.
But yeah, you could do a thing where you do a spammy, let's do all this information about my organization and just stick it in some file that can't be used by people and put it on my website. But that wasn't the angle that I was...
[Darren Shaw]
I hear your angle, but I think you're going to lose so many of those little details that actually are valid for AI. I think AI needs to know very explicitly that you do X. And if you don't say it very explicitly, and so how many Xs do we do?
Well, we do like hundreds of Xs. And so that's where you kind of have to lay them all out for the dumb dumb robots. So I don't know, you and I will have to debate this at another time.
[Claire Carlile]
Well, but you can have, but that's the difference, isn't it? Between like a landing page, which is just like, here is the page, which isn't like an essay on something. Doesn't mean that you can't have the content on your website if it's very valuable for someone that's further down their sort of decision making process.
You know, it can be, it can be indexed, it can be read by people. Exactly. So I'm not saying it shouldn't appear.
I'm just saying, putting it in some weird LLM readable file that's not for people is 1980s SEO, but for AI.
[Darren Shaw]
1980s SEO. Okay, my next article is from Michael B. Snow.
This guy, he is the Snow. And he has written on the Sochi blog in partnership with Google, partnership, provides evidence of social signals as a ranking factor. Interesting.
So they did a study. They use this multi location company called Painting with a Twist to see whether or not linking your social accounts to your GBP will help you rank. And so they got 31 locations, they have a test group where they didn't link the social accounts.
And they didn't really weren't active on socials. That was a control group. And then the test group, they linked all the social accounts, and they went hog wild on the posting.
And so the test group posted 60% more during the test. And there were some gains. Interesting.
Visibility gains were small, but I think noteworthy. The test group saw nine points higher. This is from the Google Business Profile performance dashboard data.
So, GBP search impressions, nine points higher. GBP customer action, so clicks and calls, 10 points higher. I don't know what points means, but that's what they said.
GBP phone calls, 11.5% gap by the end. And Painting with a Twist said, Oh, yeah, we also saw a lift in our website traffic. So, some hints that the social signals will result in better overall SEO.
Michael says, Which signals are doing the work? Is it the freshness of the content? Is it just adding the link?
Is it the engagement? Is it the content itself? And so he doesn't know the answers to that.
He just, you know, we just tried this, we saw a lift. So, I thought that was very interesting. And then Google says, Yeah, we are.
They apparently in this partnership, Google said, Yes, we are indexing content from linked social accounts. So, knowing that it's indexed, that's something. And it pulls, we know that it pulls offers and events from your profile.
So, what do you do? Keep your linked social accounts active. So, if you've gone into your GBP and you've added social links, and of course, maintain a steady flow of content across all of those channels.
Create localized content that earns engagement. So, prioritize posts, reels, events, and community content that encourages engagement, of course. And create more share opportunities.
Build in-location moments. This is verbatim. Build in-location moments customers want to photograph.
Anyways, that's the end of my discussion of that article.
[Claire Carlile]
Well, thank you. Thank you very much for sharing.
[Darren Shaw]
You know, it's what I do.
[Claire Carlile]
It's actually what this podcast is about. So, save your thanks.
[Darren Shaw]
Yes.
[Claire Carlile]
Right. That's it.
[Darren Shaw]
We did it. Yeah. Well, thanks, everybody.
Please go and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We just, I think, figured out how to push podcasts to video. Video podcasts on Apple.
So, that's actually happening now. So, you get the video version. And we've got the video version on the Spotify and the video version on YouTube.
So, if you like to look at your podcast rather than listen to them, then we have all of that enabled. This is pretty new, apparently. So, video on Apple Podcasts.
So, anyways, watch our faces on Apple Podcasts.
[Claire Carlile]
Do it.
[Darren Shaw]
And we'll see you next time. Thanks for having a listen. Bye.
Or watch.
[Claire Carlile]
Or watch. Goodbye.
[Darren Shaw]
Bye.