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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 โmust-readโ and โmust-watchโ links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
Claire (00:00.096)
Hello, hello, welcome to the Whitespark Local Update with me, Claire Carlile
And with me, Darren Shaw, and this is the podcast where we tell you what happened in local search or, you know, just search in general. Mostly we talk about chunking and query fan out. But today we're going to talk about query fan out and maybe, maybe why don't we just start there? I'll just start with my link, query fan out in practice, turning one search into an Omnimedia content plan. Like, I mean, perfect. That's what you want, right? So it's basically like
I've been hearing about query fan out and what am I supposed to do with this? How do I do it? Show me the process. Here it is. And so basically it's like how to do the query fan out, how to get the different question. You put one question into like a prompt into an LLM, the LLM turns it into a bunch of sub prompts to like gather data. All those sub prompts are a goldmine of content opportunities.
So it's just really helpful to have this laid out in a very nice document. And I know you love query fan out, Claire. So what do you think of this?
I love query fan out as much.
Darren (01:19.214)
There's a ghost, a ghost in your house.
As much as I like content chunking. Tell me this Darren, query fan out. How is it any different to what we used to do in the olden days when we used to think about our user and the way we're trying to attract where they were in terms of what their intent was? Did they need informational? Did they need transactional? And then we also thought about what were the adjacent topics and other questions they might have.
needed answering. Why is Queer ReFan out any different to that?
I think I have an answer for you. So if we go back a couple of years, what we would do is we would use also asked. would use the people also asked. It's perfect. So it's like, hey, here's my topic. What are people asking about that topic? And then you would get this. That's driven from search behavior. People would type in stuff in the search results. The difference, which is minor-ish but still significant, is that that's not really how a large language model works.
the difference is is that it's looking for very kind of specific things to answer the prompt. And so it's not necessarily the same as what people ask. It's almost like you can just call it instead of people also asked, it's Chad GPT also asks. Because what Chad GPT asks isn't necessarily the same. And so you will find different insights in that set of also asked.
Darren (02:52.056)
then you will see in People Also Ask. And I think really the magic is to combine the two. So you should still do the People Also Ask. But I guess I would just say you shouldn't ignore the Query Phantom because it is new and Google is moving towards a world of AI-driven search. You see it in the AI overviews. We will see something like Web Guide rollout. And so I think it's useful to get ahead of it and just at least run it, get the different subqueries, and then compare them with People Also Ask.
yeah, there is different stuff in here. So that's my answer.
Okay. I'll take it. but I'll also say that just saying that it's the same as people also ask is a simplification because I'm thinking that with a marketing hat on rather than a, we used to use this little part of, the Google SERP, which was people also want, but you did a good job on convincing me to go and read this. so well done. Thank you.
Yes, I'm going to turn you into an AI SEO eventually.
dude. Okie dokie. My first link is a LinkedIn post from Vinay who is a product expert. He is writing a lot, Google business profile product expert, writing a lot and dealing with a lot of suspensions. And so it was just something that caught my eye where he was saying, tis not the season to be jolly because
Claire (04:23.296)
He's saying for the last two years, December to February have been the toughest period for reinstatement. So he's talking about an optic in suspensions and an optic in how busy he is. So it's just interesting to note. well, that's interesting. Are we going to see a ton more and is it a sort of cyclical thing? So I'm not going to think about why that might be. It's more, keep your eye out and don't get suspended.
That's really the best way to manage Google. Don't get suspended. It's the number one piece of advice for being successful on Google. Best. Yeah, exactly. This is breakthrough top tip right here. Yeah. well, that's interesting. And so why does this happen? What do you think? Are they doing some kind of sweep where they're like, we're going to twiddle the knobs on our, you know,
You heard it here first!
Darren (05:20.718)
profile violating the algorithm and then it just like a bunch of profiles get suspended.
I know, maybe they get very bored and start pressing buttons. Start pressing buttons less often. Or maybe helpless business owners just start feeling naughty in December, January and February and do naughty things.
I to helpless business owners.
Darren (05:48.948)
Yeah, well, they're not going to get they're to get coal in their stocking from Google if they do that.
So anyway.
I got another post here. This one is from Cyrus McShepard and he says on LinkedIn that there's an interesting correlation between the citations referenced in AI results and common crawl. What is common crawl? Common crawl is this thing that is like an open source crawl of the web. And so the interesting takeaway here is that
AIs, LLMs are like, crawl the whole web too hard. I don't want to do that. Why don't we just use common crawl? It's available. We'll use that. So that's very interesting. So what is your takeaway? Well, if you are indexed in common crawl, that really helps you to rank. I shouldn't use the word rank for AI. It really helps you to be visible and be returned in the AI. So just very interesting.
The link was actually written by, sorry, the article was written by Metahan, I gotta butcher this name, Yesilyurt. He found this correlation between presence in Common Crawl and the metrics within Common Crawl, like page rank, harmonic centrality rank, those things, if you are strong in Common Crawl, it really helps you get more sighted. our new job is Common Crawl optimization.
Darren (07:25.87)
That is a whole new thing you gotta learn about. I don't know how to do it. Read the article. This is my job is just to tell you that there's an interesting article, give you a summary of it, and then I leave you to go and read it. And when you understand how to optimize in CommaCrawl, please let me know.
all about harmonic centrality.
It's a new thing. I think it has, I know what harmonic centrality is. It's a combination of query fan out and chunking. When you combine those two, you get the harmonic centrality.
And you have to play a little wind instrument with your nose at the same time. Yeah. I love all of that. So some people have been very excited about the announcement on the Googley blog about universal commerce protocol or UCP. Sounds very exciting.
It is kind of exciting.
Claire (08:24.094)
agentic integration, blah, blah, blah, helping you find products and buy them. So that's the sort of short thing, isn't it? Google. Can you find me a pair of noise cancelling headphones? I want them in black. They need to be comfy. I've got small ears. need to do blah, blah, blah, blah. I want them to do this and I want them, find them, find me the best price and then buy them. Okay.
And then buy them. That's the thing. It's really interesting. You can connect to your Google Pay and be like, you're just like this. Hey Google, I the headphones, blah, blah, blah, blah. Two days later, they show up at your door. You didn't have to do anything. That's it.
And then like you said, then we actually just get an AI to wear them to listen to things on our behalf because we honestly cannot be bothered.
No, there's too much stuff to do in our lives. Like, I just want to sit in the hot tub all day long while the agents do all my work.
So go away and have a little read of that. A bonus link on that is, Aleda actually like always writing something, which is very interesting and actionable. Uh, like, Oh, well, this is great, but this is what you actually have to do with your merchant center. What you're likely to have to do with your merchant center. And then as always, obviously, if you are a local business and you do sell online as well, you have product and you are using merchant centers and that is super useful.
Claire (09:51.966)
If you are a local business that is a service, something like a restaurant, so I'm trying to work out that, you know, obviously we're interested in the agentic part of making a booking, making a booking for a restaurant. Sometimes you actually have to pay something to make that booking as well. So there is an e-commerce protocol in that. So let's have a think about that. And then as always.
near media where, you know, it's always an interesting comment because it's the consumer behavior point of view, which is, it's going to take a while for consumer behavior to catch up with, you know, this is a potential that AI could be making this purchase and paying on your behalf. But sort of restaurant bookings are a sort of low bar. I don't mind them doing that on my behalf. So anyway, have a
read and have a look at the year later stuff. I will definitely be doing that because a few of my clients have Merchant Center. So I need to make sure that I've done all the things. So go and have a look at that.
Yeah, when this came out, I made a post saying like, this is kind of a hint about the kind of functionality I think will come to small businesses, where you just ask the agent to like call the business and answer questions for you and get a quote. All those things are coming on the on the local business, GBP side, Google Business Profile side. So I think it's like a sneak peek preview about what we can expect. Basically, the bots doing everything for us. Yeah. Yeah.
Bye bye.
Darren (11:29.622)
Dr. James Davidson, he's a doctor. He has posted on LinkedIn that he did, it's like, okay, Darren Shaw has been touting a strategy for a very long time, originally sparked by research done by Joel Headley about title tag length. So I'm like, I've been saying it for seven years, title tag length is BS.
And every time I do it, people are like, what? No way. And I'm like, yes way. Look, Joel Headley, did a survey, or he did a research in 2019 where he just crammed in a bunch of extra stuff at the end of the title tag. And when he did that, he saw like a 16 % increase in Google Business Profile Impressions. So, okay, what should you do, small business? Don't worry about the 67 character title tag length or whatever your
WordPress plugin is telling you. So this is advice that I people all the time. Dr. James Davidson said, I'm a doctor, I can research this. And so he did it. And it turns out that he thought it was negative for his business. So he did an actual test. Group A control group didn't change the titles. Group B made really long titles. And he found in his...
testing that the click through rate dropped significantly on the test with the longer titles. So a little bit of balance perspective here. We have some data, new data, know, it's been like since 2019 when Joel did his stuff. Things change in Google all the time, so this is great. This is like awesome to see a new study on this topic. What is the limit?
His conclusion here is like it's statistically significant. So he's going to keep the shorter titles. He's not going to do the stuffing that Darren Shaw suggests that he does. So I find it fascinating. The one thing that is missing from his study is he's only looking at data in search console. So I want to do my own study. It's overdue. I got to do my own study. We got to test this on some locations, some web pages. And then we got to also pull in
Darren (13:56.866)
the Google Business Profile data and see if we see the same thing. Because you know what? I will change my tune. If it's not a good recommendation, then don't do it. He says it's not. So do your own research. That's what they like to say in SEO. They say do your own research. Don't just blindly follow what Darren Shaw says or what Dr. James Davidson says. You should do your own research. I feel like it's overdue to do some more research.
I'm just glad that he did this. I'm glad that somebody has tested this thing I've been talking about for a very long time. yeah, anyways, that's all I gotta say about it. Do you have anything to say about it?
I that's quite enough and I can't believe we're still talking about title tags. Okay. So my final link link is a link to a YouTube video with Andy Crestedina talking about how to make an AI clone of yourself using a custom GBT, GPT, which is something that I've meant to do for ages.
Things are important. Yeah.
Claire (15:03.272)
I stopped using, chat, GPT, apart from the world burning. I've just over that now, been using Gemini more. don't think it is possible to build a custom Gemini, but tell me if I'm wrong. it's not meant to do for ages for the purpose of making a Claire, that I could go and ask questions to, and it would help me write little sound bites of content based on everything that I've produced courses.
Yeah. Blog posts, my website, interviews I've done. And then I can also talk to it and tell it things and it would use my tone of voice. I haven't done it. And I really like Andy Crestedinas. One, he's always really great at giving you all the details for the prompts. He doesn't like skimp. He doesn't say, so say some important things into it. He's like, this is what you need to say.
Here it is exactly.
Anyway, it is really good. You should go and make one for yourself if you fancy it or whoever. It can be used in lots of different ways. And also in that piece, he links to a custom Andy. And that is my final link. And I think it's fabulous.
Ask Andy anything.
Darren (16:24.846)
Andy Crestadena is a top voice, big fan of Andy. And yeah, you know what we really need? More Claire Carlisles in this world. we need to, you should make like 10 copies of this Claire Carlisle. Clone Claire multiple times and then we could ask Claire any questions about local SEO, Google business profiles. That's a good idea. Actually, what's the local business angle? I wonder if there's value.
in making a clone of like the local plumber. Yeah, hey, I'm John the plumber. I made a clone of everything I know about plumbing and I put a widget on my website and you can ask me any question. That's an interesting idea.
There is also if you've got, need to, know, local businesses are all shapes and sizes. If you've got internal training that needs to get done, you need to train people up. You need to answer their questions. and you need to do that in the correct way. Then there's so many different ways to use it.
That's it. That's it. a whole set of six links, we talked about them all. Technically, Claire, you threw an extra one in there. I thought we weren't supposed to do that. But you did.
I didn't talk about it. just said a bonus link.
Darren (17:37.344)
All right. All right. Good. So, well, thanks everybody for listening. Go leave us a review on Apple podcasts and also leave comment on our YouTube. Yeah. And I don't know what else should you do? You should just subscribe.
First of all, should leave reviews, reviews, we really like reviews. Tell a friend, listen with a friend.
we're really asking a lot here, you're all family together
Write a poem about your love for this podcast.
Yeah, we would love to see. You know what would really help us is if you wrote a haiku about this episode and then left it as a comment on our YouTube channel and on our TikTok and anywhere you get your podcasts, leave a haiku.
Claire (18:33.538)
Yeah, if you do that, you'll get a free thing.
Yeah, we'll send you a Weisberg local update hat. We're going to make it you.
I'll knit it for you.
All right. Thanks a lot. Bye, everybody. Bye.