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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 βmust-readβ and βmust-watchβ links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
Claire (00:00.12)
Hello and bonjour and welcome to the White Spark Local Update with me Claire Carlile
And I, my name is Darren
bonjour Darren. Bonjour. Okay, tell us what we're doing today.
Today we are going to cover the latest happenings in local search over the past week and a bit. So what's been happening in local search? We're going to talk about cool articles and your mind will be blown with all of the incredible information we will be providing you today. Claire, do you have an interesting article to discuss?
a few. So there is something that I read recently. So I've been going down a little bit of an where is search going next rabbit hole and what do we need to know about which will be reflected probably in the pieces I've chosen. So this one is a piece called From SEO to AIO why your content needs to exist in AI training data. So
Claire (01:05.014)
This person that wrote this feels quite strongly about certain things. So rather than saying right now, this is definitely what you should do. My piece of learning from this is I hadn't really thought very carefully about training data versus rag. So about how we need to make sure that we exist in this, ideally in this corpus of training data.
and we also need to be accessible via RAG. So it was just a really nice piece that sort of did a little explanation to me about those things. I'm saying that I imagine that you'll want to exist in both places. But then I just had a little chat with Crystal Carter who was saying, and now don't quote me on this, but she said, yes, that's true. You want to exist in both places.
But have a think about when information goes in as the training data, you don't necessarily get cited and linked to. Whereas with RAG, that's the bit that you are. So I'm not saying that you don't want to be in the training data, but you need to be in both places because we do want those citations and we want those links as well when RAG comes into play. But yeah, it's all changing all the time. I just really like this piece because it seemed to be quite an accessible piece of content about, remember when people were talking about
blocking LLMs from using their data. You know, it's not long, we're only going back a few months. And now we're saying, how do we make sure that what we have and information about our brand and our content is very accessible? So it's quite a step change.
Yes, you know, people used to say that about schema when it first came out. They would say, you don't want to mark it up in schema because then Google doesn't really need to crawl your website and get your content. They're just going to use it in their knowledge graph or something like that. But yeah, same thing. But this is like this is it. This is search everywhere optimization. You want to be everywhere. Definitely want to be in the LLM data. Definitely want to be in the RAG data. And RAG data is just traditional SEO stuff. None of that.
Darren (03:11.756)
chunking our query fan out, hey, Claire? So yeah. Yeah, I love this piece. This is very interesting. And I think the one thought I had when you were talking about this was people are like, I don't care too much. Like, great. I've to get into chat GPT. But chat GPT is just a tiny piece of the pie. And I was like, well, how about Google's LLM? You definitely want to make sure that your content is LLM accessible.
on both the training side and the thing. So the real takeaway here is check your Cloudflare settings, right? Make sure that you are not blocking LLMs from crawling your site. Is that the main, like, this is what you got to do?
was part of the focus of this was talking about a cloud flare, but because I'm not, you know, I don't dig that. don't know what really know how to check that. would go and check. We get my little techie person is like, you know, can everyone access the things that they need to? Can you do the magic and make sure that they can? So it's just that awareness. So like when we're thinking about search engines, we've always thought about crawling and indexing. So it's just that sort of slight mindset change, I guess it was just like.
cat, you know, is my content accessible to for training data and for whatever anyway. So that's my first piece, Darren. What is your first piece?
Cool, cool beans. Well, mine's also AI related. So much of our content these days is. And it's about AI mode and Gemini are being integrated into Chrome. What? So when this happens, this is very interesting because it's sort of this thing where you don't have to leave your browser that you're already using to get all these AI features.
Darren (04:58.498)
This is going to be hard for chat GPT to compete with because everybody uses Chrome. So it's like, it's right there. I got a little button. They're going to build it right into the search bar. So when you type in your search bar, rather than that running the Google's traditional search results, you're going to get to this point where AI mode is kind of run right out of the search bar. And so this is really.
So a Gentic browser in the article, Google also showed a Gentic browsing capabilities like using their Mariner technology. Users will select the Gemini AI button and the browser will perform a task for them autonomously. This is a pretty big deal. It's like you can just ask it to be like, hey, Chrome, could you please go and research?
I'm traveling to London for Brighton SEO. Could you go and build a whole itinerary for me? I want to find some cool things to do. I've to get me to hotel. And I want you to find my flights. And that's like the agent then goes and does all that and comes back and says, here you go. So that's pretty interesting. so anyways, them integrating this functionality, AI functionality, right into the Chrome browser is a very significant development. And it just makes it super accessible.
And it is an indication that Google will be flipping that switch from traditional search pretty soon. And so back to your article, got to make sure that your content is crawled and accessible in the LLMs.
excited. Yeah, the idea that, yes, plan me a three day stay in London, I want to go to a cat cafe, but not the same one as last time. And then Google would know that the last time was where I booked last time, because I booked via Google Booking and it's in my email and la la la. So it comes down to how much access do you want Google to have?
Claire (06:57.966)
to function in this agentic manner. And they have that data anyway because it lives in all of my bookings and everywhere. Anyway, moving on.
They have all that data anyway.
My next piece is, know, strangely enough on the on subject of AI. I've just been looking around in a new content hub on Wix. You might remember that George Nguyen built out the SEO part and that still exists and that's fantastic. And he has also written a piece which appears in the Search Lab. So I was just having a dive around in there. But I really liked the Search Lab AI Search Lab glossary from Crystal Carter.
which made me feel like, brilliant, I've actually got a glossary for all of these things that people are talking about, you know, what is rag, what is training data, what is this, what is that. So I like it because it's clever and it makes me feel like I'm a bit clever. So definitely have a dive into that because sometimes when you're reading stuff you don't really understand what things are. So a good glossary is always a big win for me.
You are extremely clever and this is a very useful resource. I am glad to know that this exists. Yes. Do we get our badges yet for the Crystal Carter fan club?
Claire (08:16.77)
I am working on it. Like I said, when I chatted with her earlier and I just told her how magnificent she is. yeah, I mean, we can only hope that one day we could be as magnificent, but hopes and dreams.
Good luck to us. Yeah, hopes and dreams. She's also really cool on TikTok. On the SEOs that on TikTok. Yeah, she's great. She's got a really great channel and she does. She's just she's like a creator. She's a TikTok creator. She does a really good job of generating SEO content on TikTok. So one of the people to follow if you are on that platform.
TikTok
Claire (08:54.562)
Well, I wouldn't know about that like any sort of middle-aged woman. I only consume my TikTok content via Instagram.
man, me too. I have to actually spend more time on the TikTok app.
the TikTok. Okay.
I got another AI LLM related topic. This one is quite cool because Dan Petrovich, one of my favorites, waiting for my fan club badge from him as well. Yeah. So he made this really awesome tool, Cetician Mining for AISO. And so you open this dang thing up and then you just give it any query, right? So you could say like,
please recommend some good personal injury lawyers in Phoenix. And it'd be like, here are some highly rated personal injury lawyers. And then it gives you the full breakdown of all the citations. So it's like, people say you should be checking the source. You should be like, this is how you can find what sources are being cited in LLM responses. And this will just instantly give you that list. And so here is the list of the sites.
Darren (10:07.458)
ThePhoenixReview.com slash best personal injury lawyers, Phoenix. That's a good one. The Phoenix Review, Martindale.com. Justia is being pulled in here, lawyers.findlaw.com. So it just gives you the list of all the important sites that are being referenced for this particular query. So what do you do? You use this tool, you run a number of different queries.
You save all these important sites, and then you go and you look at every one of these sites and be like, do we have a listing? Yes, great. Is it correct? No. OK, let's edit it. Is it correct? Yes. Well, let's still edit it then add some photos and enhance it and improve it. If I don't have a listing, I'm going to add one. And I would say that for industries like legal, you want one for the firm and one for each of the primary lawyer partners. For industries like plumbing,
You're going to make one for all of your locations. So yeah, I just think this is a very useful tool that saves you a step of trying to squeeze these sources out of the LLMs when you ask something. And so this is a really actionable task. You use this guy's tool. He did say it was a limited time. Dan said it's available temporarily for free for a limited time. Anyone can go in mine for authoritative grounding citations.
Dijon A.E.I. This fits as a single step in a complex citation mining pipeline, which involves GSC API, query intent classification, synthetic query, and fan out generation, prompt generation, citation target text retrieval, NLP, and semantic matching. I think he only added all of those words to sound smart. I don't know if that's...
That is a word salad isn't it?
Darren (11:53.07)
It's a word salad, yes. But regardless of the word salad, it's a cool little tool and you should check it out.
And well done for another acronym, AISEO. I love that. Let's just, let's have as many as possible so no one knows what anyone is talking about.
I love that too. I don't think we have enough yet. I think we need more.
Maybe 10, 10 or 20 more. I will look at that because that looks jolly useful.
It is cool and Dan Petrovich is cool and so join his fan club as well.
Claire (12:26.338)
Yeah, so Darren can continue to sponsor his content by talking about him every single week on the podcast.
know, but the dude keeps launching cool stuff. Actually, I forgot something I wanted to talk about related to this tool. It was super smart. found this. One of the results that I got was citing one of the lawyers own websites. And it was like the LLM in its grounding citations had cited the top five best lawyers in city. it was, it was a guy wrote his own article on his own website, the top five best lawyers.
And so obviously he was the number one lawyer and then the other lawyers were just like four made up people you never heard of. Definitely not his competition. So I thought that was an interesting strategy. Yeah.
Yeah, that's super popular and that is just like, yeah, going down the path of throwaway content. So we won't talk about.
But if it works for the LLMs interesting
Claire (13:26.816)
the la la la la la mama. Okay, goodness gracious me, why have I chosen this? Because it's just there's so much in this. I am going to talk about, we love a bit of consumer research and I do like it when people go out and actually do proper research, which is something that I definitely am not doing and speaking to a million different people and understanding their journeys and what they do. this is
Something that Reflect Digital here in the UK have been doing for a while is their Search Pulse AI report. It's taken this thing, is probably ChatGPT, which has made SEOs and marketers like ourselves actually think about, wow, people are really starting their journeys elsewhere, or something else is very important.
And obviously people have always been talking about YouTube SEO, TikTok SEO, basically findability on other platforms, but it doesn't feel like any of those have ever been given us such a massive shakeup. So this idea about all of these different platforms and searcher behavior is being opened up in terms of we're going back to actually now we're thinking about, so what do people do on social media?
we would have thought that people were just spending their time. We didn't count that as necessarily a searching behavior, did we? It was just something that you did when you scrolled. But obviously it's all searching, it's searching for something, even if it's the meaning of life. So what I think is this has opened up this context of search and it's broadened our horizons in terms of where our people are and what they're doing. So one of the things that I really like about this report is how they break it down into, so they have this.
four quarters, four quarter grid.
Claire (15:16.174)
Yeah, so they're talking about four quarters. So they look at emotional, rational, external and personal. And they break down some behaviors into and search engines into where they fit. But it's interesting when they're not talking about search engines, they call them search platforms, which is what they are. But then we wouldn't have thought that Facebook and Pinterest we do search, but Facebook, Instagram, this idea that it is a search platform.
not a search engine. So they take what they call social media, or they social media what we think of as social media, search engines, mainstream AI and specialist AI, and they map those against this quadrant. So the rational, the personal, the rational external, the emotional external. That probably didn't make any sense. But what it does is I think it just, it has expanded my idea of thinking about
my customers, what they're doing in all these different places. We've always known that they're doing different things in different places. But I think as marketers and local SEOs, we're just needing to think about it a little bit more just because we've been stretched. We've suddenly been stretched in terms of, we're not just thinking about, we're not just like so focused on Google anymore. We're also thinking, and again, whenever Celeste Gonzalez is speaking and people
really weighing into this, where does social media fit? Because it used to be social media was this bubble and then we got into social commerce which was basically flogging ladies, women or people like myself, things on Instagram. But it's not just about that, isn't it? It's making sure that the information in all these different places is accessible and available to all these other different platforms. Anyway, it blows my tiny mind thinking about it. But a very worthwhile...
while read just to sit down for a good hour, have a cup of coffee, have a cup of tea, read through it. And again, rather than being scared and going, this is so much information, just process it in terms of what do I need to know about my customers? How is this new knowledge going to affect the search journey of my customers given what I know about their demographic and their age range? So.
Claire (17:36.962)
Just focus on how this will inform you as a marketer for your customers.
Yep, it's crazy how, you know, it was way easier. We just had to rank our clients in Google. That was just great. Now it's like the idea of search everywhere optimization is like your clients are asking you, hey, how do we get more visibility on TikTok? And we're like, I don't know. I'm old.
But first of all, yeah, are your your potentials on tick tock? That's the thing is we need to come back to these foundational aspects is like how do I get visibility and blah blah blah? I know do you need visibility and blah blah blah?
Yep, so that sounds like a big read. And now you've given me a huge job. Thanks a lot, Claire. Gotta go read this one hour article and think about my life choices. You'll like I'm gonna like it. So the thing I wanna talk about next is the writing is on the wall for Q &A.
Okay. Try it.
Darren (18:42.674)
man, Q &A is going away. Mike Blumenthal predicted this back in January when Google had launched the Ask Maps feature. It's like, why would we take user or business generator or user generated Q &A and they realized this is a stupid feature because people are just asking really dumb questions like, are you open right now?
So they realized that the Q &A is maybe not so good, so they're thinking about getting rid of it. And the clearest sign that it is going away is Dale from Jepto had posted on a local search forum about an email to the developers, anyone that is part of the development community for Google Business Profile API. They got an email saying that the Q &A functionality is being deprecated in the.
AI, see you later, as of November 3rd. And they said, they're in the process of updating the Q &A functionality and user experience. That's the only explanation they get. They got, they gave.
They go, gov'n.
It's the only explanation they governed.
Darren (19:56.398)
So they gave this explanation that they're in the process of updating Q &A functionality and user experience. So you know what that means? AI generated Q &A, which means you will not be able to see the Q &A. a standard local SEO strategy tactic recommendation was to populate your own Q &A that answers all the questions. It's like, look, you got an FAQ section right on your Google Business profile. All you business owners, you should be using this because it's great.
You
Darren (20:26.104)
for conversions. But now you will not be able to do that. You'll just have to rely on the AI to answer your questions for you, which goes back to what we've been talking about this whole episode. Get your content everywhere. Every little detail, like Celeste talks about on TikTok, you want to talk about every little attribute of your business. Attributes. You've got to think about the tiniest little details. And then Google has that information, and Google's new Q &A replacement can answer those questions for people that are asking.
That was interesting. So long Q &A. It was nice knowing you. It was mid knowing you.
I'm underwhelmed.
Yeah, it was like you were an acquaintance that I didn't really connect with. That's right. I'm not, I'm not bothered if you go goodbye. Yeah. I hope you enjoyed that because we enjoyed speaking about these things. We'll just do a really surface level, top level podcast next time where we're like, here's a thing about something really easy. It'll take you one minute to read and you can then win on the internet.
Top three tips for optimizing your Google Business Profile.
Claire (21:31.634)
Haha, yeah, we love that. We're gonna say thank you and goodbye now, Darren, aren't we?
And we're going to kindly request that you now go straight to Apple Podcast and leave a review saying, I loved all that AI content. It was great. And Claire and Darren are fun to listen to. And I'm definitely going to be a subscriber for
Thank very much for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. We love making the podcast. Make sure you subscribe and come back next week. Thank you.
Bye everybody.