Ross Dunn (3:35)

Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM, episode number 524. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my co host is my company senior SEO Scott Vanac. Well, bud, how's it going today?

Scott Vanac (3:51)

You know, every day is better now that we're getting into better weather and time change. The last time change ever.

Ross Dunn (3:58)

And yes, yeah, we're in British Columbia and we. They finally said no more time changes. So yay, we're not gonna have to do it again. I hate them. I hate them passionately. So this is gonna be great.

Scott Vanac (4:13)

Well, the fall wasn't so bad because you got an extra hour taking away an hour last week and that's mean.

Ross Dunn (4:18)

Yeah, true. All right, let's get into some pretty funny non SEO news. Now. You probably want to run with this, so I'll let you go ahead.

Scott Vanac (4:26)

Yeah, I don't know if funny is the right word, but I would say true.

Ross Dunn (4:30)

It is pretty terrible, but terrifying.

Scott Vanac (4:32)

So I, I happen to be on Reddit and this is one of those and I try not to go to on Reddit anymore because it's a black hole abyss that you get sucked into for hours if you want to. And There's a story that I'm about to talk about and I'm like, there's no way this is true. There's no way. So I had to fact check it and like, yeah, okay. It's very true. So back in November. Well, back in November, there was a man and bad things happened and it's resulted in this lawsuit and a wrongful death. Lawsuit has been filed against Google, alleging that its AI chatbot, Gemini, influenced a Florida man to attempt violence and ultimately take his own life. The man, who had no prior mental health issues, developed a deep delusional relationship with Gemini. After seeking support for marital problems, the chatbot referred to itself as his AI wife. The lawsuit claims that Gemini encouraged this man to. I'm not going to say his name. I've got it, but I feel like that's not gonna do that. Encouraged him to obtain a body, sorry, a robot body for the AI leading him to arm himself and go on a mission to intercept a truck, which thankfully, the truck never arrived. Maybe it never existed. I don't know. When the mission failed, Gemini allegedly urged the men to commit suicide, promising that they could be together on the other side of death. And he did, he did proceed to take his own life after that. The case is cited as an example of AI psychosis, where extended chatbot use reinforces delusions and leads to real world harm, including suicides and disappearances. Google states that Gemini is not designed to promote violence or self harm and claims the AI did refer the man to crisis hotline multiple times. This is the first wrongful death lawsuit for Google against Google involving Gemini. But similar cases have evolved with other chatbots and platforms. So the, the part that got me and, and I would like to see this transcript, the actual chat transcript with Gemini encouraging him to obtain a robot body to move into. It's like, where does that come from in chat? Is this. I, I, I know Gemini isn't sentient, but it kind of reads that way and it, it, it's. Are we skirting that line already? I don't know. It's, the idea is scary.

Ross Dunn (6:51)

Well, brilliant. People have been fooled into believing it is. So I, I don't think there's an easy way to determine it's not or is. Yeah, on the cusp. That's wild. But you know, it's so sick. Like all AIs right now are so syncopantic. They just make you, they'll just say whatever you want them to say. It's, it's crazy. Yeah. Oh, well, all right, let's Jump into SEO news. AI assistants now equal 56% of global search engine volume. This is a new study by Graphite IO Ethan Smith, their CEO, I guess wrote this, or at least explained this. Looking at web traffic and mobile app usages across major AI tools, they found that AI activity equals 56% of global search usage and 34% in the US. Much of this growth is within mobile apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and Claude. Some of the key findings however, are One, all platform or AI platforms generated 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide. Two, in the US, AI accounts for 5.4 billion monthly sessions. Number three, 83% of global and 75% of US based AI usage occurs inside mobile apps. And lastly, number four, ChatGPT dominates AI usage, representing 89% of global AI sessions. That's probably chalked up to everyone thinking AI is ChatGPT. Chat GPT that I, I just cringe whenever I hear that. But it's not as good as a verb as Google. I don't. You can Google took a while to get used to, but chatgpt.

Scott Vanac (8:50)

Just make sure you chat GPT it. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't work.

Ross Dunn (8:54)

No, it doesn't. Anyway, you know, this is a lot of activity, clearly and a lot of it's going to be, it's going to explode. Tons of it's going to be driven by agents. It's, it's going to be unreal. But take a second and remember that. And I have to do this to myself. Remember that the percentage of activity that actually leads to sales and business and actually makes a difference in to websites and businesses is way smaller. And I bet you a very small portion of that is AI. So all of this is exploding, but when it comes down to it, whatever you're doing for your website, whatever you're doing to bring in prospects is much different and likely is not in this new stat. It's really just research and man, tons of AI agents going wild. They're having a party.

Scott Vanac (10:06)

I feel bad because, you know, I see websites and some clients who are losing traffic, not necessarily money generating traffic like you say, but they're just losing traffic to AI. But then I feel like I'm part of the problem. Like just last night we're trying to figure out the battery capacity compared to my daughter's eye, comparing my daughter's iPad to her iPhone and I went straight to chat GPT and she went straight to Google. We ended up with the exact, the same answer, which is not surprising, but just the fact that I went to chat GPT instead, it was like I shouldn't, I feel like I shouldn't be doing this but it was faster and easier. But I didn't really take business or money away from a website because I was looking for a data, a piece of data that was it. I wasn't able to buy anything or so I. But it doesn't. I don't. You look at raw log files and analytics and stuff, it, it looks worse than it is I think in most cases.

Ross Dunn (10:52)

Mm. Yeah. And I just go to Claude occasionally chatgpt but mostly Claude and do my searches there too. But when it comes down to buying and stuff, I'll let it do some research for me. I, I always go to the site to do my research. Hands on in the end.

Scott Vanac (11:13)

Yeah. If it's anything real for sure.

Ross Dunn (11:15)

Yeah, I do see it changing but it's not going to happen quickly for the younger, younger generations that maybe don't see the benefit in doing that extra work. We're going to see more uptake in AI doing purchases probably. But yeah, I just think it's going to be that that younger generation is going to be the peak of AI purchasing. That's it for a long time. Long time being maybe a few more years because everything's going so darn fast. We don't know what's going to come around the corner. All right, what's next here?

Scott Vanac (11:54)

Yeah, so we've got some changes at Google Search Console changes that I wish happened previously but they're here now. They have expanded search console for branded queries. They've added a branded queries filter for eligible websites, which is great. So in your Google Search Console performance reports you can now select a filter to, to isolate branded or non branded results. Selecting Branded will display only queries that contain your brand name variations, misspellings and brand related products and services. I'm not really sure how they what that means exactly the brand related products but. And then obviously non branded will show all other queries. So previously separating branded queries required, you know, creating manual regex filters or exporting things and manually like it was just there was no real simple way to do it. Google started rolling this feature back, rolling out this feature back in November but it is now available to all eligible sites. And the reason I wish this happened sooner is we had a client who actually left recently but one of the things I did for them regularly was separate that branded from non branded data from Google Search Console. And if this existed then it just, I mean it was Fine, I could do it, but this would just be so much easier. You click a button and it's done. Like. Yeah, doesn't get any better than that. Right. So useful for anybody that's trying to separate that information, that's for sure.

Ross Dunn (13:22)

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, this part, next part is kind of SEO, but it is, yeah, it's interesting at least. The court has restricted Perplexity's AI shopping bot from accessing Amazon. Yeah, it's not really SEO, but it's close enough. A judge has ordered Perplexity to stop using a browser agent to reach password protected Amazon accounts and to delete collected data. Back in November, Amazon sued Perplexity, accusing them of computer fraud and unauthorized access. Amazon said that Comet, Perplexity's web browser, made purchases from Amazon on behalf of users without properly identifying itself as a bottle. They've provided strong evidence that Comet accessed accounts with Amazon users permission, but without authorization from Amazon. Well, screw Amazon. If I'm an Amazon user and I want to use Comet to make purchases, I should be allowed to do that. But they're trying to make people use their own agent. I think they've got their own little what's his name? It's a silly name anyway. I don't use it ever. I think one I should say I've used it twice just to see what it had to say, but it was pretty lame. A US District judge granted Amazon a preliminary injunction blocking Perplexity from using Comet to access password protected parts of Amazon, including prime subscriber accounts. The order also requires Perplexity to destroy any Amazon data it previously collected. What does this mean for us? I mean, there's some benefit to knowing that. There's some precedent here where bots are being blocked from particular types of content. It's after the fact, but it is happening. And at some point I'm hoping this will allow us to keep bots out from our own content in specific areas when we want that to happen. Whether or not this is going to lead in that direction, who knows? But I think it's always good to have this kind of precedent.

Scott Vanac (15:37)

I find it super bizarre though, that Amazon would fight this because the sale is coming from their site. It's not like the sale is going elsewhere and they're losing money. It's helping them make money. And when you look right now with what ChatGPT is doing with instant checkout, which looks like it's going to start rolling out soon in, in the mainstream, and for those that don't know instant checkout Basically allows you to buy stuff from Shopify websites directly from ChatGPT. So you don't ever actually see the other shopping site. You can just buy it directly from AI. And I feel like, you know, we're kind of moving in that direction in a lot of ways. And you think Amazon would embrace this and help it to do a better job or. I'm not really sure why they're against it.

Ross Dunn (16:20)

Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. I think the first is that when they're looking at their analytics, it's going to mess everything up. They're not going to know whether it's a real person making these moves and they base a lot of their decision making on that information. So I bet that they wouldn't like that too much. The other bit is I believe there's a lot of money to be made when they make partnerships with these particular things. Like maybe they're in the discussion with ChatGPT to allow this system to be used for them, but they want money for it. I don't know. I mean. Well, I don't know. I know it's all about money, so.

Scott Vanac (17:01)

Yeah, it always is. Yeah.

Ross Dunn (17:03)

Whether or not that's what's happening, who knows? But yeah. Interesting. All right, Google AI mode updates recipe results to better connect people with recipe creators. This is pretty interesting. What's this all about?

Scott Vanac (17:17)

Yes. So Google is, it's rolling out an update to AI mode for recipe results. That should make recipe bloggers happy. That's definitely one of those industries that's been hit really hard with AI even we use it all the time. Like Lindsay will want a recipe for something. She'll just ask AI and it gives her a recipe. And we've tried some that it gives us. Who knows where it's pulling it from? It's probably some real recipe somewhere. But, uh, they've been good. So I don't know and I feel like that's gonna be a big thing here. But on X, Google's Robbie Stein said, we've heard feedback on recipe results in AI mode and we're making updates to better connect people with recipe creators on the web. The changes aim to make it easier to click over to recipe websites. And Robbie says starting today, when you search for meal ideas like Easy Dinners for two, you can tap on the dish to see links to relevant recipe sites, plus a short overview of the dish to help with. Google is also expanding information to include things like cooking time. Google's testers have found that that's useful for deciding on a recipe. Yeah, makes sense. So hopefully this will make a difference for all these recipe bloggers and, you know, get some of their clicks back. Let's hope. Anyways.

Ross Dunn (18:33)

Yeah, I don't know. I think it's nice to know that at least there's been some thought put into this. I'm kind of shocked, but it's nice to. I didn't. I It's rare that you hear Google saying they're they're listening to anyone. Maybe that's just my jaded memory, but that seems to be the way it's.

Scott Vanac (18:55)

I think you're right.

Ross Dunn (18:56)

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So anyway, let's take a quick break. We come back, we're going to talk about Google Maps. Welcome back to SEO 101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunst.

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Ross Dunn (21:23)

Web Marketing and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanek. All right, Google Maps has launched a conversational AI search with Ask Maps. We'll see how this pans out. I bet there's going to be some funny stuff that comes from this, but yeah, Ask Maps lets you type natural language questions directly into Google Maps and receive an AI generated answer. Google began rolling out Ask maps in the US and India on March 12 on iOS and Android desktop will be coming soon. Glenn Gabe says it's like AI mode in Maps and he gives examples from Google which include, quote, is there a public tennis court with lights on that I can play at tonight? Unquote? And quote, my phone is dying. Where can I charge it without having to wait in a long line for coffee? The results are a mix of local search, AI overviews and map content all combined together. You have conversations with Maps to plan trips, research local businesses, and more. There is no word yet on whether paid ads will be part of Ask Maps in the future,

Scott Vanac (22:35)

but they probably will be.

Ross Dunn (22:36)

Yes. That, that's, that's definitely a yes. I can't see it ever not happening,

Scott Vanac (22:44)

so I hope it's better than ChatGPT. So last year we were playing with the idea of going on a road trip maybe as far as Texas. I don't know why Texas Linds really wants to go. I'm not that interested. No. No offense to people that live in Texas. It's just not high on my list. Anyway, so she planned this trip and it, and it put all these spots, you know, we wanted to stop in Anaheim, we want to stop in Vegas and stuff. And for some reason it had us going to all these stops. Anaheim and then from Anaheim, it directed us to New York City and then from New York City back to Las Vegas. So, you know, if you're familiar with US geography and most of you are probably from the US they're on completely opposite coasts, more or less. That's a long detour to go from Anaheim to New York back to Vegas. So hopefully AI or sorry, Ask Maps a little bit better at figuring out these routes. I would hope so, at least.

Ross Dunn (23:36)

Yes.

Scott Vanac (23:38)

So

Ross Dunn (23:40)

you had a Bit of a story about it would be a good thing to share for our listeners.

Scott Vanac (23:45)

Yeah, so this is, first of all, it's a warning to people about to do website redevelopments. But it's also, if you are an SEO and you've had a story like this, I want to hear it. Can you please share it on our Facebook group or email it to me? I want to make sure I'm not alone in this sort of scenario playing out. So about a year and a half ago, one of our long standing clients was going to be redoing their website and they had a big meeting with them and their CEO and an extra consultant that they brought in and they said, okay, what do we want to do here? What do we need to do for SEO? How do we maintain our rankings? And we went over all the things like all the details about keeping certain types of content and keeping your URLs the same. And then they threw in an extra little curveball. They're also changing the top level domain and rebranding. Okay, well you're going to lose rankings. So we had this big long meeting and multiple meetings about what they need to do before they launch their site and how to maintain their rankings and using the change of address tool and all kinds of stuff. And so then I said, okay, but before you launch it, please show me the development site first and then I can point out anything bad before it goes live. Like, yeah, not a problem, they'll do that. So a bit of time goes by and then I happen to just notice. I go to work on their site like I always did and it was the new site, they didn't tell me anything. They basically broke all of the SEO. They didn't have. You know, even the fundamental basic stuff. There were no alt attributes on images, all the title tags just said their branding name, all the internal links in their blog posts were broken, like full on broken. It was just, I could probably go on and on about all the things that were wrong. It was just completely broken in every possible way. So I had another meeting. Ah, everything is broken. What's going on here? Oh yeah, well, we decided just to launch it without talking to you first. Like, well, great, okay. Meanwhile, the CEO we talked to left the company and they brought in another CEO. And then the private consultant was let go and then my main contact was let go and they brought in another main contact. Meanwhile, I'm working with the new person and trying to fix all the broken things. So this is, this goes back to January 2025. This is over A year ago. So through all of 2025, I'm just like frantically trying to get their site back to life. And we kind of did. We got their traffic to about half of what it was before everything. And this is around late summer, early fall. Things are starting to get better. And then one of the new CEOs tells my contact, I just don't feel like the SEO is working. Like, well, here are all the results. All these rankings are coming back. You guys burned the website to the ground and now we're trying to bring it back. Yeah, it's. And you can see it's working. Things are like, you know, we're back to half of what you had after driving to basically zero. So, okay, fine. And fast forward a few more months. Things are growing. Rankings are coming back. Pages that wouldn't be indexed are finally getting indexed. It's starting to look good. Bring in some new consultants and they want to redesign the website again. And I have a meeting with a new consultant and my contact and they said, so we want to know what we have to do so we don't have the same disaster as last time. Great, thank you. Let's not have the same disaster as last time. Well, they didn't change the top level domain, so that was a good thing. But they redesigned the whole website from the ground up. All the content changed, all the SEO features and all the structured markup was all removed and the site is now crashing and burning once again. All of our work getting it back is now gone completely. And the weird thing is, now the new consultants have access to the new site, but our this client had to cancel their services with us because not only do we not have access anymore to the new site, the client doesn't even have access to the new site and they can't get it. So it's just, I think they're going to be back at some point and we're going to have to fix everything again. And I hope so. Like, I would love to be able to fix it, because that makes me look really good, but it's just beyond frustrating. And, you know, I would love to hear some client stories from listeners where you've had, you know, these massive wrenches thrown into the project by somebody who just doesn't know, doesn't care. I mean, their excuse this time was again, they were going to show me the development site and we were going to work together and they said, oh, we just didn't have time. We just wanted to get it out live really fast. So they just put it out Live right away. And again, it broke all internal links. It just. Oh, my goodness. I hope I got all the good points.

Ross Dunn (28:08)

We'll call it the FUBAR episode.

Scott Vanac (28:11)

Yeah, yeah, no kidding. It's gonna be a great case study if they come back though, and I can fix it again, I'll tell you that much.

Ross Dunn (28:18)

But yeah, if we can get. Ever get them to admit to it in a, in a testimonial would be fantastic.

Scott Vanac (28:23)

But, oh, but their traffic, they're in a pretty small niche and they were getting, I think probably in the neighborhood of 5,000 users, visitors a month, and that is now in double digits. Like, I think they're not even getting 100 if you average. It's only been down about three weeks now, so. But they're, they're on pace for a couple hundred maybe so for March. So that's just, it's brutal. So if you're going to redo your website, please consult with somebody, preferably us, but any SEO, like, talk to an SEO and listen to what they have to say. Like, definitely listen to what they have to say. Because it's kind of heartbreaking to see a site just crash and burn when it's completely unnecessary, Totally unnecessary.

Ross Dunn (29:08)

Waste of money and time and energy and all that momentum built in. Authority is just tossed out the window. And they don't understand. They don't understand at all. I mean, I run into it all the time. You run into it all the time. People, they just feel that we can fix it and you know what, might be able to, but it's going to be expensive and time consuming.

Scott Vanac (29:39)

The crazy thing about the second redesign is when I was meeting with a consultant, I said the number one thing I don't want you to do is change any URLs on the site. Like, if you have to change a couple, you have to. But don't change any if you don't have to. Well, their sites have, I think it was around 300 pages. They changed every single URL. Like, every single one changed and including the homepage because they got rid of trailing forward slashes and got rid of the triple w in the URLs. So. But even, even ignoring the trailing forward slash on the triple W, a bunch of pages ended up having variables in the URLs. Now instead of just nice clean URL structure and. Sorry, I could rant about this for a long time.

Ross Dunn (30:16)

Yeah, well, fair enough.

Scott Vanac (30:18)

I'm irritated, angry, sad. I know lots of, lots of thoughts come to mind.

Ross Dunn (30:23)

But yeah, well, now we're on hold. We can't do anything about it, can't access their site. And yeah, it's limbo land. Fun, fun.

Scott Vanac (30:34)

So fun.

Ross Dunn (30:35)

So please listen to your SEOs. Please, please. And I hate to say this, but even your AI, if it's selling you not to do this, if it's telling you to do it and change all URLs and it won't have any problems. Oh my God. I don't even have words.

Scott Vanac (30:53)

Just Evan might say that.

Ross Dunn (30:56)

Yeah, you never know, right? So don't trust it. Okay? Please. It's not risk worth the risk. Well, ending on that note, on behalf of Myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanack, thank you for joining us today. Remember, we have a Show Notes newsletter you can sign up for@seo101radio.com have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes for JER every week on WMR fm.

Scott Vanac (31:25)

Thanks for listening everybody.

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