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- [00:00]
A
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Jordan Cooney.
- [00:43]
B
Social media creators aren't just inspiring vacation trips anymore, they're shaping bookings. In fact, 73% of travelers say influencer recommendations have led to a booking decision. Here's the gap. You read an influencer's post. Spot the perfect beach in Portugal. Screenshot the reel scramble to find the hotel name and make the perfect booking experience. All of this in the backdrop. A creator just drove a $3,000 vacation but gets paid nothing. The directory era, with endless lists of links and reviews has had its day. Now the question is, how do you turn inspiration into checkout and ensure the creator who influenced the booking gets paid? I'm Jordan Cooney and joining me today is John Levesque, founder and CEO of Seek, the AI native platform turning saved media into bookable itineraries. Today, John will show us why the old model is fading and how experience networks are redefining the discovery and action in an AI dominated world. John, welcome to the Voice of Search Podcast.
- [01:57]
C
Jordan, thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here.
- [02:00]
B
I am thrilled because we get to talk about some unique stuff today. Not the normal way of thinking about the Internet and what's changing in the Internet. And really I think the beauty of our conversation is it's really human. It's really about people and what people are creating. So that's what's going to make this super fun and exciting. But before we dive too far into this, give me a little bit about your background. You spent many years building communities at great companies like Microsoft and Docusign before founding Seek. So what made you decide to leave this corporate life and start up a travel startup?
- [02:33]
C
You know, it was funny. I decided while I was working that I wanted to create something. Well, it actually started with a decision that I wanted to leave corporate life, which led me to trying to figure out how I do that, which then I decided I wanted to create something because I saw so many folks create things and find their path to independence and wealth and Even cooler than that. Like, getting to create new things in the world was exciting. And so I said, this is what I'm going to do. And I set off to discover what problems, you know, that I faced personally that other people faced with me. And I made a list of about 20 things and you know, I found a couple, I started working on them in the evenings. And it's funny, you know, this decision to start Seek happened as I'm going to split time 9 to 5. 5 to 9. 5 to 9 was really like 5 to 1, but who's counting, right?
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B
Exactly.
- [03:29]
C
And then, you know, along the way, tech in 2025 is precarious. My job got restructured and I had this moment now to decide am I going to go and get another job or am I going to go full time into Seek? And I felt like this moment was the universe telling me something to go for it. You know, I have savings and I've had a good life and I wasn't, you know, without means or without future. And. And so I decided I'm gonna, I'm gonna risk some of it and I'm gonna try it.
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B
And.
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C
And so that's really where the decision point kind of happened was, you know, a Sparta kick off the cliff a little bit. And as you're flailing, you know, I decided to kind of control my free fall a little bit instead of just being subject to it. And so that's, I guess how the transition happened.
- [04:18]
B
I love it. But I mean, at some of these big companies you probably learned some things that are helping you build this startup. Give us a couple like good capabilities that you took away from your time at Microsoft and Docusign.
- [04:32]
C
I mean, I had a lot of opportunity to do some very cool things at Microsoft. I helped coin bottom up innovation and the term the citizen developer and the idea of community led growth. And you saw Microsoft's power platform, if you're not familiar with that, it's Power apps, Power BI, Power Automate and Copilot. It's B2B tech stuff, very boring. But in four years helped that grow from $0 from codename products to over a billion dollars a year annual revenue. And so I had a great opportunity there to learn the power of community. And if you listen to a community and if you actually build the things they're telling you, they buy more from you. Amazingly right. It's wonderful how that worked out. So I took away, you know, the strategies and the connections and the frameworks and everything on how to make those movements happen and took that to DocuSign where, you know, I learned specific, you know, leaned specifically more into like developers and lawyers, legal, like different Personas. And that was just a continuation of like niching down in certain areas and understanding how different people think of these movements. Right. Because that's really what you're trying to do with community, is create a movement. And so, you know, I just decided through all this, like, I'm going to create my own movement and I'm, I'm interested in travel. And so, you know, when I was investigating all these problems, there were two main problems that came up. One was I hate Yelp. And number two is I love to travel. And I was like, I want to solve Yelp. And so I came up with this business listing idea and then I was like, travel's hard because there's 100 different sources and there's no good way of organizing this information. And I could probably do something about that. And so that's really where I leaned into, you know, both of this. How do I, how do I help small businesses and mom and pop restaurants with amazing recipes get traction in this world of pay for play? And also how do I help travel creators monetize the knowledge and experience that they're just sharing willy nilly that others are vacuuming up the value of. And I decided these were the problems that I could take on. And this is really where I went from what am I gonna solve to. I'm definitely gonna solve this to, oh my, I'm now full time solving this. Yeah, absolutely.
- [07:13]
B
Let's talk more about this. Cause this concept of directories is one that I think our listeners truly need to. And there's massive implications to search discovery. How consumers find information today is wildly dependent on directories. Right. So especially within the travel category. I mean, TripAdvisor really comes to mind because it is like the de facto review environment that we all use to kind of make judgment calls on hotels and beaches and experiences. And there are other players in this space. But, but when it comes to this fact of like directories and that this directory era is coming to an end or is transitioning, how do you exactly define this transition? And why is it that directories don't have the humanity that we need to make our experiences useful?
- [08:09]
C
I think I'll go back to the beginning. Like, let's talk about directories for a second. And what are they and what's it mean? What do I mean when I say the directory is dying? I think, you know, it goes back to file cabinets. Right. If you think about A wall of file cabinets. Right. It's. It's rows and columns. And that is how humanity organized information. And then we translated that for computers and we built rows and tables. That's what a database is. Right. That's how we write code. Right. It's all just lines. It's. All right. And so we organize all of our information into directories. And now if we think of the modern day, you think of a Yelp listing, a Google listing, a TripAdvisor listing. Right. It's just rows and tables like search flights. Okay, well, this column of flights contains these providers, and then these rows contain all of the information that they make available. And all we're doing is just sharing directories in new ways. And now we have algorithms on top of directories. And now we're adding AI on top of algorithms on top of directories. Yeah, right.
- [09:13]
B
I was just going to ask about the AI on all of these things.
- [09:17]
C
Yeah. So I think that what I foresee is, as the world opens up, this one potential angle of AI, which, which continues the path. AI on algorithms on directories, that is one path. I think I am seeing a different opportunity where I am calling it the Trust economy, where we see people looking to people. You opened the show with the perfect stat that 72% of people admit that their decisions often end around what they'll do on social. From an influencer. Yeah, right. Where I. Every night in Italy, when I was there, I was on Instagram and TikTok, like, what am I doing tomorrow? Looking for sandwich shops, looking for Vespa tours. Right. All the things. This, I believe, is how we actually are meant to search and to find. And it goes back again. Let's go way back. And why do I believe this? Because I believe that there was a time where humanity traded information one to one, face to face, across a fence, across a table, across a fire.
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B
Right, Right.
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C
Yep. And I think that when we look at what this influencer movement, this trust economy is, I believe it is our humanity's attempt to go back to this, like what we know is right, that we can listen to other people and we don't need a brand and we don't need a platform and we don't need a broligar to vacuum up all this value. Right. We can talk to each other and trade value with each other and. And I think that that's the other direction I'm seeing. And I think, you know, there's. There's proof there too. Fansly Patreon onlyfans Right. There's There is the rise of creator to user direct commerce. Right.
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B
Well, before we get into this whole creator economy and the platforms that exist for those, because there's a, there's a whole new economy that's, that's shifting in that direction right now. I want to stay on the directories, right? These, these age old directories. Not, not to pick on Trip more, but let, let, let's stay centered there. Because what's happened over the last decade or half decade where the trust or the utility of what these directories provided has diminished, right. Is the review still as valuable as the review once was 10 years ago?
- [11:44]
C
I don't think the anonymous faceless review holds any value any longer. I think that that is the fundamental issue. Right. And I think Google Local killed it. Like 2023, they removed 480 million fake reviews, right? Like what did they do before that? Nothing. They just lived on the platform. Right. Like now they have a policy to try and remove fake. But up until 2023, they were just all there.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Amazon, same thing. A pandemic of sorts of fake reviews. Right. I think that we now understand bot farms and click farms and review farms and all this stuff.
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B
Right.
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C
And so TripAdvisor, I think, you know, has other problems. I think it's in the same category as Yelp, where its utility peaked in like 2012 or 2015 tops.
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B
Right.
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C
And, and now we've just been living in these. They're de facto. But it's not because we trust them, it's not because we value them. It's because it's what we have. Yeah. And so I think, you know, like you go to TripAdvisor, right? And like, what's the number one item? Someone who paid. What's the number two item? Someone who paid. What'S the number three item? Someone who paid. You get to like 5, 6, 7. And it might be something that's really well rated, right. But you're, you're. And that's, here's the real problem. Here's the real problem and I think it's. If you don't understand it and if you haven't been able to put words to it, I think that this is, you know, what I am seeing and why I'm building something different because I think people are feeling like they understand that the value is not in the platform. Right? Google Local, Yelp, TripAdvisor, all these things. There's no incentive for you to get the best experience.
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B
Yeah.
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C
There is only incentive for you to see multiple experiences.
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B
Right.
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C
And so sponsored listings and reach. Right. This is a zero sum game for everyone because the business has to pay a fortune to own their keyword, to attempt to maximize reach.
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B
Right.
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C
But are they the thing that the consumer really wanted in the moment? No. So half the time they're paying for nothing.
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B
Yeah.
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C
The consumer, on the other hand, really wants a certain experience and is getting blasted with bullshit because people paid to get in front of them.
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B
Right.
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C
So the incentive is just, it's a mismatch for the user and for the platform. And, and we're just stuck. And so I don't know if people have the words for that yet, but I do believe everyone is feeling that already agreed.
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B
And so let's transition this to the concept at hand, which is experience networks. And you brought up Patreon earlier, and there's a variety of different experience networks that are out there. And I'm curious to get your point of view on what makes them different. Help our listeners also understand what is an experience network and how does an experience network differ from a directory? And then what are the unit economics? Because you just made it really clear these directories in the directory model is predominantly based off of an advertising ecosystem. I pay you money, you make me more visible, I get more clients or more customers or more people walking into my store, whatever it might be. But what's really uniquely different about these experience networks is that exchange of money is totally different and the middleman is almost bypassed in them. So tell us more about what are these experience networks? How do they differ from these directories? And then let's talk dollars and cents about what makes them tick.
- [15:26]
C
Yeah. So I think if we look at like a traditional platform, like, you know, Instagram is a social network. TripAdvisor is an experience and discovery platform. I think the experience network lives somewhere right in the middle of those two things. And so I want to speak real quick to, you know, Patreon onlyfans fansly. I think that these are creator marketplaces and they are a step. They were, they were the first step and I believe that they will evolve as well. But, and I think the true difference between an experience network and a creator monetization platform is the tangible outcome. And so in experience Network, I think, you know, I think there's going to be a few more that rise up very fast. And I keep talking about another one because I actually don't care. I think there's going to be one that comes up with shopping very fast as soon as, like seek takes off, like for clothing. Right. Imagine if you could just Throw your favorite creator's video into an AI and it could, like, tell you everything they're wearing in the video and where to buy it and where to get it for the cheapest price. Like, there's a lot of opportunity there. And I think that that's an experience Network because at the end, I'm getting something tangible. Now, Patreon Fansly, OnlyFans, a lot of these are like, you know, OnlyFans sells digital sex. You don't get to touch the person, you just view the person. Patreon sells software a lot of the time. Like, people create niche software or mods or art or things, and they sell, like, digital access fansly kind of similar somewhere in between. And so I think the next evolution of the Experience Network is really like this tangible piece. And so where I think that I see seek fitting in and how I believe it's like the first Experience Network is because the gap we see right now exists between, like you said at the start, inspiration, I saw this thing on social. I want to do this thing, and then, like, actual booking, right? Action. And so inspiration and action are very disconnected. And so the Experience Network, I think, brings those two things together. It allows you to very quickly go from inspiration to action. And in our case, that is, I see a trip, I book a trip, I do the trip, right? It's a very, like, closed loop. And so I think that these will exist again for multiple things. I think I'm excited to see niche experience networks rise up for, you know, comic creators or whatever. Like, things that they send around to each other, like, stuff that they can actually make and touch and interact with and grow. Like, imagine if you could pass around something and add to it virtually. Like, I don't know, there's a lot of potential and a lot of different directions where this goes, where it takes a step beyond creator marketplaces, right?
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B
Let me ask you a question on this, because there's a unique play here. And this is important because the entire Internet is built off of where money goes. And so whether it's SEO, whether it's paid search, whether it's paid ads, whether it's affiliate, whether it's me getting sponsorship money for things, the puck moves where the money goes. And so in these directory models, the TripAdvisors of the world, the monetary exchanges, is this advertising play. Billions of dollars from businesses goes into this directory, and in exchange, they send some sort of customer or value to your website or your experience, your business. Now, in this creator scenario, these creator marketplaces, there's this, there's this connection point where you're connecting the creator with the consumer, the one that wants to use or utilize the content or the expertise or the knowledge that is maintained by this individual, this creator. And so this creator is getting money, and in many cases, they're getting up to like 70, 80% of the money. Right. And so the marketplace is only taking a very, very small portion, whereas before the directories were getting billions of dollars in advertising, very little or nothing is going to anyone in the exc. In this creator Marketplace, there's a lot going to the creator. And in this Experience Network, there's a whole new revolution. Because right now, today, if I give advice about SEO, or if I give advice about a shirt and a brand that you should wear, which, by the way, you should never take any advice from me about fashion, but if you were to do so, I would get nothing in return. I get no money.
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C
Right.
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B
So how does the Experience Network solve that problem?
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C
Yeah. So right now, early on, what I have done to solve it for us, and I think I can apply it more broadly as well, but for us specifically, the way I have done it is I went through all of them and I saw that there was like this direct sales model where, you know, I sell the knowledge to you, I sell the sex to you, I sell the software access to you, I sell whatever to you, and you pay for access. Now, I think what's interesting is with the Experience Network, there's a slight shift in that because I've come up with an additional layer which is affiliate partnerships. There are a lot of companies out there paying a lot of money to get these leads in the door. Hotels have anywhere from like a 5 to 25% affiliate referral payout. Right. Airplanes are the lowest, like, dollars, like $2, $5, like up to 1%, maybe, if you're lucky. Right. But across the board, you have all these different folks that want all this business. Car rental places, hotel places, gear places. Right? Everything. And so I've done the hard work of going and creating all of these relationships, 60 of them. And so I have 60 different affiliate partners. So what we do is we don't make you sell to a person directly. Everyone gets access to all of your info because you're already giving it away for free anyway, so why would someone pay for that? So instead, what we do is we grandfather you into all of our affiliate partnerships. We load up your itinerary, or what we call a sequence. We load up your sequence with all of the booking links, right Alongside the mapping links, right alongside all the details, because that's what Seek does. It's an AI that watches your content and turns it into shoppable itineraries. And so we have this affiliate partnership where we just grandfather you in, we track who you are, all the money, all the clicks, everything gets attributed to you and it happens as you sleep. Right. And so we have given this tool set to creators in this way where now when somebody books that trip, right, Clicks on your book it link, you get paid. What's really cool is most of these affiliate partnerships also have long running cookies, seven days to 30 days. So even if that person took a minute and didn't book today and went back to that partner and booked 20 days later, you're still getting paid, you're still getting credited for that purchase, Right?
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A
Right.
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C
And so now we have the ability to pay the creator and we do the same thing, 70%. We're giving you the lion's share, we're only keeping 30%. And so now it's attribution, it's affiliate partnership. And I mean, obviously it's a bit of the network effect, right? As one creator shares these out, multiple people see other creators, see, go, create, share them out, we have a creator. Platforms have a outrageous network effect. And I think experienced networks, obviously we have no proof yet as we're still just launching, but I think we'll see, have an even greater network effect as they lead to something more tangible.
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B
So let's talk about this a little bit more because there's a big component of this that we have to unpack and it impacts like, you know, a lot of our listeners right on our podcast are focused on search and search marketing, content marketing and those components. But there's been this kind of broken orthodox in the Internet and that is that I will create content, I will give it to you Google or Facebook or any other major channel of traffic. And in exchange, you're gonna give me some traffic, you're gonna give me some eyeballs that wanna see or consume my content, right? So let's take your business with seek and like, I'm a traveler, avid traveler, I create content. And in exchange for my content, I want to get eyeballs on my website, I want to get an audience, I want to grow my community of followers and reach people. But that is fundamentally broken right now because nobody's clicking on anything anymore. AI has transcended the entire clickable rankings that happen not only in Google, but I'd even argue in social media platforms. AI has influenced the way that we even serve content. There to make it more of a response based experience versus a ranking based experience where we had choice to pick something in an experience network. There's a huge transfer here though, because you're basically putting the power back in the people that create content, right? And so my major question around this is it seems like the entire discovery process for people has been broken. And how are you changing this now for the travel experience industry? And why should travel experts who create content trust this network over other ways of reaching their audience online?
- [25:11]
C
I think the coolest thing is I'm not asking anyone to replace anything. Everything we're doing is additive and I think we're filling in gaps that have never been able to be filled in before, right? Because if we think about it, all the affiliate partnerships that I was able to negotiate were because I have a platform and a platform will have X amount of users. I personally have a lot of followers, right? Not a lot, a lot. Like, you know, some people have a lot, a lot. I have a few followers. What inevitably happens for most of these creators when they go to try and monetize is they're told they're not big enough, they're not wide enough, they don't have enough audience, they don't qualify for these programs. So that's problem one. Problem two is that right now they're not incentivized with views, right? Even like TikTok creator program, $1,000 per million views. Also like your videos have to qualify correctly. So they have a bunch of loopholes. So you never make the thousand bucks for the million views ever. So all these programs, right, are not incentivized to help creators in this way. And so I think it's really cool because there's like four main benefits that we give them, right? One is the AI layer that translates the data into something shoppable. The shoppable piece is made possible in part by the second point, which is the affiliate layer. And then to your main point of like, these people are not allowed to build a business, right? They are content engines for the platforms to vacuum up the value from. So the other cool thing I'm doing is we have OAUTH to all the other platforms. So like you already made a bunch of TikTok videos, you already made a bunch of Instagram videos, you already made a bunch of YouTube shorts. You don't have to make them again or upload them again. Just connect to seek and tell us which ones you want to use. RAI does all that for you, right? Plugs in everything I just said and Then here's the coolest part, right? The final piece is you get to own your audience. So, like, if you booked from me, right, I would get your name and email address so that I could then contact you further and say, hey, dude, so glad you took my New York City trip. Hope you enjoyed it. I have three new trips coming out next month. I'd love to keep you informed. Subscribe to my newsletter, let me write and like. And now I, as a travel creator, am not only able to monetize, but I'm able to build a business on my terms. I'm able to think about what else I want to do. I'm able to think about how else I want to market to you. I have direct control of my audience audience. And so there's a lot of value that I believe we're producing that creators are not able to get elsewhere, that we are pulling out of the system in various ways and giving them access to transparently and in a way that I think not a lot of people are or are willing to because it goes against so many of their business models.
- [28:05]
B
It does. And that's what's unique about this entire effort, is that it's contrary to most other business models when we think about maybe the most contrarian of those business models. I always think about SEO, right? Selfishly, it's the industry that I'm in. But it's an important one because it fundamentally is a function of doing certain types of work to gain or create more traction from unpaid forms of traffic. And so organic traffic in and of itself has to fundamentally be one of the most critical assets that your creators want to have. Right? Your travel creators have to create organic visibility in order for them to actually make any of those links, make that entire network work in their advantage. How are you thinking about the organic landscape? How are you helping creators? Because these are. These are travel experts, right? These are individuals on the road.
- [29:00]
C
Yes.
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B
They're not web marketing experts. How do you help them get that journey going and get that kind of traction online?
- [29:11]
C
So the fifth benefit that I did not mention yet is that when you take a video from TikTok and run it through the Seek AI, what happens is we create you a beautiful. I can send you a couple links so you can check them out. A beautiful SEO optimized out of the factory webpage. The link, the slug is even SEO friendly. Like, we make the AI understand, like, how many days were you in this place, what place were you in and what was the theme of the trip? So we always come up with something like three days in Manhattan, food and sites, right? And we come up with this beautiful thing that someone might search automatically. We also plug in all the metadata. Like, we're doing a lot behind the scenes. Because this is the other big, big benefit, right, Is we're giving you a web layer to your social media that you've never had. Again, another thing that's just not really been possible, like, you know, like TikTok web or Instagram. That's shit. That is not a web layer, right? That is a app wrapper that works terribly. Everyone who attempts to use it hates it. And so I think this is the other piece, is that we see the value, even with AI. Like, I think, you know, a lot of people are, oh, my God, AI is killing search. I think, like, if we're realistic, it took like, like 12, 12% of the search. Like 12% search reduction versus AI. Like, it wasn't massive. It will continue to grow. The disparity will continue to grow. But I. I don't know. I mean, let's be real. How many times do you actually use that AI response anymore? I think, like, when it first came out, I was like, oh, yeah, cool, I got my answer. Now I just find myself scroll. I don't even let it load. I just give me the results. I don't give a shit about this.
- [31:01]
B
You know, people want choice. People want choice. And that's why this travel network experience network matters, because it gives people more choice and real choice. Right? It's not me reading 18,000 reviews about how great of a beach it was. I actually get to see the beach and feel the beach and hear the waves and experience the whole impact of it. And I agree. I think building in capabilities for SEO is super critical. John, tell our listeners a little bit about where they can find, seek, how they could engage with this if our listeners are travelers themselves, how they can become a creator if they want to find more of this travel experience network, how they can find some of your creators.
- [31:49]
C
Yeah, yeah. So right now we are onboarding slowly. So if you go to seq.ing and sign up, you can sign up, you can use the tools, you can test everything out. Monetization is not turned on for you yet, but the AI is turned on where it will translate the videos into an itinerary with everything mapped, with everything detailed. To get monetization turned on, we have to have a bit of a conversation. And once you sign up, we reach out automatically to have that conversation to say, hey, we see you signed up. We'd Love to talk with you. We have this little thing you should fill out if you want to monetize with us and then we'll onboard you and give your account access to those tools and we can help you build your first few. But right now it's still a little hands on. We're trying to keep tight relationship with all everyone who's onboarding right now. And so I'm the CEO but I'm also the dude onboarding you, hanging out with you like teaching you how to use it and talking you through it. But if you just want an impression, go to the site seq.ing. go to how it works. We have a couple of videos up there where you can see how the translation process happens, how things get edited, what it looks like. I think it's like seven minutes across three videos. Doesn't take very long. And then yeah, we're pretty quiet on social except for me. I also have A substack s eq.I or s e q I n g.substack.com where I write every week about what we're doing and what the I call it the State of Seek. I haven't put one out in a week or two. I'm due. I should have done one today. I'm a little behind so I got to keep myself honest.
- [33:24]
B
Awesome.
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C
All right.
- [33:25]
B
Love it, John. And that wraps up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. A huge thank you to John Levesque, CEO of Seek, for joining us. If you'd like to contact John, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on the voicesofsearch.com. you can also visit his website seekseeq.ing. if you haven't subscribed yet and would like a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feedback, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube and we'll be back in your feed every week. Okay, that's all for today, but until next time, remember the answers are always in the data.