“Is This Place Any Good?” How Google’s AI Reads Your Reviews to Answer Customers (Before They Ever See Your Website) H1: “Is This Place Any Good?” How Google’s AI Uses Your Reviews to Answer Your Customers
Here’s a stat that should make every small business owner sit up straight: 90% of consumers used Google to evaluate local businesses last year. (Source: BrightLocal). For over a decade, I’ve been advising my clients—from lawyers to plumbers to restaurant owners—that their online reputation is their “digital front door.” We all know the drill: a […]
Why Visibility Now Lives in AI Answers, Not on Your Homepage
“The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google.”— Unknown digital marketer, circa 2010. That used to be true.Now? The best place to hide your business is in Google’s AI Overview, ChatGPT’s summary, or Bing Copilot’s suggestions — if you’re not mentioned there, you simply don’t exist. Let’s be honest: we’ve […]
More Than “Fluff”: How a 0.5-Star Rating Change Can Skyrocket Your Revenue
The “0.5 Star” Difference: How a Small Shift in Your Rating Can Mean a 15% Jump in Revenue A one-star increase in your Yelp rating can lead to a 5-9 percent increase in revenue. That’s not me just saying that. That’s not a fuzzy marketing guess. That’s a direct finding from a famous study by […]
The “Zero-Click” Search is Here: How to Rank in Google’s AI Overviews (And Why Your Old SEO Won’t Work)
How to Rank in Google’s “AI Overviews” (And Why Your Old SEO Won’t Work) What if I told you that up to 30% of your website traffic could disappear in the next year? That’s not a scare tactic. That’s the reality of the biggest change to Google Search in over two decades. My name is […]
My AI Wrote This… Or Did It? Why a Human Agency is Your Best Hire in 2026.
AI vs. Marketing Agency: Why You Still Need a Human Expert in 2026 I’m going to let you in on a little secret. As a marketing agency owner for over a decade, I’m not scared of AI. In fact, I love it. But I’m also not firing my team and replacing them with a $20/month […]
Your GBP Q&A Is Gone. Here’s How to Optimize for Google’s New AI Search.
Well, it finally happened. If you’re a small business owner who (like me) obsessively managed every part of your online presence, you probably logged into your Google Business Profile (GBP) this week and felt your stomach drop. On Monday, November 3rd, Google officially removed the Q&A section from many profiles. Just… gone. For over a […]
Your 2026 SEO Survival Guide is Here
Let me start with a prediction that might make your stomach drop. Imagine a world, just a couple of years from now, where 25% of the search traffic you get today… just vanishes. Gone. It’s not a hypothetical. The global research firm Gartner made a stunning prediction that by 2026, traditional search engine volume will […]
The Robots Are Running YouTube: Your Guide to Getting Found in the New AI-Driven World
Let’s play a game. Open up YouTube on your phone right now. Take a look at your home screen. How many of those videos did you actually search for? And how many were just… there, served up to you by some invisible force that knows you almost too well? If you’re like most people, the […]
Beyond the Blog Post: The 3 Content Types That Rank in the Age of AI
Let me tell you a secret that will change the way you think about your marketing. If a robot can write your content, Google’s robot doesn’t care about it. That’s it. That’s the new reality. For years, as a marketing consultant, I’ve watched small business owners struggle to keep up with the demand for “more […]
Why Does Google Love Video and How Can Your Business Use It to Rank Higher?
Google’s Love Language is Video: Your Small Business Guide to Winning at SEO Let me ask you a question. When you think of Google, what comes to mind? A list of ten blue links? Keywords? Complicated algorithms you can’t possibly understand? For years, that was the game. We were all trying to figure out the […]