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Google's AI Is Describing Your Business · After the Demo

• 0:00
  Kate: Say I search for a plumber, and Google's written a little paragraph about what they do. Right there on the listing.
• 0:06
  John Arndt: Is it right?
• 0:06
  Kate: Mostly. Except it says they install water heaters. They stopped doing water heaters years ago.
• 0:12
  John Arndt: Huh. Where'd it get that?
• 0:14
  Kate: Nobody knows. But their own website still says it too.
• 0:19
  John Arndt: Oh no.
• 0:20
  Kate: Yep. Still on the services page. Right under a photo of a truck they sold.
• 0:25
  John Arndt: So it might just be reading them.
• 0:27
  Kate: Old them. Old them is a liability.
• 0:30
  John Arndt: Okay, to be fair to Google, it's a test, and Google,
• 0:34
  Kate: Don't. Save it. We've got a whole episode.
• 0:37
  John Arndt: We do have a whole episode.
• 0:52
  John Arndt: This is After the Demo. I'm John Arndt. I run about fifteen small software products out of Sacramento, most of them built and run with AI agents, plus an AI consulting practice.
• 1:03
  Kate: And I'm Kate.
• 1:04
  John Arndt: So, in the last month or so, there's been a lot of news about Google business listings. Google's testing its own AI summary on some of them. And on Maps, it put the full list of reviews behind a sign in.
• 1:15
  Kate: Wait, the reviews?
• 1:16
  John Arndt: The full list. And it's pausing new reviews on some profiles after it spots a spike in spam reviews.
• 1:23
  Kate: So Google's writing about your business and putting your reviews behind a sign in. When did anybody ask you?
• 1:29
  John Arndt: Nobody asked. Which is why this one's about what you can actually check.
• 1:33
  Kate: What I want out of this. Should you just opt out. Can a review push backfire. And what do you check this week.
• 1:40
  John Arndt: And where that paragraph comes from.
• 1:42
  Kate: Do you know?
• 1:43
  John Arndt: No. Nobody does. Google hasn't said. But I'll tell you what we actually know.
• 1:47
  Kate: Great show. And if he says it depends without telling me on what, I'm stopping him.
• 1:53
  John Arndt: She will. Okay. Get your phone out. Let's look at one.
• 2:00
  John Arndt: So. Search for a business. Any local business. On a phone, the listing's up near the top. On a computer, it's the big box on the right.
• 2:08
  Kate: The one with the hours and the photos and the stars.
• 2:11
  John Arndt: That one. Now, in this test, the top of that box says AI Overview. Under that there's a paragraph Google wrote about the business. And under that, a button that says Show more.
• 2:22
  Kate: And Show more does what?
• 2:24
  John Arndt: Opens a chat. You can ask it follow up questions, and it works like Google's AI Mode.
• 2:29
  Kate: Wait. So on the business's own listing, Google's the one talking. Not the business.
• 2:35
  John Arndt: In this test, yes.
• 2:36
  Kate: Is everybody getting this? Because I feel like people would be talking about a chatbot on the pizza place's listing.
• 2:43
  John Arndt: No, not everybody, and that matters. A guy named Ben Fisher posted an example on LinkedIn. Then Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable got it to show up himself and wrote it up in September. He thinks Google's been testing versions of this for a while.
• 2:57
  Kate: One guy's screenshot.
• 2:59
  John Arndt: Two guys. Schwartz made it happen on his own screen. But some people are seeing it, and you may not yet. Treat it like a test, because that's what it is.
• 3:08
  Kate: Do it with me, then. Say you run a dental office. What's the paragraph going to say?
• 3:12
  John Arndt: Honestly? We don't know what Google feeds it. Google hasn't said.
• 3:16
  Kate: Then how is anybody supposed to fix it? You can't fix a paragraph when you don't know where it came from.
• 3:22
  John Arndt: Fine. So, the one example we've got. Schwartz looked up the summary on his own company.
• 3:27
  Kate: The reporter checked himself.
• 3:28
  John Arndt: Yep. And he said most of it is correct. But the part about his niche solutions was, his words, a tad old.
• 3:35
  Kate: A tad.
• 3:37
  John Arndt: And then the line I like. He said he can't blame the AI, because the content on his corporate site is super old as well.
• 3:43
  Kate: Wait. So by his own account, the robot didn't make it up.
• 3:47
  John Arndt: That's how he tells it.
• 3:48
  Kate: Old you did.
• 3:49
  John Arndt: That's going on a mug.
• 3:51
  Kate: Old them strikes again. I said it at the top.
• 3:55
  John Arndt: You did. But careful. That's one guy reading his own listing. One example. And Google hasn't said what it reads.
• 4:02
  Kate: Might be the website, might be something else, and nobody's telling.
• 4:06
  John Arndt: Right. So worry about the half you control. You can't control what Google reads. You can control whether the services page you wrote five years ago still says something that stopped being true.
• 4:17
  Kate: Great. The homework is cleaning your room.
• 4:19
  John Arndt: Your old rooms. The ones you forgot you had.
• 4:22
  Kate: Like what? Give me rooms.
• 4:24
  John Arndt: A service you stopped offering, but the page is still up. Hours from before you changed them.
• 4:29
  Kate: The town you moved out of.
• 4:30
  John Arndt: Oh, that's a good one. You moved across town three years ago, and there's still an about page saying proudly serving the old neighborhood.
• 4:38
  Kate: Proudly.
• 4:39
  John Arndt: It's always proudly.
• 4:40
  Kate: Wait. People don't go to the about page. Nobody's reading that.
• 4:45
  John Arndt: You're not reading it. Something might be.
• 4:47
  Kate: Hm. That's creepier than I wanted it to be.
• 4:50
  John Arndt: And you won't find out from a phone call. Nobody calls to say, hey, your Google paragraph thinks you still do water heaters.
• 4:56
  Kate: They just call the other plumber.
• 4:58
  John Arndt: And you never even find out you lost the call.
• 5:00
  Kate: I want to push on the old rooms thing, though. Say you didn't write your website. Somebody's nephew did, in a weekend, and nobody has the password.
• 5:09
  John Arndt: That's real. That's very real.
• 5:11
  Kate: Telling them to go clean it up is like telling them to clean a room they don't have the key to.
• 5:16
  John Arndt: Then the first step is finding the key. Who has the login. Before anything else.
• 5:20
  Kate: That's a less fun homework.
• 5:22
  John Arndt: It's a five minute email, though. And you need it for everything else we're going to talk about.
• 5:26
  Kate: Fine. Now let me tell you what Schwartz actually thought of the whole thing, because I read the rest.
• 5:31
  John Arndt: You read the rest? Voluntarily?
• 5:33
  Kate: Some of us read. He said he's honestly not a fan. He's not sure he wants AI describing his business when he can do it himself.
• 5:41
  John Arndt: Yeah.
• 5:41
  Kate: And honestly? Same. If it's your business, you write the paragraph. Not a robot that might've read your about page from three years ago.
• 5:50
  John Arndt: I get that.
• 5:50
  Kate: You get it, but you're making a face.
• 5:52
  John Arndt: I'm making a face because you're not going to win a fight with Google over the pen. What you can do is make sure everything Google might read is current.
• 6:00
  Kate: That's the boring answer.
• 6:02
  John Arndt: It's usually the boring answer.
• 6:04
  Kate: With you it's always the boring answer.
• 6:07
  John Arndt: Boring works. That's the annoying part.
• 6:09
  Kate: Actually, wait. Can you just tell Google no? Is there a button?
• 6:13
  John Arndt: There's a button. It might not do what you think.
• 6:16
  Kate: Then I say push it.
• 6:17
  John Arndt: Let's argue about it.
• 6:23
  Kate: Formal debate. I'm for the button. You're against. Two minutes each, and nobody says it depends.
• 6:29
  John Arndt: You're really holding me to that.
• 6:31
  Kate: I said it in the intro. It's binding.
• 6:33
  John Arndt: Fine. Ground rules first, the stuff we both agree on.
• 6:36
  Kate: Allowed.
• 6:37
  John Arndt: There's a setting in Search Console. Flip it, and Google keeps your site out of its AI answers. AI Overviews, AI Mode, even the AI Overviews in Discover. And as of August thirty first, Google says every site has it.
• 6:49
  Kate: Opt out meaning what, exactly?
• 6:52
  John Arndt: Two parts. Your pages stop showing up as a link in those answers. And Google stops using your pages to write the answer.
• 6:59
  Kate: Good. That's the whole point.
• 7:00
  John Arndt: I know. Hold onto that. And the report next to it is the one we did in episode one. Impressions, no clicks. I'm not doing that again.
• 7:08
  Kate: Thank you. My case.
• 7:10
  John Arndt: Floor's yours.
• 7:11
  Kate: Nobody asked. Google started writing paragraphs about businesses and didn't check with anybody first.
• 7:17
  John Arndt: True.
• 7:17
  Kate: And Schwartz, who covers this for a living, said he's not sure he wants AI describing his business when he can do it himself. I'm with him.
• 7:25
  John Arndt: Also true.
• 7:26
  Kate: So if the robot's going to quote old you, stop feeding it. Why let a machine paraphrase you badly when you can just say it yourself?
• 7:34
  John Arndt: That's a good closing line.
• 7:35
  Kate: It's my opening line. Your turn.
• 7:37
  John Arndt: Okay. The button takes your pages out. Your pages. Nothing we've read says it stops Google describing your business from other sources. And nothing we've read says it touches that summary on your listing at all.
• 7:49
  Kate: Wait, so the paragraph stays?
• 7:51
  John Arndt: As far as anything we've read, the answer still gets written. It just gets written from everybody else's pages.
• 7:57
  Kate: From who? Who else is writing about a plumber?
• 7:59
  John Arndt: Directories. Review sites. Some best of roundup a local blog did three years ago. Whoever wrote about you.
• 8:06
  Kate: Oh.
• 8:07
  John Arndt: So you push the button, and you've fired the only writer who can actually fix old them.
• 8:11
  Kate: I hate that that's good. Wait, though. The directories at least have the hours right.
• 8:17
  John Arndt: Do they? Who updated them?
• 8:19
  Kate: Nobody updated them.
• 8:22
  John Arndt: Nobody ever updates them. And there's a second problem. If your pages stop showing up in Google's AI answers, the one official report you get from Google has nothing of yours left to count.
• 8:33
  Kate: So you'd be flying blind.
• 8:34
  John Arndt: Blinder. It wasn't a great view to start with. Even Google's John Mueller said in September that the way they count this stuff will evolve over time.
• 8:42
  Kate: That is not reassuring.
• 8:44
  John Arndt: It wasn't meant to be. But a bad view still beats no view.
• 8:48
  Kate: Time. That was two minutes.
• 8:49
  John Arndt: That was ninety seconds.
• 8:51
  Kate: It felt like two. And hang on, you keep saying nothing we've read. That's a lot of nothing.
• 8:58
  John Arndt: It is. Google hasn't said much. So I'm only telling you what Google says the button does, and Google says it does that to your pages.
• 9:06
  Kate: My real problem, though. Half the people listening haven't touched their website since the nephew built it. If the site's that bad, isn't Google better off ignoring the site completely?
• 9:17
  John Arndt: Then the button doesn't save them either. Google probably just skips the one page that's theirs and describes them from the directory listing they set up once and forgot about. Which is likely older.
• 9:26
  Kate: Older than old them.
• 9:28
  John Arndt: Ancient them.
• 9:29
  Kate: No. We're not doing ancient them. Comeback. Say Google's AI answer keeps quoting the owner's page wrong. They fixed the page, it's still wrong, and nobody at Google picks up the phone.
• 9:41
  John Arndt: That's the real case for the button. For the AI answers, anyway. The summary on your listing, nothing we've read says it touches. I'll give you that one.
• 9:50
  Kate: Ha.
• 9:50
  John Arndt: But it's the last resort. Fix the page first. Check your listing info. And if the answer's still wrong after all that, then you think about it.
• 9:58
  Kate: That sounded an awful lot like it depends.
• 10:01
  John Arndt: It depends on whether you fixed the page. I told you on what. That's legal.
• 10:06
  Kate: I'll allow it.
• 10:08
  John Arndt: Closing argument?
• 10:08
  Kate: Thirty seconds. I'm timing you this time.
• 10:11
  John Arndt: Your instinct is right. You want to control your own story. The button just takes your voice out of the room and leaves everybody else's in.
• 10:18
  Kate: Okay. Fine. You win. Nobody's pushing the button.
• 10:23
  John Arndt: Thank you.
• 10:24
  Kate: Don't gloat.
• 10:25
  John Arndt: I'm not gloating. This is just my face.
• 10:27
  Kate: That's your gloating face.
• 10:29
  John Arndt: It's the same face.
• 10:31
  Kate: But it goes on Kate's list.
• 10:33
  John Arndt: What's Kate's list?
• 10:34
  Kate: Things I'm coming back to.
• 10:35
  John Arndt: Am I on it?
• 10:36
  Kate: You'll know it when you're on it.
• 10:37
  John Arndt: That's a little ominous.
• 10:39
  Kate: So really, the answer is make old them less wrong.
• 10:43
  John Arndt: Yes. The boring one again.
• 10:45
  Kate: Two for two on boring.
• 10:46
  John Arndt: Boring's undefeated.
• 10:47
  Kate: What about the reviews, then? Because that's the part people actually read.
• 10:52
  John Arndt: Oh, I have thoughts on reviews.
• 10:54
  Kate: I was afraid of that.
• 11:01
  Kate: Before you start, I read this one, so I'm going first.
• 11:04
  John Arndt: You did homework.
• 11:05
  Kate: I did. As of the end of September, Google Maps asks you to sign in to a Google account to see all the reviews on a business listing. To sort them, too. And to leave one.
• 11:17
  John Arndt: Huh.
• 11:17
  Kate: You've never seen that wall, have you?
• 11:20
  John Arndt: Isn't everybody signed in to everything?
• 11:22
  Kate: Strangers aren't. Are you signed in on your phone?
• 11:25
  John Arndt: Probably. I've never checked.
• 11:27
  Kate: Of course you haven't. So you're the one person who can't see what a stranger sees.
• 11:31
  John Arndt: That's fair.
• 11:34
  Kate: Signed in John.
• 11:35
  John Arndt: Is that going to be a thing?
• 11:37
  Kate: It's a thing now.
• 11:38
  John Arndt: Why'd Google do it?
• 11:39
  Kate: Schwartz's guess? Stopping bots, AI platforms and other companies from scraping the reviews. And he says straight out it's a guess. Google hasn't said why, as far as we've seen.
• 11:50
  John Arndt: So a stranger looking you up might see less than you think they see.
• 11:54
  Kate: Less than you see, anyway.
• 11:55
  John Arndt: Okay. I have a pitch.
• 11:57
  Kate: Oh no.
• 11:58
  John Arndt: Hear me out. Google's AI is starting to write summaries of listings. Reviews matter. So now's the moment. A review push. Email everybody you've done work for in the last year. This week. Get a pile of reviews in before the summaries settle.
• 12:13
  Kate: Everybody from the last year. In one week.
• 12:16
  John Arndt: That's the beauty of it.
• 12:17
  Kate: That's the problem with it. Cross examination.
• 12:20
  John Arndt: I wasn't done.
• 12:21
  Kate: You were done. Exhibit one.
• 12:23
  John Arndt: There are exhibits?
• 12:24
  Kate: There are three. Exhibit one is an email Google's been sending some owners. Quote, Google has detected a spike in spam reviews on your Business Profile.
• 12:33
  John Arndt: Spam. Mine wouldn't be spam.
• 12:35
  Kate: Hold that thought. It removed them, and it says new ratings, reviews and other user contributions have been temporarily paused.
• 12:43
  John Arndt: Paused for how long?
• 12:44
  Kate: Google says it lifts the pause once the risk is mitigated, typically within a few days.
• 12:49
  John Arndt: Okay, a few days isn't the end of the world.
• 12:52
  Kate: A few days where nobody can leave you a review. Right when you asked everyone to. Now. What does your push look like from Google's side?
• 13:00
  John Arndt: A spike.
• 13:01
  Kate: Exactly. Google's watching for spikes in spam reviews, and what counts as spam isn't public. So whether your push reads as spam, you don't get to decide. Even if it isn't.
• 13:12
  John Arndt: It might be fine.
• 13:13
  Kate: It might. You want to bet your listing on might?
• 13:16
  John Arndt: Exhibit two.
• 13:18
  Kate: One consultant commented on that story. A former client asked her about the notice. They'd opened a new location, and by her account, they were always very good about getting a steady stream of reviews.
• 13:29
  John Arndt: Steady. So, the opposite of a blitz.
• 13:32
  Kate: The careful version. And they still got the notice. She thinks Google questioned their methods, and that the filter needs refining.
• 13:40
  John Arndt: We don't know what they actually did, though.
• 13:42
  Kate: We don't. One consultant, one former client. But if the steady version got the notice, I wouldn't bet a blitz does better.
• 13:50
  John Arndt: Okay. Exhibit three.
• 13:51
  Kate: Exhibit three is really for you. You love a study.
• 13:55
  John Arndt: Don't flatter me. Read it.
• 13:57
  Kate: Two researchers put out a study in September. It's a preprint, so not peer reviewed yet. They asked AI models for local recommendations, and part of it was restaurants in thirteen American cities.
• 14:08
  John Arndt: Okay.
• 14:09
  Kate: The restaurants the models recommended had about three to five times as many Google Maps reviews as a typical restaurant in those cities. And ratings at most about a tenth of a star higher.
• 14:19
  John Arndt: A tenth of a star.
• 14:21
  Kate: Which, I'm sorry, is nothing. I can't feel a tenth of a star.
• 14:25
  John Arndt: Nobody can feel a tenth of a star.
• 14:27
  Kate: The picks had way more reviews and barely better stars. And a count like that takes a while to build. Nobody gets it in a weekend.
• 14:35
  John Arndt: One catch, though. It shows what got picked. Not why it got picked.
• 14:39
  Kate: I'll take it. Verdict?
• 14:41
  John Arndt: Yeah. You're right. Drop the push.
• 14:43
  Kate: Say it again, slower.
• 14:45
  John Arndt: You're right. Drop the push.
• 14:49
  Kate: Thank you. So what do you do instead?
• 14:52
  John Arndt: Ask for one review after every job. Every time. So nothing ever piles up. It just trickles in, and it never stops.
• 15:00
  Kate: And that's safe?
• 15:01
  John Arndt: Safer. Not safe. Exhibit two was a steady business, by her account, and they still got the notice.
• 15:08
  Kate: And if you get the email anyway?
• 15:09
  John Arndt: Read it. Google says if you think real reviews were removed by mistake, you can ask Google to take another look. And you can still edit your Business Profile information any time.
• 15:19
  Kate: Then that one I'm taking off Kate's list.
• 15:21
  John Arndt: It was on the list?
• 15:22
  Kate: It went on the second you said hear me out. Now it's off. Settled.
• 15:27
  John Arndt: I walked in here thinking the push was smart.
• 15:29
  Kate: You walked in signed in.
• 15:31
  John Arndt: I'm never living that down.
• 15:33
  Kate: Signed in John. When a stranger searches a business's name, what do they see now?
• 15:44
  John Arndt: Depends who they are.
• 15:45
  Kate: Nope. No. That's an it depends.
• 15:48
  John Arndt: I was going to tell you on what!
• 15:50
  Kate: New game, then. I read you a claim, you tell me keep it or toss it. Short answers.
• 15:55
  John Arndt: I don't do short.
• 15:56
  Kate: Learn.
• 15:57
  John Arndt: Okay.
• 15:58
  Kate: Claim one. Chris Long, who works in SEO, posted on X that ninety three percent of the brands he tested had an AI Overview when you search their name.
• 16:08
  John Arndt: Keep it. With footnotes.
• 16:09
  Kate: That's not short. And ninety three percent sounds like basically everybody.
• 16:14
  John Arndt: Basically everybody in his sample. Which is about a hundred big brands.
• 16:17
  Kate: Hold that.
• 16:18
  John Arndt: Short footnotes. Barry Schwartz covered it at the end of September.
• 16:22
  Kate: Barry again.
• 16:23
  John Arndt: Barry's having a big month. In most of the examples he looked at, the AI box sat lower on the page, below the brand's own site.
• 16:30
  Kate: Then why does it matter?
• 16:32
  John Arndt: Because it's still on the page. And the ones that didn't get one were Google's own name and news publishers.
• 16:37
  Kate: Google doesn't summarize Google.
• 16:40
  John Arndt: Not in that sample.
• 16:41
  Kate: Claim two. DemandSphere, a search data company, posted on September thirtieth that AI Overviews on branded searches tripled in September.
• 16:50
  John Arndt: Keep it. It's their count, not Google's, and the post doesn't give a sample size.
• 16:54
  Kate: That was almost short.
• 16:55
  John Arndt: I'm growing.
• 16:56
  Kate: Claim three. Malte Landwehr from Peec AI, a company that tracks AI search, posted his company's data saying the share of AI Overviews with outside links went from close to zero to over a quarter.
• 17:09
  John Arndt: Over what period?
• 17:10
  Kate: Doesn't say. No sample size either.
• 17:12
  John Arndt: Keep it, gently. And the fun part. Barry wrote it up, and he said it doesn't feel right to him.
• 17:18
  Kate: Then why'd he share it?
• 17:20
  John Arndt: Because it cut against what he'd been reporting. He'd been saying the opposite.
• 17:23
  Kate: Huh. Respect.
• 17:25
  John Arndt: He also says, same post, that he has a small investment in that company.
• 17:29
  Kate: Respect, with a footnote.
• 17:31
  John Arndt: Everything gets a footnote today.
• 17:33
  Kate: Okay, but stop the game for a second. These are all giant brands. Nobody ran this on a plumber in Fresno.
• 17:40
  John Arndt: You're right. That's big brand data.
• 17:42
  Kate: What does the plumber do with it, then?
• 17:44
  John Arndt: The small business version, you do yourself. Search your own business name. If there's an AI box, look at whose pages it points to. Yours, a directory, a review site.
• 17:53
  Kate: And if it's not pointing to yours?
• 17:55
  John Arndt: Then you know whose pages that answer is leaning on.
• 17:58
  Kate: Old them. Or somebody else's old them.
• 18:01
  John Arndt: Somebody else's old them is worse. That one's harder to fix.
• 18:05
  Kate: Signed out, by the way.
• 18:06
  John Arndt: I heard you the first time.
• 18:07
  Kate: Claim four. Neil Patel, earlier this month. He says the Search Console AI report is like a billboard company calling to tell you how many cars drove past.
• 18:17
  John Arndt: We did the no clicks part in episode one. I'll skip it.
• 18:20
  Kate: You will.
• 18:21
  John Arndt: The new bit is good, though. He says the report can't tell you whether the answer actually named you, or just read your page to write about somebody else.
• 18:29
  Kate: Wait. That can happen?
• 18:30
  John Arndt: That's his point. And you'd never know which from the report.
• 18:33
  Kate: So it's a billboard company that won't tell you whose name was on the billboard.
• 18:38
  John Arndt: That's better than his version.
• 18:39
  Kate: I know.
• 18:40
  John Arndt: Keep it. The report's still worth ten minutes a month. Just know what it can't tell you.
• 18:44
  Kate: Claim five. Alex Groberman, also earlier this month. He read another analyst's breakdown of a search product Google sells to businesses through Google Cloud.
• 18:54
  John Arndt: That's already three steps away from anything.
• 18:56
  Kate: Let me finish. He thinks Google's AI search runs on a lot of the same plumbing as that product. And he says that product cuts pages into pieces of at most about three hundred seventy five words. Which is oddly specific.
• 19:10
  John Arndt: Interesting. And exactly why somebody will turn it into a rule by Friday. Toss it.
• 19:15
  Kate: Just like that? You said interesting.
• 19:17
  John Arndt: Interesting isn't advice. It's one person's read of somebody else's analysis of a different product. Not proof of how Google Search works.
• 19:25
  Kate: Somebody listening already started chopping their website into little pieces.
• 19:30
  John Arndt: Then stop. Don't rewrite anything off one post.
• 19:33
  Kate: Kate's list.
• 19:34
  John Arndt: Of course it is.
• 19:35
  Kate: Wait. I just noticed something. Both of those posts, Patel and Groberman, end in a sales pitch.
• 19:42
  John Arndt: They both do.
• 19:43
  Kate: You skipped that part.
• 19:44
  John Arndt: I was getting there. Selling something doesn't make the observation wrong. It means you check it before you act on it.
• 19:50
  Kate: Says the guy with about fifteen products.
• 19:53
  John Arndt: Says the guy with about fifteen products. Check me too.
• 19:56
  Kate: Oh, I do.
• 19:57
  John Arndt: I know you do.
• 19:58
  Kate: So you check your name once. Then what? It changes next month and you never find out.
• 20:03
  John Arndt: Yeah. That's the part I got wrong once.
• 20:10
  Kate: Got wrong how?
• 20:12
  John Arndt: August nineteenth. The email provider behind my outbound paused sending. And nothing went out for a day before I caught it.
• 20:19
  Kate: A whole day? How do you not notice that?
• 20:22
  John Arndt: Because quiet looks like nothing. Nothing went out, and nothing going out looks a lot like a slow day.
• 20:28
  Kate: You run about fifteen products, and your outbound goes quiet, and you don't hear it?
• 20:32
  John Arndt: That's exactly how you don't hear it. Everything else is loud.
• 20:36
  Kate: Please tell me you changed something.
• 20:38
  John Arndt: I wrote a rule. Anything that sends on your behalf needs a health check that tells you when it goes quiet.
• 20:43
  Kate: A health check. Say that in normal person.
• 20:46
  John Arndt: Something that bugs you when a thing goes quiet.
• 20:48
  Kate: That's an email rule, though.
• 20:50
  John Arndt: It started as an email rule. For this episode I'd stretch it. Anything that matters needs a check that tells you when it changes.
• 20:57
  Kate: Hold on. A paused review feed looks exactly like that.
• 21:00
  John Arndt: Google does send an email. If nobody reads it, it's a slow week.
• 21:04
  Kate: Who reads email from Google? It always looks like spam.
• 21:08
  John Arndt: Which is a little ironic, for an email about spam.
• 21:11
  Kate: And a summary that changed? Last month it said you do water heaters, this month it says something else.
• 21:16
  John Arndt: Looks like nothing too. Unless you wrote down what it said before. That's what worries me about all of this. As far as we've seen, there's no alarm for that. It just drifts.
• 21:26
  Kate: Drifts is a very calm word for a listing telling people you still do water heaters.
• 21:31
  John Arndt: It's a calm problem. That's why it gets you.
• 21:33
  Kate: Then I'm making a rule.
• 21:35
  John Arndt: Let's hear it.
• 21:36
  Kate: Once a month, search your own business name. On a phone. Signed out.
• 21:40
  John Arndt: Why the phone?
• 21:41
  Kate: Because that's probably how a stranger's looking you up. And signed out, because as of the end of September, a signed out stranger can't read all your reviews on Maps. You want to see what they see.
• 21:51
  John Arndt: That's good.
• 21:52
  Kate: Say it.
• 21:53
  John Arndt: Say what?
• 21:53
  Kate: The two words.
• 21:55
  John Arndt: Signed out.
• 21:57
  Kate: Thank you, signed in John.
• 21:59
  John Arndt: Why monthly, though? I'd say weekly.
• 22:01
  Kate: Because monthly is the one people actually keep doing.
• 22:04
  John Arndt: People.
• 22:05
  Kate: You. Monthly is the one you'll keep doing.
• 22:08
  John Arndt: Fine. I'm taking your rule. Monthly, on the phone, signed out. And write down what it said.
• 22:14
  Kate: Write it down where? Nobody has a system for this.
• 22:17
  John Arndt: A note with the date on it. A screenshot. Anything that tells you next month what it said this month.
• 22:22
  Kate: A screenshot folder called old them.
• 22:25
  John Arndt: Honestly, that's the right name for it.
• 22:27
  Kate: Wait. How do I even sign out on my phone? I've never signed out of anything.
• 22:32
  John Arndt: Signed in Kate.
• 22:33
  Kate: Don't.
• 22:34
  John Arndt: Open a private tab. Same thing, for this.
• 22:37
  Kate: Since when do you know about private tabs?
• 22:40
  John Arndt: Some of us read.
• 22:41
  Kate: Okay, but that's the listing. What about the other half? Somebody asks for the best dentist near them, and say you run the place. How would you keep track of what Google's AI tells them? Nobody's doing that by hand every week.
• 22:54
  John Arndt: That's what Mentioned On does. It's one of mine. It asks the question a customer asks, like best dentist near me, the same questions on a schedule, never naming the business, and keeps the answer with the date.
• 23:06
  Kate: Including Google's?
• 23:07
  John Arndt: On paid scans, yes. AI Overviews and AI Mode, on up to six of your highest intent questions, and that Google answer can be up to a week old.
• 23:16
  Kate: And the summary on your own listing?
• 23:18
  John Arndt: No. It never names you, so it's reading what a customer gets, not your listing. No review monitoring either. That's by hand, or a review tool. And it can't promise anybody a spot.
• 23:28
  Kate: You just told me what it doesn't do.
• 23:30
  John Arndt: You'd find out anyway.
• 23:32
  Kate: That's the worst sales pitch I've ever heard.
• 23:35
  John Arndt: Good. It wasn't one.
• 23:36
  Kate: So the listing, the thing this whole episode is about, is still you and a phone.
• 23:41
  John Arndt: That's the honest split. The listing's on you. The customer's question is the part it keeps track of.
• 23:47
  Kate: Now. Kate's list. I'm reading it.
• 23:49
  John Arndt: Here we go.
• 23:50
  Kate: First, the button. Opting out of Google's AI. It stays on the list as only if Google's AI answers are still wrong after you fix your page.
• 24:00
  John Arndt: Agreed.
• 24:00
  Kate: Second, the pieces thing. Chopping your site up. Stays on the list as not off one post.
• 24:07
  John Arndt: Fine by me. And the review push?
• 24:09
  Kate: Already off. Settled. You lost that one fair and square.
• 24:12
  John Arndt: That's a good list.
• 24:13
  Kate: It's a short list. That's why it's good.
• 24:16
  John Arndt: So. Fifteen minutes this week.
• 24:18
  Kate: If old them isn't too bad.
• 24:19
  John Arndt: And if old them is really bad?
• 24:22
  Kate: Then it's a long weekend.
• 24:24
  John Arndt: Okay.
• 24:25
  Kate: Give me the fifteen minutes in one breath.
• 24:27
  John Arndt: This week, take your phone, sign out or open a private tab, and search your business name. Read it like a stranger, the AI paragraph if there is one and the reviews you can see without signing in. If something's wrong, find the page on your site that says the same wrong thing, fix that page, check your Business Profile info while you're in there, and set a monthly reminder.
• 24:48
  Kate: That was two breaths.
• 24:50
  John Arndt: It was one long one.
• 24:51
  Kate: And from now on, one review ask after every job. Not a blitz.
• 24:56
  John Arndt: One ask. Every job.
• 24:57
  Kate: And the button stays on my list.
• 24:59
  John Arndt: Where it belongs.
• 25:00
  Kate: Also, send this to whoever wrote your website five years ago. Or whoever keeps your Google listing.
• 25:06
  John Arndt: They're old them.
• 25:07
  Kate: Be nice to them.
• 25:08
  John Arndt: Links are in the show notes. The stories we quoted, the study, and the two posts.
• 25:12
  Kate: Back to the plumber, then. Where did Google get that paragraph?
• 25:16
  John Arndt: Still nobody knows. But now you know which page to check first.
• 25:19
  Kate: Which beats hearing about it from the other plumber.
• 25:22
  John Arndt: This has been After the Demo. I'm John Arndt.
• 25:24
  Kate: And I'm Kate. Sign out. Go look at yourself.