AI isn’t coming — it’s here. And the way people find your business is already changing.
In this episode of Owned and Operated, John sits down with Sam Preston, CEO of Service Scalers, for a deep-dive on how AI is reshaping local search and why HVAC, plumbing, and home service operators need to evolve fast — or risk being left behind.
They explore what it means to “rank” in a world of LLMs, how showing up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview actually works, and why your SEO and Google Business Profile (GMB) are more valuable than ever. From review mining to AI-mode discovery to early signs of AI agents booking jobs, this episode lays out a real-world, contractor-first roadmap to dominate in the AI-driven search era.
You’ll also hear how Wilson’s early investment in SEO and programmatic content is now paying off — and why operators of every size should focus on backlinks, FAQs, and review quality today to future-proof their lead flow.
Whether you’re doing $1M or $50M, if you want to stay visible and competitive as AI search becomes the new front door to your business, this one’s essential.
💼 Extra Special Thanks to Service Scalers!
We’ve been partnering with Service Scalers to maximize our Local Service Ads (LSAs) and optimize our Google My Business profiles, and the results have been incredible. With hundreds of thousands in sales and 900+ calls in a single week, GMBs are now our top-performing organic lead channel.
Want to learn how Service Scalers can do the same for you?
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
🔥 Get $1,000 off your first placement here
💸Sponsored by CFO Made Easy
Built a strong trades business? Let’s take it to $10M and beyond. CFO Made Easy offers part-time CFO services for home and trade service businesses—helping you boost cash flow, maximize profit per tech, and make clear growth decisions.
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🎙️ Hosts:
John Wilson → [https://x.com/wilsoncompanies]
Sam Preston → [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampreston/]
OAO Ep 231 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] AI search is search With technology adoption, you have a chance to pass the current winner.
Sam Preston: Well, I think everybody's gonna have their own, like personal AI agents. Sam's gonna have his own agent. It's my va, if you will. That goes and it sets appointments for me. It schedules things. I mean it, it's a shock.
It's a shock if you're small enough, start doing. Research, start working with SEO and reviews, right? It
John Wilson: was a really pleasant surprise when our SEO performed for ai.
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Uh, I am your host, John Wilson. I run Wilson Plumbing Heating in Ohio. I'm here today with Sam Preston, the CEO of service. Scalers. Welcome to the show.
Sam Preston: Thanks, John. I really appreciate it. Yeah,
John Wilson: I'm doing my best to do like better intros, so that's a
Sam Preston: great intro.
John Wilson: Um, yeah, I'm excited to see you.
Like we have, um, I get to see you in a couple weeks, five weeks,
Sam Preston: five weeks,
John Wilson: six weeks. You're coming
Sam Preston: outta Charleston?
John Wilson: Yeah, we're doing a [00:01:00] meetup in Charleston. Oh yeah, we're, we're doing this thing and we haven't like announced this yet, so I think it's gonna go out on Twitter in LinkedIn soon. But we're starting to do these like mini meetups, basically.
We're doing one in Charleston, we're doing one in New York. We're thinking about Chicago, and it's basically like, Hey, let's just go there and like, who's a home service entrepreneur in there? And let's just like get together. So I'm, yeah, I'm pumped to see you September
Sam Preston: 4th. There's some great. Great companies out here in Charleston.
Uh, yeah, actually several people that have been to the Breaking Five. And so like coming down here, here is already big fans here of, of the podcast. So yeah, we can easily get a bunch of people together.
John Wilson: If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that we've been big fans of Service scalers.
One of the things that they just dropped that we are really excited about is a paper lead program. So what they help you do is they help you directly gain access to leads and scale up your lead partner. Program, go to service scalers.com and say we sent you. [00:02:00] Yeah, and I've, um, I'm friends with Preferred and uh, Brandon's their leader down there and they're, I think the biggest in market.
And then Call Dad has eight locations. One of 'em is Charleston. I'm friends with, uh, also, uh, yeah, Matt, I'm friends with him and I have some roofers that are close by, so it'll be fun. I think it'll be like 20 or 30 people. Let's do it. Let's go. Yeah, it'll be good. Uh, alright, so you posted on the Facebook group.
Some questions. Yeah. Or is that how you wanna lead in?
Sam Preston: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I don't know if you know, but John has a Facebook group and if you're not a part of that, you should definitely go be a part of that. 'cause it's great. I asked a question of like, it's great. Hey, what kind of marketing questions do y'all have for me and John to answer?
We got a bunch of people asking questions. Uh, and so I think for this episode we're choosing one topic and a bunch of questions to just like try to dig in and answer anything we can. About marketing.
John Wilson: Yeah. Sweet. Where, where do you wanna start? What topic do you wanna hit?
Sam Preston: Ooh, I kind of like the, I'm [00:03:00] excited about the AI search inside of marketing.
Yeah. And the kind of where that's going. Um, mostly 'cause I was just like playing with it this morning and trying to break it. Yeah. And so like, that's the one I'm excited about to talk about.
John Wilson: I think. Let's do it. Yeah. AI search has been, AI search has been really interesting. Like, we watch it like crazy obviously, because the.
The potential impact is, is real. Yeah. Like it's, uh, it's existential. Yeah. Right. Uh, it's a big potential risk. So yeah, we're watching it like crazy and we're. Trying to make impact as much as we can.
Sam Preston: Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it is really interesting the way it's about to go. Uh, we have like this little channel, we call it big and small wins, and anytime something good happens with a client, the team like posts in it.
Um, and this morning one came in. We have one of our clients listed on the LLM, um, which basically means when you search for our client within like Chad, [00:04:00] GBT or something like that, it shows up like
John Wilson: HVAC near me.
Sam Preston: Yeah, right. It's showing up. Um, which was huge, right? Because that is really even for me, like when I go to search, I'm like using Chad CPT.
Uh, or like Google's ai search to go search for things. Yeah. And so like, I think that's where the trend is going, and you got to start trying to figure that out.
John Wilson: Yeah, I think so. Uh, something that we talk about a lot, and this is just like getting more and more reinforced is like, AI search is search and we can like make this look.
We can like try to complicate it as much as we want. But the people that are doing well at AI search, they're showing up in LLMs, they're showing up as relevant. It, it seems like there's a couple like core things, which I don't know if anybody a asked this question, but like the core things are, Hey, was your SEO good to begin with?
Yes. No. Yeah. You know, it, it's kind of like [00:05:00] inarguable, like let's pull a SEMrush or an AH refs or something. Like, did you have good stuff? And uh, and if it was like, did you have. Robust frequently asked questions. That seems to be like the next big thing that AI is looking for. But a ah, ref, I don't know if, uh, I don't know if SEMrush is doing this, but they, um, I don't know if it's ah, ref or how to print a, I don't know.
I don't know how. I've always done a. Like they have this thing. I'll even see if I can screen share really quick. Sure. So they have this thing now where they show, are you showing up? Well for ai? So they have your number of citations and number of pages. So like for Google AI overview, we have 206 citations.
We're, and we're like growing. We're doing well in Google, we're doing well in chat pt obviously we need to do better with the citations. Mm-hmm. But I, and that to me seems like back links are like number of things we would show up for. Sure. Pages like doing really well with chat pt, which this just resonates.
Uh, like we [00:06:00] show up a lot. Like I get texts from friends, um, being like, Hey, you showed up in my search for this. Yeah. Uh, perplexity, Gemini, copilot. And what it, what it seems like is we had good SEO before we started, we had a lot of back links. We ranked for a lot of keywords, I mean less keywords than usual or used to be.
Traffic seems to be down. I actually don't know if that actually resonates with reality. That is one of the downsides of HFS or SEMrush. Like use your Google console to check actual traffic. Yes. Um, but we had good SEO to begin with and like a domain rank of 36 for our industry is like good. Right? Like, it's not amazing, but it's good.
So I think what we've seen is we've shown up in a lot of different things where I think someone that had less, uh. Which would show up less. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Sam Preston: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. If your SEO is already good, you're a little bit of ahead of the game. [00:07:00] Um, yeah. And I will go one, one step further.
It's not just your SEO, it's also your Google business profile, which is SEO. Yes, I get it. Don't come at me. But like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They are two different things. Um, actually I'll share my screen. Yeah. Just
John Wilson: like local. Yeah, yeah. Do it. It's like local SEO and OnPage. SEO is how we think about it internally.
So you have your local SEO, which that's gonna be like listing citations, GMB and OnPage is, um, like on page, like our website.
Sam Preston: Yep. Look at this little AI mode right here. So,
John Wilson: yeah,
Sam Preston: we can come in here and we can search for, you know. Anything that you want. And I think this is kind of where the future of like the AI search is kind of going there.
Um, so if I wanted to find, uh, you know, find me, uh, three HVAC companies, uh, in Charleston, uh, South Carolina, um, and I wanna find a local company, um, [00:08:00] I want a local company, not a big chain. Right. It's going to go through and start searching. If you start looking at what it's searching for, look, it's going after maps.
It's looking at 49 different sites. Yeah, that's interesting. And it's now found three different Yeah. Options. Now, if you look over here to the right, this is SEO. Yes. So like, you know, uh, go preferred.com. Anchor, like this is all SEO. So they're still all, you know, they're pushing the SEO, but then the rest of this is maps.
This is your GMB. Um, but you know, because I'm a cheap scape, right? Like, I'm not gonna just go spend all the, just 'cause you're local, I'm not gonna spend as much money as possible. Let's find something that's, you know, relatively competitive. Uh,
John Wilson: what, what I think is kind of interesting about this, which I, I feel like, so one of the existential threats with AI and search is like, [00:09:00] what happens?
If you are the company with 20,000 Google reviews, right? Like how do you still have Alpha in this search? Because at this point you own the map. Like if you have 20,000 Google reviews, you own the map. Uh, but like your search, like there's companies in your market with five, 10,000 Google reviews, but the ones that showed up are the, there's a hundred and eight, forty six and a nine 90.
Like what, what's your take on that? Because that feels almost like a flaw, like validity of search, I guess is what I'm trying to get to. Mm-hmm. So if like, Google's job is to give you a service provider that is likely to make you happy so that you go back to Google and search again, right? Like, Google's in the job of, they're in the business of making you happy.
So typically when you search the, the best SEO, the highest rated, like they're gonna use some metric to show up in this case. The ones that they sent were all very small businesses that [00:10:00] didn't have a lot of reviews. Mm-hmm. Which on one hand is good for those small businesses, but on the other, it seems almost like the opposite of what Google wants, where Google wants to send you, who has the most Google reviews?
'cause they have the most satisfied customers. That's a safe bet. So, so that seems like a flaw. But I, I guess I'm curious what your take is.
Sam Preston: My take is, this is gonna kind of turn into, in a lot of ways, the way LSA works is the same way your SEO is gonna work, uh, or your GMB. It's not just about what you've done in the past, it's what you've done recently.
Um, and so like, yeah, you have 2000 reviews, but that's like from 20 years ago. Like that's not hap Yeah. What have you done in the last 90 days? Um, so I could see that like. And that's the same thing with LSA, right? Like if you're not getting
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: Um, verified reviews within the last 30 to 90 days, it, at some point you can start seeing that tick go down and it's gonna be, yeah.
So I think, I think obviously the [00:11:00] reviews volume is going to be a big deal. Always has been. But I think there's a secondary tier of when is the most, most recent reviews been coming through? Okay. But to keep going on this, like the next thing I wanted to search was like, Hey, can you tell me what the best price one is out of the three that you sent me?
And what are the most common issues that you're seeing if you look at this? Yeah. Max, mechanical heating, anchor heating and air. Both are described as affordable work inside of their reviews. The second one here are this third one Holy City Air. Uh, heating and air has a review that's pooling, um, that basically says, Hey, they charged me $600 to replace a 50 cent fuse.
So like, uh, and then it also says the quote was half, uh, less than half of price of that competitor. But like someone may or may not read that. So I'm more Yeah. Inclined to click one of these two and you can come again, see like the most common problems that people are happening. I think reviews are, again, like your, your GMB, uh, your [00:12:00] Google Business profile is about to matter a whole lot less, uh, more than it did.
Yeah. Quite frankly, like. Three months ago.
John Wilson: Yeah, that's, well, which to me, and this is because we have a good, like we've invested sort of a dumb amount into our GME profile. Like to me, that's a win. Like I, I think that's great and I think that's what everyone was afraid of is that, hey, this wouldn't matter because I, I'm thinking back to like 10 years ago, and GMB was just starting to become a thing and reviews were just starting to become a thing.
And like that was a moment where. And I think we have a similar moment here now. Yeah. Where, hey, with technology adoption, you have a chance to pass the current winner.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: And that's, that is like, if I summarize the last 10 years of our story, that's the last 10 years of our story is with technology [00:13:00] adapt like adaptation.
We passed the market winners. But I know other people that are like 40, $50 million providers that are not adapting to technology. Yeah. And they will lose market share because there's gonna be some freaking 30-year-old or 25-year-old or whatever that starts like hammer at home AI search.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I mean, and, and one of the things you notice there, there was no paid there.
You know, and we're, yeah, that's gonna
John Wilson: change.
Sam Preston: I think it's gonna change. You know, we, we're gonna get into a QA section here in a second, but like, one of the questions is like, is PPC dead? Uh, the answer's no. Uh, but like I thought SEO was going to take a downturn. I actually. Kinda like corrected, uh, when I started playing with this.
Yeah. Because of the whole Yes. I think it's gonna be the most relevant. It's gonna be reviews based. It's gonna be the who's what, who's done what for me lately. Um, and yeah, how is this changing? Because, um, yeah, I think it's gonna get really interesting. You're gonna have to be much better [00:14:00] at CEO. Than you were in the past.
Um, because it's, you're not gonna have, you know, a thousand pages people, first off, people used to never go past the first page. And now people aren't gonna go past like three results. You're gonna be at the top three to actually even matter
John Wilson: if your books say you're making a lot of money, but there's nothing in the checking account.
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No fluff, no corporate finance speak, CFO made easy.com. It's time to grow with clarity. Yeah, I, I, I mean, I think that's been right for, I think that's been right for a while. Yeah. But yeah, I, I agree. I mean, we, I agree. I think SEO becomes more important and more important and like we made, um. Like with you guys, like you obviously know this, but like for the audience, we started working with, uh, Sam and his team back in like 21 or 22.
So we're on like year three or four of this, which is awesome. And uh, I think 22 and early on in 23, like we embarked on a really big SEO project and it was called programmatic. And the idea is like. We wanted to show up more. We wanted to be more, and we, you know, as AI started to become a thing and like sort of mass content started to become a thing, we were a really early adopter with you guys.
Uh, so, [00:16:00] and I think because of that, like I showed our a h refs, but it's good. Like we won. Like we, like, we made a huge investment in SEO and like it worked. We're showing up in LLM. Our SEO is good. Like we had to do a lot of work on backlinks and all that stuff, but like, that was two or three years ago work and investment and like, we are more relevant than ever today because of it.
Yeah. And I, I, I, I guess I, my point is like, I totally agree, like I think that SEO has always been the gift that keeps giving. And in an AI world it is like even more the gift that keeps giving 'cause it's just so important. Yeah.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I mean, I think and, and, and, and it's because of how powerful the AI search is.
Like you, you just saw, I just searched, Hey yeah. Gimme three local companies. Boom. I got three local couples. Yeah. Okay. Gimme someone who's affordable. Alright. It, it pulled directly from your website who is actually affordable. Yes. Now I wanna ask, well, who, how many [00:17:00] reviews. Actually pertain to what I need.
I need it. I need an install. I don't need someone who's just good at, you know, um, you know, HVAC in general. I want someone who can specifically give me a unit for my house. That's two stories. It's a, you know, split, whatever that is. Like someone can ask specific things. They, that the AI can then go pull from their reviews going, Hey, this person had the same situation.
They could pull that data. Um, it's gonna be a little pull from Facebook groups and Twitter and all these other search forms about Yeah. How good you are at your job. I think it's gonna be, you know,
John Wilson: huge. It's gonna be wild. Yeah. I think it's gonna be wild. Yeah. I, I, the, the review thing I think is really interesting, like drawing from reviews.
Yeah. That is interesting because I think, um, you know, there, there was, it's kind of at a funny time, so like. Thi this is a tough year for a, a lot of companies, uh, especially like HVAC driven companies, like [00:18:00] very odd summer. And, uh, it was either really cool or summer started late or it's still really cool.
But there's a company, I'm, I'm in a group chat and there's a company in, um, I think Denver or something like that, and big company, like 40 ish, 30 ish, somewhere in there. And they just underwent a massive price decrease. Which I thought was like, kind of interesting for a number of reasons. One, that's just not something you typically see.
Yeah. Um, now maybe they drove a ton of efficiency and they were like, Hey, this is a way to like claim market share. Which, like, that's something we're thinking about. 'cause we've done, we've been really effective at managing our overhead through growth. So we're like, Hey, maybe we do, maybe over the next year, maybe we do think about like, leaning up on these items.
But I, I also, I think about like. In the industry forever. Being too expensive has never been a bad thing. Mm-hmm. It, that's never been like, we [00:19:00] don't even consider that a bad review. Like if somebody leaves us a one star review and they said, Hey, the pricing was a lot in our mind, that is a good review.
Yeah. Because it self-selects customers away that we wouldn't wanna deal with anyways. Right. So for us it's like, okay, a one star review, we're too expensive. Okay. I'm not gonna call them great, but if you read the other 6,000 Google reviews that say we do a good job, then like those hundred that say we're too expensive, you know, equal out.
So our, but now like with ai, I think what is said inside the reviews like, like you just demonstrated is even more important. And suddenly that does become like, Hey, are they affordable? Well, okay, well how many of my Google reviews say I'm affordable? Or the price are, I don't know. Yeah. Because we haven't really.
Cared much about whether or not our price was the best. That hasn't been our focus, and that that hasn't been anyone's focus in the industry. Yeah, no one focuses on that. So that's gonna be, that'll be really interesting. An another version of this that I [00:20:00] find, um, I, I saw like an article on, on, I think Home Pros or something, which is like an awesome newsletter, does a great job.
And it was, uh, ai, I don't think they're doing this in home service yet, but they're doing this for like restaurants where AI will actually call the business and like ask about things like availability and pricing. Yes. And I'm like, oh man. Like, that's wild. Yeah, because like for, for some businesses that makes total sense.
Like, hey, how much is a haircut? Like whatever for home service, that is gonna be a shift. And it does, it does start to become an advantage that's currently a disadvantage, but suddenly price transparency is an advantage where, hey, if you can be the one that gives pricing, will you book more jobs? That's never been a thing.
Yeah. And that might be about to be a thing.
Sam Preston: Well, I think everybody's gonna have their own like, personal [00:21:00] AI agent. You know, Sam's gonna have his own agent. It's my VA, if you will. That goes and it sets appointments for me. It schedules things, it talks to people, um, you know, texts. My wife, I love you. Um, you know, nice helps me with my relationship.
I need you to touch that
John Wilson: every 12 minutes.
Sam Preston: Yeah, just good morning. Every morning. Um, AI is saving Sam's marriage. Um, yeah, but like the other part with that is now it's going to talk to the Wilson CO's AI agent and it's gonna say, Hey. And this will be great for members, people that have been with you for a while.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Sam Preston: because like I've, I'm already a member of the, the Wilson coming Plumbing, you know, all, all of the different services y'all have. Hey, can y'all schedule somebody to come out and fix this thing? You know, I think membership would, will take an uptick because of that. But also for someone who's not a member, it'll just literally be able to go find you three quotes off the bat.
Um, yeah. So that's gonna be interesting.
John Wilson: That's gonna be interesting. I, I brought that up [00:22:00] in a peer group. And it was not, I mean, it it's a shock. Yeah. It's a shock. And, and that's, that's a, it's one of those things where, hey, if you've been operating in the industry your whole life, and even if you're still young, like 30, 40, 50, and suddenly you have to be price transparent or you, you have to do something like, I mean, that's a sweeping change.
Yeah. And, and, and frankly, like it's a sweeping change that the industry's not ready for. So I'm as in like, they don't even have, they couldn't do it if they tried, right? Like the industry just couldn't do it. So maybe for the 1% of companies that are able to do that, I'm like, I'm watching close. Because we, we do have the ability to do it.
We're price transparent on a few things and like it's, it hasn't been a disadvantage.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: So for us, I think this could turn into Alpha and I think what it could do, which is really interesting, is it starts to [00:23:00] make web e-commerce platforms. Even more valuable for your business because you can put the whole price book right online.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I mean, uh, roofing's already doing this. I've seen a couple companies out there that like, uh, can look at your, uh, uh, home Yes. On Google Maps and give you a basic price point. Yeah. Um, and they use a little bit of an AI to give it a, a, a price point, but. Always in that price. Yeah. We, we do this
John Wilson: for HVAC replacements and water heaters and generators.
Nice.
Sam Preston: So, but, but within that, I'm assuming y'all have some language that says this is subject to change. Yeah. Yeah. Once we come out there and actually take a look, which then is, is you get out there and you upsell into, you know, to the good, better, best, the thing you've always been talking about, like, this is how you get in the door.
And then we can talk about, okay, well here's your three options, let's take that to the next level.
John Wilson: Yeah. No, I, I agree. But I, I think that one, I'm like, I'm kind of, I'm kind of interested in just to see Yeah, yeah. [00:24:00] What happens.
Sam Preston: So, you know, I think the, the question we should be asking is, okay, so at what level should you know business owners, home service business owners actually start.
You know, partaking in this, like how, how should they start acting to get this started? And I would say one, yeah. Don't start with AI agents. Like
John Wilson: don't, don't just jump
Sam Preston: in. Yeah. If you're big enough and you can dedicate somebody to fully going into this, sure, go for it. Yeah. But if you're small enough, start small one, start doing some research.
You know, just, just go to YouTube, learn about this stuff. Figure out how you can just keep up to date. To start working with SEO in this, I think your SEO is going to matter even more than it does last year. Yeah. Um, and reviews. Yeah. Right. Get, get into those two things. I think those are easy ones. GMB, like those three things really should be a focus point for you going forward.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: Um, yeah. And then maybe take a, a course, like, I know there's like on school.com, there's uh, there's some, uh, good like courses you can get into [00:25:00] in communities to learn about this stuff. Um. I wouldn't let it take away from what you're doing this year though. Like this year's not gonna be the make it or break it if you're small enough where you just need leads and jobs done.
Um, but I would put a focus on reviews. So I think that's where I would start. What about you?
John Wilson: I mean, basically the same, like, it was, um, it was a really pleasant surprise when our SEO performed for ai. Yeah. Like, 'cause you just no one knew. Yeah. Because everyone's guessing, like, no, no. And still no one knows the answer guys.
Like no one knows the answer. But like it's, we have, we are starting to get early evidence. And early evidence is we're showing up where we want to show up. Yeah. And that is awesome. Something else that I'm like a big fan of is, I like that Google came out with like, I don't want, I personally don't want Google to be disrupted.
That doesn't help me. Like [00:26:00] that doesn't help anybody in home service. And I, if you think you want it to be disrupted, like Google's probably most of your leads. Like, why on earth? Like I've seen people like, yeah. Disrupt Google on Twitter. And I'm like, dude, like if Google, if if Google actually gets disrupted, your business is fucked for like one whole year.
Like you will not know how to get leads. Like you don't want that. Yeah. So like let 'em be Yeah. Like just keep charging my card. But, uh, so, but I do like that they came up with a product that looks and feels like AI or chat GPT because then people will, people will use it, they'll go back to Google. Like it makes a lot of sense to still be in Google.
So be fair of that. Yeah. SEO, uh, really I'm pumped up that Maps and Google Reviews has a place Yeah. Inside search, because that is like, hey, this is like 10 years, you know, people work hard to get those reviews and like, keep their GMBs accurate and like it's a lot of money and time and energy. So for like a year I've been like, dude, you gotta like make our [00:27:00] GMB profiles like worth the energy for the last five years.
So I was really excited to see that in there. I'm fascinated to see what happens with paid, but that's sort of like next step. So I, I basically agree with you, like SEO should be top of your mind and, and none of this, like one article a month bullshit, like I'm talking some real f. SEO and then a lot of reviews.
Yeah. Like, just lot, just, and just sort of keep that emphasis. And I think if you do the core things right, like we're showing it in our business currently, if you do the core things right, like you will continue to be okay.
Sam Preston: Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, yeah. I wouldn't change anything there.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think I even said we did, we did a, we're almost on every 90 days of like an ai, an AI in search.
I mean, it is a high, high change environment. Last time I think we were talking about, hey, our, our Google leads are still going up. Like, everyone's like, oh my God, chat GPT, like whatever. Our Google leads are still rising.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: And something we didn't talk about, uh, is, Hey, [00:28:00] what is dis There's a, it's, there's like search and there's discovery.
Uh, maybe you'll do a better job at this than me. I'm probably using the wrong words, but the idea is people are going to chat GPT, and they're typing in a question. Like, Hey, HVAC company's near me. Oh, it's, uh, discovery, then verify. Mm. So they're, they're going into chat, GPT and they're like, searching for service providers, plumbers, whatever.
And they're, they're discovering the different options that they have, and they're using AI to like formulate, you know, a little bit more of a conversational search.
Sam Preston: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: But then they're using Google to verify that search. Mm-hmm. So there's like, people are chat GPT then to Google. Mm-hmm. Now the only reason that's happening is because people.
Chat. GBT doesn't really offer a great solution to give you the best service providers yet, like maybe they will soon, but like currently, that is the best way to do it is, Hey, I'm gonna use chat GBT to discover all my options. I'm gonna jump onto Google. I'm gonna verify that they do in fact have good reviews and then I'm gonna call [00:29:00] them.
But both of them, both of those involve great SEO and great GMB.
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Sam Preston: Well, one of the big reasons why it's, uh, still lagging behind a little bit is because, uh, Chad, GBT is using [00:30:00] Bing as their search, and not a lot of people are using Bing to make sure that everything's optimized there for the LLM, uh, which is why we're such a big fan of.
Hey, we we're showing up on chat, uh, and it's because we are optimizing for Bing and for Google. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, to make sure that we do show up and it will catch up. Um, it just will,
John Wilson: yeah. Our Google traffic is still going up on a per lead basis, and I think that, and that's been like consistent, like that hasn't changed at all.
So we're still continuing to see that. So we feel, I feel comfortable with just what we've done, which is SEO and GMB focus.
Sam Preston: Keep doing it, man.
John Wilson: Well, this was a, this was a, a like good discussion on ai. I really feel like it's sort of, nothing happened with AI in home service and search for like 90 days or four months.
And then in the past couple weeks it's like they're gonna start calling you for pricing and now here's this new AI mode and like, it seems like a lot happened quick.
Sam Preston: Yeah. And I feel like that'll continue to happen. Like we're just gonna [00:31:00] keep getting announcements of things coming out. Yeah. But then that won't actually hit the market for the next like 12 months.
Um, there'll be early adopters. Yeah. But then I think it'll take a little bit and I think we'll look back in two years going like, Hey, the, the way people searched and how they found your business is very different than what it is now, even though it's still all through search. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I think it's gonna be fun.
Right. Um. Things change. You know, we went from MySpace to Facebook and Facebook to yeah. TikTok and whatever we have now. So like things change, the marketplace changes. You have to be adaptable, uh, to going and finding your audience. Um, you know, I remember having a conversation with some of my business partners and kind of being nervous about like, Hey, AI is gonna change the game.
And they're like, Sam. Yeah. Like, this has always happened. Like the market we're marketers. Yes. This is like, the game's always changing.
John Wilson: It's the na it's the nature of it. Yeah. You're just
Sam Preston: running ads on Facebook or now you're doing on TikTok or It was on Google Ads now it's on Google AI search and, um. [00:32:00] Uh, on, on Chachi, like it's the same thing.
Get in front of your audience, drive uh, intent-based traffic to your website. Get more leads. Yeah. Uh, and focus on things that are gonna get you more and more of those things.
John Wilson: Yeah, no, totally agree. Great conversation on how AI is changing search.
Sam Preston: That was fun.
John Wilson: Thanks for coming in. Uh, if people wanna get ahold of you, where can they contact you?
Sam Preston: Uh, hey, Sam Preston on, uh, TikTok, or not TikTok? Well, I guess yeah, TikTok too. That is true, but I'm never on there. So
John Wilson: all, all those, all those dancing videos. Nice. Yeah.
Sam Preston: And, uh, yeah, I gotta, gotta gotta grow somehow and I'll do whatever it takes really.
Jack Carr: Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam Preston: So, uh, XI guess I was, I meant to say Twitter, but I guess it's X and then LinkedIn.
Um, and I guess the question you gotta ask yourself was, was this really real or was this all just ai, Sam and John? Yeah,
John Wilson: I think I, I think I hit my nose a few times, so we know it's real. Yeah. All right. If you like what you heard, make sure you give us a five star [00:33:00] wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and make sure you check out owned and operated.com.
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