211: Why AI is Killing Your Clicks: The New Metrics for a Zero-Click World with Joe Doveton

The ground beneath the digital marketing industry is shifting. For decades, the mantra was simple: optimize for traffic, measure clicks, and track conversions. But with the rise of Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Answer Engines, that rulebook is obsolete. In this powerful episode, I sit down with Joe Doveton to discuss the urgent reality facing every brand that relies on web traffic.

We dive into the phenomenon Joe calls the "Crocodile Mouth", the unsettling visual trend where brands maintain high search impressions but see clicks vanish, a direct result of zero-click searches. With the proliferation of platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and various generative engines, we discuss why the Google monopoly on the customer journey is over, and how users can now move from the awareness stage to purchasing a product without ever visiting a Google property. This episode is a wake-up call for marketers still clinging to outdated KPIs.

Joe introduces the new alphabet soup of optimization, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization). Crucially, we explore what this means for your analytics. If traffic and conversion rate are "lousy metrics", what should you measure? Joe reveals emerging metrics like Visibility within LLMs and competitive positioning. Most importantly, we agree that this "Wild West" era is finally killing all the outdated SEO hacks, forcing brands back to the core long-term strategy: writing useful content and focusing on the customer experience.

About the Guest

Joe Doveton is an experienced digital strategist, consultant, and speaker focused on the intersection of AI, search, and customer experience. With a background that includes working in advertising and a deep understanding of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Joe is now pioneering tools and strategies for the Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) space. He is the founder of GEO Jet Pack, a platform designed to extract and visualize entities from content to help brands gain visibility in LLM responses - a critical new metric for the AI era.

What You'll Learn

• The difference between traditional SEO and the new acronyms: GEO, AEO, and LLMO.
• What the "Crocodile Mouth" is and why it confirms the end of the reliance on clicks.
• Why the old marketing KPIs, specifically web traffic and conversion rate—are now "lousy metrics" for measuring success.
• The new metrics emerging for the middle of the funnel, such as Visibility within LLMs and competitive position within prompt responses.
• Why the entire AI shift proves that long-term SEO success is still about being useful, interesting, and trustworthy (EEAT).
• Why the current AI era is killing all the old SEO hacks and discouraging tactics like content farming.
• How and why brands like Google are undermining their own profitable ad business by integrating AI Overviews.
• The vision of the Semantic Web and why the current structure of websites is inherently ill-suited for machine consumption.

Guest Contact:

• Joe Doveton's website
• Joe Doveton on LinkedIn

No Hacks is a podcast about web performance, technical SEO, and the agentic web. Hosted by Slobodan "Sani" Manic.

Transcript

Joe Doveton
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[00:00:00] this is it. This is the moment we look back on and realize that is when everything changed. If your business relies on Google clicks for revenue, you have a problem. Your analytics dashboard is not being fully honest with you.

[00:00:14] You're seeing impressions. Your clicks are vanishing. You're seeing the crocodile mouth in your Google search console, and that means AI is now answering the question without sending anyone to your website. So we're beyond SEO. We are in G-E-O-A-E-O-L-L-M-O, whatever it is, O territory, and all of the old rules are dead.

[00:00:37] What should you measure if conversion rate is a lousy metric, and how do you survive when Google is deliberately undermining its own profitable business as it is? And as we'll discuss today. Today I brought on Joe Dolton, digital marketing specialist, CRO consultant, SEO consultant, to talk about AI revolution that is killing your traffic.

[00:00:56] We're defining the new metrics for success and figuring out how to engage with customers outside of your website. Wherever that may be. This is not about adapting, it's more about surviving. So let's dive in. Okay.

[00:01:09] ​

[00:01:17] Sani: Joe, welcome to the podcast. What's the acronym for SEO in 2025?

[00:01:23] Joe Doveton: Uh, well, good question. There's, uh, you know, obviously SEO is evolving. Um, you, you may have heard some other, um, acronyms joining the alphabet, spaghetti, things like GEO, generative engine optimization. Answer engine optimization, a EO, large language model optimization, LLMO. So, you know, there's a, a whole, uh, new, new wave of acronyms joining the industry.

[00:01:52] Joe Doveton: Look, I mean, SEO is, is, is SEO. And you've gotta look at, um, the fact that Google is still the 800 pound gorilla in this space. And traditional SEO as in like keyword based search is still the bulk. Of search behavior. But what is happening is that search behavior is evolving and people are getting more comfortable with conversational type search.

[00:02:20] Joe Doveton: And this is where things like G-E-O-L-L-M-O-A-E-O, whatever you want to call it, uh, we call it GEO, um, but that's where that comes in. SEO is still there. Keyword, short phrase based tech search. But there is an evolution where people are getting more comfortable with typing long phrases, and the end result, of course is no click.

[00:02:45] Sani: Long phrases are mostly questions. I would say those long phrase prompts are usually questions. Isn't that the same thing? Then they're searching for an answer. It's still search engine of user. Question about. Five years from now, 10 years from now, do you think, we'll look back at 2025 specifically when this became a thing and a crocodile mouth became a thing.

[00:03:06] Sani: We'll talk about that and just look back and remember when it looked like Google was threatened by chat GPT and just laugh it off. Or do you think this is a real credible threat to Google, the first one they've ever faced?

[00:03:19] Joe Doveton: It is such a, it's such a good question. This, because if you look back at the history of, you know, sort of big tech in the last 30, 40 years, um, the big, the, the brands that dominated, you know, from IBM to Microsoft to to Google, um, they're still massive and they're still there, but they just kind of, you know, they've moved into other services.

[00:03:40] Joe Doveton: Microsoft and IBM particularly, you know, kind of corporate services, Google is the same thing. I think what you're seeing is Google's, um, that that whole thing where it's just about Google Monopoly is over. Um, because, um, they, they're still the, the biggest player in this by a country mile, and we will remain so for, for many, many years.

[00:04:04] Joe Doveton: But you're now looking at the situation where there's the proliferation of platforms and tools and technologies that people can use to find products. So, you know, with apps, with social media, with Reddit. With the generative engines like you check GPTs and complexities and so on. It's perfectly plausible for people to go from the awareness stage of a product or a service to buying the darn thing without everything, a Google, uh, product.

[00:04:30] Joe Doveton: And that is different. And that was sort of unthinkable 10 years ago, you know? So, um, Google is still massive. It's obviously, it's still the most important, you know, player by a mile in this, but. There are, it's, we, we've now entered the point where there's a proliferation of tools and platforms to get answers from, and I think Google have to get used to it.

[00:04:52] Sani: I, I love that you mentioned social media, because this was a thing before AI and chat PT showed up. You could use, I mean, TikTok shopping, maybe not in the western world, but it, it's

[00:05:03] Joe Doveton: I,

[00:05:03] Sani: It's massive social media. Even on

[00:05:06] Joe Doveton: And Wipo in China and stuff, you know.

[00:05:09] Sani: so this is not a new thing. If Google has been threatened, don't think it has been threatened specifically by open AI or chat GPT.

[00:05:17] Sani: I think we're just evolving beyond using Google search box@google.com as our primary way

[00:05:24] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:05:24] Sani: things. By the way, second largest search engine in the world, I think I saw this recently, is YouTube. So Google is dominated not by one by, but by two country miles and like. They're holding that Wait, wait until they add, uh, shopping directly from YouTube videos because there's no way they don't do this at some point.

[00:05:42] Sani: And, and then there, there are three country miles ahead, crocodile mouth. This is something that I'm shocked when someone tells me that someone who works in digital marketing tells me they don't know what it is, but can you explain what it is?

[00:05:54] Joe Doveton: Yeah, sure. So this was, um, it was, I think it was popularized by a guy called Sarah in a blog post. Basically, it's the form of you look at your, you look at your, uh, your stats for impressions and clicks. Uh, we, we, we started to see with, with the rise of zero click searches, the kind of physical manifesta manifestation of its impressions holding up and clicks going down, and it sort of, you know, kind of looks like it looks a bit like that.

[00:06:22] Joe Doveton: Um, and it's just become sort of emblematic of the whole kind of zero click thing. Um, so it's an interesting one because obviously brands. Uh, what, what it's implying is that brands are still being queried and talked about and engaged with. It's just that they're not necessarily getting clicks to their website.

[00:06:43] Joe Doveton: And this is very different and scary for a lot of people where, you know, if you are set up that your whole proposition is about traffic, uh, and gaining, gaining clicks, um, you know, the world's moved on. You know, I think people are engaging. With your brand and with your products and services and your topics and the people that talk about it outside of your website and in many cases that a lot of that traffic is not coming back.

[00:07:11] Joe Doveton: So if you're not sort of engaging with this new reality, you have a bit of a problem.

[00:07:18] Sani: Jonah Alderon. You know Jono ev.

[00:07:20] Joe Doveton: I know John. Oh yeah.

[00:07:21] Sani: on this podcast. He said, if you're in the solve, I think in June this year, if you're in the solves query space. Find something else to do. Because if Google knows how to answer the question that people are asking without sending them to your website, for example, what's the recipe for a cake or anything that's going to be the same every time, you will never get that click again from Google, at least, or from search engine.

[00:07:45] Sani: So it's, it's tricky. Things are changing. Things have been the same for 25 years with Google, maybe more, and now for the first time ever. If there's a real change happening in how people search, so what can websites do about the crocodile mouth and, and getting more visible in search, but not getting that traffic, what to do

[00:08:07] Joe Doveton: Well, I, yeah, I think, well, I think before we answered that, there's a great, the question is really about analytics and about your, um, companies KPIs and key metrics, because if your KPIs and your key metrics are set up around traffic. And conversion rate. You know, obviously we, you, you, you and I both work in the conversion rate optimization industry and we everybody discusses that conversion rate is a lousy metric.

[00:08:29] Joe Doveton: Um, that is also problematic because in a world where you're getting fewer clicks, but potentially getting the same number of, uh, conversions, you know, as visitors come back at the end of the funnel to convert, what are you gonna see? You're gonna see your conversion rate going up and your people can draw the wrong conclusion to that.

[00:08:46] Joe Doveton: So the traffic's going down, conversion rate is up, everything's. Everything's okay, but it doesn't mean that it kind of means that you are looking at the wrong things. So I think for most brands it's kind of what are your KPIs going to be going forward because you, you cannot just purely look at your web traffic and your conversion rate as success measures.

[00:09:10] Sani: But what should they be? And, and, and I, I agree with you. Conversion rate is also keeping it the name of an industry based on a terrible metric that everyone agrees is terrible, is a very weird thing to do for 20 years. But let's leave that aside.

[00:09:26] Joe Doveton: that's a different, that's probably a series of podcasts

[00:09:29] Sani: don't have enough time this year to talk about that.

[00:09:33] Joe Doveton: so that's the, the first thing is have a look at your, your success measures and redefine your. Re redefine what success looks like at the end of the funnel. You know, it's things like revenue per visitor and average order value and stuff like that, which is no different to what we've been saying for years.

[00:09:47] Joe Doveton: In the CRO space, in the middle of the funnel, there are new, there are kind of new metrics. I think there's a yet to be defined metric about sort of overall brand health or overall brand visibility. Which nobody has at this, at this stage. Um, but there are in, in the, this kind of informational, middle of the funnel space around, um, using answer engines and s like Chet and so on.

[00:10:17] Joe Doveton: There are a few tools that are merging things like peak ai, things like prologue, uh, Athena HQ and others, and some of the things that they're talking about, visibility. So visibility within. LMS becomes another important metric. So the percentage of times that you appear for a prompt, and also, you know, for people who are very keen on, um, comparing themselves to other brands, you know, the competitive position, whether you appear first, second, third, fourth, or fifth within the prompt response is also something that's measured by these engines.

[00:10:49] Joe Doveton: So these are kind of newer metrics that are, that are emerging that people look at.

[00:10:54] Sani: But it's tricky to measure what an LLM says because ask it again. It's going to say a different thing to the same person. With the same, uh, context 'cause that's just how they work. So will we ever be able, will we dream of the good old days when we knew what the Google rankings were, one through 10 and say it was easy back then.

[00:11:14] Sani: Like, will, is there ever going to be a way to know NLLM ranks you?

[00:11:19] Joe Doveton: uh, well, in the absence of everybody agree with Sandra and opening up, you know, their, um, their, their backend for everyone to look at. No, but. I th I, I think this is a new space. It reminds me I'm long enough in the tooth to, to remember the early days of search back in sort of 97, 98 when you had the lyco and you know, Yahoo's pre-Google.

[00:11:41] Joe Doveton: Um, it's a little bit like the wild west. Nobody, it's, the whole space is evolving so fast. Uh, we don't know, uh, what commercial pressures are gonna get brought onto to things like chat EPT for example. Y you know, we know that they're recruiting an AD team, but we dunno what ads look like in the context of chat EBT yet, so, you know how open they are with what people are searching for, what people, what prompts are getting, I think is yet undefined.

[00:12:07] Joe Doveton: So we're in this kind of intermediate phase where we have metrics that have emerged. Like visibility and, you know, position, uh, and people are kind of using that as a stop gap until we've got a better visibility on, you know, what, industry wide, this is the middle of the funnel, it's information. What does success look like?

[00:12:25] Joe Doveton: So it is a long-winded way of saying, I don't think we know yet. Um, but there are, but the more successful people in this have got, uh, interim measures that they're looking at, say if we are doing okay on these ones, we are in the right place roughly.

[00:12:41] Sani: Does that also mean that when someone, let's say on LinkedIn says, I know exactly how this works, you should not trust them.

[00:12:49] Joe Doveton: Yeah, it's rubbish.

[00:12:50] Sani: Okay, glad we're on the same page, because there's a lot of people, no, there's a lot of people claiming that they have figured everything out and they know exactly how it works. I think Sam Altman doesn't know how JGBT works because of what it is.

[00:13:01] Sani: It's just impossible to tell what it will predict next and what we'll say next. So glad that we put the word a warning for anyone listening.

[00:13:09] Joe Doveton: So, uh, you know, I, I'm, I don't wanna turn this into a product plug, but as I I, I've been building this platform called, uh, GEO Jet Pack, which is specifically aimed at this area. And, you know, I, so essentially what we are doing is we are using the APIs that are out there, like the Google, N-L-P-A-P-I, uh, and others.

[00:13:30] Joe Doveton: And it's interesting what I'm seeing. Is actually when you pull from the Google N-R-P-A-P-I, the entity that it sees vary every time anyway. So it's not like, you know, it's kind of fixed the, the baked into the way that these work is, um, a variability on what they are gonna surface at any time. So for so to reliably say, do this exactly.

[00:14:02] Joe Doveton: Is probably misleading because from, from, from, um, from week to week, months to month, there will be slightly different things that that will be surfaced by Google. You the same prompt will will mention different brands if done on different engines, but also on the same engine within different days. So it comes down to a hundred percent the same as you would be doing regular SEA getting, making sure that the basics are covered.

[00:14:31] Joe Doveton: And ongoing monitoring just to make sure that thing you, you are, where you think you are.

[00:14:37] Sani: So how, how do you, uh, do you have to prompt it a hundred times and then see like 60% of the time it mentions my brand? Is, is that the direction we should be heading in?

[00:14:47] Joe Doveton: Well, I think the, the tools that are out there at the moment, like the Peaks and the Prologues and Athena a uh, um, uh, IQ and the one that I've built Broad are broadly doing that. They're using, um. Uh, you know, VPNs and proxy servers to send out multiple prompts and monitoring the responses. And then day by day, building up a picture of whether you appear.

[00:15:07] Joe Doveton: And this is where the visibility metric comes in, you know, do, we ran this prompt 50 times this month and you appeared on 65% of the occasion, um, and your competitors appeared 70% of the, of the, of the Asian. And on average, you were in position 1.2.

[00:15:25] Sani: Mm-hmm. Okay.

[00:15:27] Joe Doveton: So rather than it being, like with tr tra, SEO, there's a snapshot of, oh, here's a screenshot of you being number one in Google.

[00:15:34] Joe Doveton: Um, you, you, you won't get, or at least at the moment, you don't get anything that's similar to that. You get over a period of time you are roughly in this position.

[00:15:46] Sani: It's so, it it, it is confusing because it's confusing. There's no other way to explain it. This is just, I don't know if it was designed to be confusing for us, but

[00:15:55] Joe Doveton: I, I, I think the point is, well, this is the point that, that I'm trying to make, is that, you know, most of the practitioners out, or a lot of the discourse out there is treating this as continuity, SEO and you know, in a lot of ways it is, it is SEO 3.0 or 4.0, whatever, whatever stage we are at it is, it's, the principles are the same.

[00:16:13] Joe Doveton: You know, write useful content, um, amplify your brand so that you generate. Uh, what it's mentioned now rather than back links, you know, um, make sure that the tech, that the site's technically marked up correctly, but it's, it's different enough to warrant a dedicated strategy because you can't get, you know, the same level of snapshot type score card type stats that you could do with a, a, you know, trade, SEO.

[00:16:42] Joe Doveton: So hence the reason, you know, we are coming at it from a slightly different angle than saying. Yeah, we, we are doing trade SEA, but we're treating this slightly differently.

[00:16:52] Sani: Nothing to disagree with there. I, I, I just still, I don't like. The, the mysticism around all this. And I don't like the fact that our best chance of knowing what is going on in inside the black boxes will have the ads. So we can track those ads. 'cause once they open the platforms up for ads, I'm talking about

[00:17:11] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:17:11] Sani: I'm talking about AA search.

[00:17:12] Sani: They will need to show you some metrics. Maybe those ads will be just inserted inside, like whatever, uh, whatever the LM spits out. And then position number three is going to be a paid one. And then, you know, you're showing up there, it will get even more confusing and it will, uh, it's an incentive for people to start spending money on these

[00:17:33] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:17:34] Sani: so they can show up.

[00:17:35] Sani: But at least we'll have something to know that, okay, uh, if I spend this much money, I'm going to show up in, in this many,

[00:17:42] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:17:43] Sani: answers. Uh, does that completely change the LLM experience that people have today? Does, does that make it terrible? Will people trust it? I mean, hypothetical questions 'cause we, we don't know, but what do you think about that?

[00:17:57] Joe Doveton: Uh, I. Uh, it's, I mean, people have got conditioned to the SERPs, haven't they? You know, we, we kind of think about the SERP and we kind of know, but actually most we are in the industry. Most users don't kind of clock that the first four or five of those blue links have been ads. You know, they kind of don't differentiate between that.

[00:18:16] Joe Doveton: So whether it's, you know, I think it's overall trust rather than trusting individual results. If people, if the answers are good enough. Bit like with Google, you know, if Google, if Google didn't, if Google wasn't a brilliant product and you know, didn't surface the right results, then people wouldn't use it.

[00:18:34] Joe Doveton: Um, more or less, more or less, you know, it's, it's a kind of mirror to what, to the industry. So they will have to do that. They will have to be what it, whether, however they integrate ads, it will have to be marked up and it will have to be not affect the overall plausibility of the response. So, I dunno whether that's a kind of grayed out, a grayed out, a grayed out section within the prompt response saying, sponsored answer or, or something like, you know, I think Google are doing I overview, you know, our partners say this, you know, it could, it could, it could be like that.

[00:19:09] Joe Doveton: One of the other things I thought, uh, you know, I'm old, I'm old enough to have worked in selling advertising as well, is, you know, whether some, whether the, in a world of zero clicks, whether the CPM model and display ads make more sense. Rather than cost per click,

[00:19:24] Sani: Hmm.

[00:19:25] Joe Doveton: uh, where they are, where they're contextually relevant, display ads contextually relevant to the answer, but they're not masquerading as part of the answer.

[00:19:34] Joe Doveton: And especially in, you know, with something like Google. Now we, there are no stats on how this is affecting their ad text, ad revenue. It must be having an impact.

[00:19:46] Sani: absolutely.

[00:19:47] Joe Doveton: Yeah. So we, but we don't know yet. We, we don't, we don't know yet what that is. Um, but it must be having an impact. So they're obviously, you know, almost voting to become, or at least that model to become obsolescent.

[00:19:59] Joe Doveton: Um, for me, I think, you know, display and C-P-A-C-P-M model kind of answers some of that question because you can have a contextually relevant ad that doesn't interfere with the, you know, the kind of answer that's, that's presented.

[00:20:13] Sani: That's a really good

[00:20:14] Joe Doveton: we don't, we don't

[00:20:15] Sani: No. No, absolutely. Because if you think of OpenAI, they're burning money no matter what they're doing. They're not a profitable, they don't have a

[00:20:21] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:20:22] Sani: arm in that entire business. Google does. Google is, Google ads are one of the most profitable businesses in hist history of mankind,

[00:20:30] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:20:31] Sani: if not the most profitable.

[00:20:33] Sani: And they, they're literally printing money and have been printing money for decades by showing the AI mode to people. And by showing that AI overview, they're. They're killing a part of that profitable branch. There's no way they don't have a plan. There's no way they're

[00:20:51] Joe Doveton: I agree.

[00:20:52] Sani: just because it's the right thing to do.

[00:20:55] Sani: No, Google, again, I'm not worried about open AI because they have different plans. I, I don't think they have plans to become profitable, but that, that may be a hot take. Google wants to remain profitable and as profitable as possible because. It's, it's a business. Open AI is not a business. Open AI is a startup, a company, but it's not a business. So Google is digging a hole in their most profitable branch they've had forever. There has to be a plan. They, they will show ads in those AI overviews if nothing else.

[00:21:27] Joe Doveton: It sounds mad, doesn't it? That you kind of go, oh, we've got, you know, we have the, the most profitable advertising system of all time and we, we are, we are deliberately gonna undermine it, but I don't think that they have a choice.

[00:21:44] Sani: Correct. No, but remember before Google started doing the AI thing a year ago, whenever it was,

[00:21:51] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:21:52] Sani: everyone was wondering, why is Google not doing this? They'll get left behind. I feel like they did feel pressured

[00:21:58] Joe Doveton: Yep.

[00:21:58] Sani: to push this. I feel like Gemini may have been even rushed. The first version of Gemini were not amazing now it's great. So. There's no way they don't have a, a long-term plan with this. That's all I'm saying. Maybe they just need to ride it out until people shift to accepting ads in AI responses and then they just plaster the ads everywhere, even more than we have had with, with regular Google search. But what we are getting from LLMs today is not what we'll be getting in a year or two.

[00:22:28] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:22:28] Sani: that's just the way I see it. And will it be better, will it be worse? It will be easier to track if you're a brand that, that, that's just. The only positive. I see. Um, but let's talk about, let's talk about the future of, uh, S-E-O-C-R-O. All of it together. Are those parts of the funnel being discovered? Uh, purchasing repeat purchase is, is, can you separate those? Can you do SEO without doing CRO? Can you do CRO without doing SEO? Because for a long time there were people who were saying kind of this. Different side of the same coin. Uh, you, they're very, I mean, even I on this podcast have been saying that, can you in the future do one without doing the other?

[00:23:15] Joe Doveton: It's a really good question to say. I think, you know, the, the answer's been hiding in plain sight for years, which is, Google's always said, I mean, going back to their. You know, the, the, their catchphrase that they've presumably thrown out the window. Don't be evil. You know, the pro, the principle, the principle being right for your customers, right?

[00:23:34] Joe Doveton: For the users. Don't write for search engines. Make yourself useful and interesting. And, um, and then by an extension of that, have the, the experience that you present to people needs to load quickly. It needs to be slick, you know, have a good user experience. All of these and, and everything else will do the rest.

[00:23:54] Joe Doveton: You know, we'll rank you if you, if you do this. And actually, so nothing has really changed. If people are useful and interesting to their customers, they will be okay. They will, they should, they should do, right. But I think the, the key difference is, you know, if we've, we've looked at Google, um, very narrowly in the context of, you know, it ranks websites.

[00:24:19] Joe Doveton: Whereas people's brand, people's brand, it doesn't purely live on the website. It lives in lots of places now. It lives in social platforms, it lives in, it lives in Reddit now it lives in within answers on LLMs. So you should be looking at that and focusing on the customer and at different stages of the journey.

[00:24:41] Joe Doveton: It's very, very hard, especially with work with attribution, you know, kind of being what it is these days. It's very hard to say. We, we tickled this user over here, and then they, you know, that we embraced them in the middle of the funnel here on the LM and then they came home and got something. I know that's hard, but you know that that's what you need to be, what does the customer want?

[00:25:03] Joe Doveton: And wherever they are, you need to be engaging with them in a respectful, helpful way.

[00:25:10] Sani: So if you look at everything that go, you mentioned don't be evil and. That is so ridiculous now. It wasn't back then, but there, there was a time

[00:25:19] Joe Doveton: is

[00:25:19] Sani: there was a time when people thought that you know, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur is going to save the world, and that

[00:25:24] Joe Doveton: Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:26] Sani: I think that ship has sailed. Maybe they're.

[00:25:29] Joe Doveton: you are not party to um, uh, you know, UK politics, but in the last couple of days, couple of days, there've been questions asked in Parliament about which is the greater threat to British security. Is it the Chinese government and the spy network, or is it Elon Musk? You know, so it's kind of gone to the stage where, you know, Elon Musk has become a bond villain in the minds of a lot of people in the United Kingdom.

[00:25:54] Sani: I think that's a misdirection. I think it's Peter Thiel, but that's just me. Uh,

[00:25:58] Joe Doveton: yeah. But

[00:26:00] Sani: potato, let's, let's call it.

[00:26:02] Joe Doveton: but the, the point being is they were the saviors and now there's a massive distrust.

[00:26:07] Sani: But if you look at don't be evil, it's still applies, it's still a good slogan, but just not apply to, to big tech. Uh, if you look back at everything Google has been saying for the last five, if not 10 years, EEAT. They've been pushing EEAT for a very long time before anyone even thought AI would become the factory it is today.

[00:26:28] Sani: They've been pushing. You need to be an expert, you need to be trustworthy, you need to be an authority. If you want to be ranked. You couldn't write about medical or, uh, your money or life topics without being an authority in that field. Without being a verified authority in that field by Google. Uh, if you look at the things they've been, uh, they had a paper released in 2021.

[00:26:50] Sani: There was an episode on this podcast about it called The Messy Middle, where they talked about everything between the first discovery and. The conversion in the end is getting messier, and you can't just play a a, a linear funnel anymore. Everything's going to change. They've been planting these seeds for years, preparing us for this new reality. Maybe they knew, maybe they didn't, but it worked with Google search and that same principle, the things that work, the long term strategy that work with SEO, none of that is gone. It all applies even more. What I like to think, because the name of the podcast is No Hacks, is this is killing all the hacks, like all of the SEO hacks we had, all, everything we use we could do to to trick the systems.

[00:27:36] Sani: AI is better at recognizing those hacks

[00:27:38] Joe Doveton: yeah.

[00:27:38] Sani: killing them.

[00:27:39] Joe Doveton: And it's a really good point that you make that, because one thing I was gonna raise is, you know, I've been diving, as I said a lot into this, G-E-O-A-O-L-L-M-O space, whatever you wanna call it. And I have seen examples of, uh, purported practitioners advocating tactics like flooding their website with AI generated pages to fill gaps.

[00:28:00] Joe Doveton: And it's kind of like, whoa, hang on a minute. This sounds like content farms. You know, didn't we have this 10, 15, 20 years ago? Um, it's sparing as hell that cannot be right and it isn't right. Um, you know, so. The unfortunate thing about being in, like, I love that phrase, the messy middle, by the way, being in the Wild West again is, you know, suddenly there were a load.

[00:28:24] Joe Doveton: There are, we've, it's been like whack-a-mole. We whack on the, you know, the shitty hacks that people used to have in the past, and then new ones are popping up.

[00:28:34] Sani: I love that you said Wild West because one of my favorite movies and. In my opinion, the best trilogy ever made. Sorry, LA s fans and, and, and Star Wars back to the future. You can't

[00:28:44] Joe Doveton: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:45] Sani: when he goes to the Wild West and he knows the rules of from the future. kind of feels like that we are, we are, we are at the wild west, but we know what works and we know what's going to win long term.

[00:28:57] Sani: It's almost like having some cheat codes. If you paid attention for the last 20 years, most people didn't pay attention. It, it is, is my impression.

[00:29:07] Joe Doveton: Y it absolutely, and it's kind of like, you know, you always will get, ah, here's a, there's another get quick rich scheme. I, I, I instinctively, you know, discount things like that When I see you in the same way that I, I, I don't trust, you know, posts or blogs where I say, I'll increase your IW conversion rate in two weeks, or whatever it is that you see it,

[00:29:27] Sani: Those posts and people who, people who post it, and I'll say it because maybe you don't want to, the people who post it are a joke and should be laughed at

[00:29:34] Joe Doveton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And well, you know, most practitioners in CRO or whatever will do that. They will, they will say, this is rubbish. Uh, but, you know, it it, they wouldn't be doing it if some people didn't believe it. Um, so yes, I think I, the, the basics, it's going back to your point. The basics are unchanged.

[00:29:53] Joe Doveton: Write great copy, um, you know, of course use. Uh, you, the automated tools to help you be more productive, a hundred, a hundred percent, who is not using, you know, church e pity or perplexity or whatever to help with summaries of all of documents. And, you know, for structuring ideas, everybody is, that's fine, but don't kind of start, uh, you, you know, outsourcing, uh, your entire workflow to, to machine.

[00:30:24] Joe Doveton: Which means you need to have a plan, but most of what you just need to know your customers and engage respectfully with them as, as you've always done. So you know that that is definitely, uh, a continuity from from traditional SEO.

[00:30:37] Sani: Uh, it's still simple. It's still not easy, and, and that's what will never change. Um, yeah, I, I don't think, I hate the AI era. you look at it that way, when it pushes people back into doing the things that everyone should have been doing for the longest possible time, like you mentioned, a content farm, like a thousand posts that about certain topic, hoping to rank people are now doing flooding Reddit as well, just writing. So the definition of going back to the name of the podcast of a hack, not not a person, but doing a hack, it's doing something where you know someone's getting screwed. some point, it could be somebody else today, it could be the system, or it could be you at some point in the future. Those are all hacks and AI will sniff them out better than people were able to do that, which I'm not happy about it, but it, it, it just how it is. Um, yeah. Uh, can you tell me more, I want to end with, with a bit more about, uh, the geo jet pack.

[00:31:39] Joe Doveton: You.

[00:31:40] Sani: Why did you decide to build that?

[00:31:44] Joe Doveton: Y Yes, it is a really good question. I mean, you know, essentially I, uh, like lots of other people, I, I use all the other tools that are in the public domain, the, ah, HFS, the Modies, you know, the SEM rushes Screaming Frog and, and Search Console and so on. I'd have used those for a number of years. But, you know, I became particularly interested in, uh, how, how to extract and visualize entities, uh, because there isn't anything that does.

[00:32:10] Joe Doveton: That does this nicely at the moment. So that's kind of was the starting point. It's like you, you know, we know that Google, um, when they look at a URL, they, they examine the entities that are on the page and that has a bearing for, you know, whether, whether what is going to be included in the LLM responses or of course in the Google search results.

[00:32:33] Joe Doveton: So I started with that and I kind of came, came up with a kind of visual visualizer where. I take, I take the data out Google, I kind of visualize it as it sort of bubble maps and it's kind of gone from there because when you start looking at, you know, individual page clusters, you can see, oh, that's interesting, because the, the entity groups on similar pages are quite different.

[00:32:54] Joe Doveton: So there's something wrong, there's a disconnect. So, you know, it's stuff that couldn't be surfaced using the traditional, um, SEO tools. And then I've kind of subsequently bolted on. You know, additional, additional tools looking at things like triplets subjects, uh, verb object analysis. So looking at text content and seeing if, you know, we can, how well a machine can extract literal phrases from that.

[00:33:22] Joe Doveton: So there's a number of things that, you know, just are not around on a SEMrush or a a or, or a, uh, even search console that you'd manually have to. Dig around for, and I was doing that manually and I'm, I'm not doing it manually anymore because I've automated it. So, and it's, and it's fascinating.

[00:33:45] Sani: I, I believe that is the future. Uh, I'll just read a quote and I want you to guess who said this. I want you to try to guess. I'm working on a presentation and. I'll have this quote there. I have a dream for the web in which computers become capable of analyzing all the data on the web, the content, the links, the transactions between people and computers.

[00:34:03] Sani: A semantic web, which makes this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade bureaucracy in our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The intelligent agents people have doubted for ages will finally materialize. Do you wanna take a guess? A wild guess you can.

[00:34:19] Sani: You can try to guess the year.

[00:34:22] Joe Doveton: Uh, the year, 1995. Nine nine. Okay.

[00:34:28] Sani: was Tim Burners

[00:34:29] Joe Doveton: Bud is Lee. Yeah.

[00:34:31] Sani: 1999. My question to you is, are we there yet?

[00:34:36] Joe Doveton: Well, I think we're getting closer. I mean, the inter, you know, the interesting thing is, you know, we talked about at the start about websites and website optimization. We are still working in the after wash of that invention of the worldwide web, web pages, website, groups of documents stick together.

[00:34:59] Joe Doveton: Instructors called websites. Um, whereas actually I think if you started again from scratch, you'd probably build something very different

[00:35:07] Sani: I could not agree more. I, I think, I think the problem with, and I'm big on optimizing for AI agents, as you know, the problem with. Trying to help machines understand websites is they're looking at another machine through a phase two filter almost that we have the, the, the interface layer that was built for humans. I think that's one of the dumbest things since the, the early days of the internet trying to get machines to, to decode. An interpretation of a machine readable thing that was made for humans, and guess what's behind it? Why not just plug it back straight into, straight into machine? But I think we're getting there.

[00:35:51] Sani: The Semantic web, we're getting there. The Semantic web is, if we ever fully have it, is going to be Internet 2.0 I guess completely and absolutely different. A set, a set of book pages put on, on, on a, on a computer screen, which is essentially what the websites are.

[00:36:08] Joe Doveton: is what it is. And the whole legacy, you know, going back to your CRO world, you was the whole legacy of print media in thinking about website design where people put, pour all their resources into the homepage and then go, oh, we, well the homepage now looks nice. We've got about, we've got about 5% of our budget left for the rest of the site.

[00:36:29] Joe Doveton: Rather than, how do customers actually use this thing?

[00:36:33] Sani: No, but that, that's how the homepage is designed. It, it looks like a newspaper front

[00:36:37] Joe Doveton: It's the front page of a brochure. Yeah, and it's, and of course nobody uses it like

[00:36:42] Sani: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, the, the entry point is not the home. It hasn't been the

[00:36:46] Joe Doveton: Yeah.

[00:36:46] Sani: long time. Thank God for that. Joe. Um, when this is out, the tool that you're building, geo Jet Pack, will you let me know so I can share it with the people on the podcast?

[00:36:56] Joe Doveton: Love to. Would love to,

[00:36:58] Sani: Excellent. I would love to talk to you about that when it's out.

[00:37:01] Sani: Uh, and where can people find you, get in touch with you?

[00:37:04] Joe Doveton: uh, yeah, if you go to www do binary bear, BEA r.com, uh, there's a little form on there, so yeah, pop me a note or on LinkedIn.

[00:37:15] Sani: Or on LinkedIn, it, the links will be in the show notes. Joe, thank you so much. I'm very excited to see this tool, uh, come to life and, and everything that, that you're doing in this space. talk to you and to everyone listening, please consider rating, reviewing and sharing the episode, and I'll talk to you next week.

[00:37:31] Joe Doveton: Thank you. 

[00:37:32] ​