How to Manage Stakeholder Expectations Around AI Search

Galen Low: Right now, every brand wants to show up in AI search, so it's no surprise that everyone and their goldfish is positioning themselves as AEO and GEO miracle workers, and it's no surprise that execs are wanting immediate results from the new acquisition channels that LLMs have created, even if that means taking a morally gray shortcut.

And it's no surprise that agencies and digital project professionals are having to navigate tough conversations about what is realistic and what is not when it comes to the AI search requirements in their website redesign or marketing campaign scopes. The pressure is real. But the reality is that AI search isn't a system you can game, not long-term anyways.

So how do you convince the powers that be to play the long game and resist the urge to pursue lazy hacks? And how do you find an AI search partner who can actually deliver the results they say they can? How does AI search work anyway? To answer those questions, I've brought in an AI search expert and agency founder that I know I can trust because I've worked with them before.

Together, we're going to get into what digital professionals need to know about AI search to help champion an integrated brand strategy that will have a much bigger impact than any snake oil source. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI.

I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place.

And if you've been liking what you've been hearing from us lately, please consider following us wherever you're finding us and maybe even leaving us a review. All right. Let's get into it.

With me today is Matt Slater, search optimization specialist and founder of Receipts, a one-person agency specializing in AI SEO. Matt has helped brands in media, SaaS, gaming, and education achieve dominance in some of the most highly competitive and sought-after keyword searches. Matt's mission has always been to cut through the noise in the world of search, helping founders and executives understand what's relevant to their brand and building out programs to achieve measurable results that align with their business strategy.

And with Receipts, he is taking a step forward into his vision for the future, where coalitions of micro-agencies extend the capabilities of growing brands without adding headcount. Armed with custom-built tools, industry knowledge, and a penchant for translating between technology and business audiences, Matt has been giving businesses the advantage over the competitors when it comes to AI visibility.

Matt, thank you for joining me today.

Matt Slater: Hi, Galen. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to chat with you.

Galen Low: So today we are talking about AI search and why it's so important for brands, agencies, and digital project professionals to understand how the technology is impacting discovery, visibility, and trust.

We're gonna be talking about what brands, agencies, and delivery leaders need to know about AEO and GEO. We're gonna be sharing some strategies for dealing with unrealistic stakeholder expectations or unethical requests, and we're going to talk about how brands need to prepare their web presence for a world where zero-click searches are the norm.

How does that sound?

Matt Slater: Sounds good to me. Looking forward to digging into it.

Galen Low: All right. Awesome. Let, let's start with a bit of controversy. There's a lot of new agencies and consultants popping up that claim that they've cracked the code on AI search and AEO and GEO, and indeed, if there's something that almost every business wants these days, it's to show up in ChatGPT or Claude when someone asks it to recommend the best company for X or Y.

But in the subreddits and in the newsletters that I'm a part of, some SEO professionals are saying that it's just all the same craft that leverages the same sensibilities. So my question is this: Is AI search its own distinct art form, or is it just SEO best practices dressed up in a different buzzword-y costume?

Matt Slater: Yeah. It's a great question and definitely controversial especially with, like, all of the new agencies that are appearing. I think without a doubt there's a lot of crossover between SEO and GEO. A lot of the core fundamentals that you would want from a strong SEO strategy and campaign would look very similar to those in AI search.

But I think there are some distinct tactics and approaches that you would take for GEO to make it its own discipline. And I think for me, you really only have to look as far as how differently people interact with Google compared to ChatGPT, for example. You look at the long-winded approach to speaking with ChatGPT and people go into a full conversation, whereas with Google there's like a two or three-word search and then you start diving into websites and the answers.

So, I think you can take something from that and I, I do believe people with a background in SEO are really well-placed to begin giving fundamental advice on, on GEO, but I wouldn't say they're strictly the same thing.

Galen Low: That's fair. I, I love that the, the bit about just sort of the interaction is different.

Like I, I feel even though there's you know, Google's got its like AI mode it's gonna give me the AI overview anyways, but I'm still searching like I would look for a library book in like the 1990s. I'm like, author, subject matter, is it good? Right? Like it's like my, my Google searches are fundamentally very basic versus the conversation where I'm sharing more context, you know, I'm sharing more information.

You know, I'm probably, you know, putting in my own suggestions and the result is not as programmatic or, you know, as deterministic as some of the search algorithms have been in the past. It's looking for the same stuff but it's got a lot more context, a lot more meat to kind of find what is relevant. And that specificity then sort of starts to matter in terms of what the intent is that somebody's actually searching for.

Matt Slater: Yeah, precisely. I think a lot of people-- The, the phrase like doing your research looks quite different now. Doing your research previously on Google did look like a A search and then you would start clicking through what was on the first page of Google in the top 10 results and trying to decode like what you want from those basically.

And then you go to somewhere like ChatGPT, and to your point, you really go down this rabbit hole and it, it asks you questions back, you interact with a platform, and then you kind of narrow down what it is exactly you want. So I mean, a, a good example is you wouldn't really search for best-- what is the best project management software?

You start to go down this, what's the best project management software for a 12-person team in a small business with all of these different contingencies, and you start to dig into these more nuanced answers.

Galen Low: That's a really good point about yeah, the, not just the context, but also, yeah, the, the, the sort of cri- criteria.

It's getting whittled down a lot more before it's even gotten to you like looking at at your brand in this case, if you are a brand, right? It's like that's the part of the journey has already happened. It's not I can't remember if it was you and I are having this conversation about you know, talking about the homepage.

What is it for now? Kind of have to build it for both. Someone who kind of already knows something about you. It's not like your doormat anymore. It's like they've had a conversation, they're almost getting referred by AI to you after already having provided information, context, their requirements, having a bit of a dialogue, and then like showing up.

Yeah, not, not sort of cold off the street, but actually a little bit warm.

Matt Slater: For sure. I mean, we'll, we'll probably get into this a little bit more as we talk, but the clarity of your information for the purpose of AI to learn about you, either as a person or as a brand, is so paramount because if it can't find that information from you, it will go elsewhere to find that information if it-- if you're being searched about specifically.

And then equally, if it's a, a search that doesn't include a brand and it's just a broad topic, then Maybe you won't show up if you're, if you don't have that information front and center.

Galen Low: That's interesting. Actually, maybe a good segue if we wanted to... I don't know. Let's zoom out a little bit because in my experience it's been decades for folks in my industry to chase the search algorithm.

And I remember still the, the first big Google algorithm update that I was impacted by was, like, back in 2020, and we watched our traffic just get cut in half, and it was, like, kinda existential for our business. And now we're in this new era of AI search, and as humans often do, there's reams of people trying to figure it out, trying to reverse engineer it a- and claim that they are masters of it.

And this is something that you're pretty close to, so I thought I'd ask what do answer engines want? What does AI search want? What are these algorithms evaluating when they're trying to assess who is trustworthy? You know, where are they going for information? What is it that they're looking for?

Matt Slater: I think it's worth breaking that question into two pieces. First understanding how LLMs learn, and then how they come to their conclusions, 'cause that helps us almost reverse engineer the process a little bit. So LLMs essentially, they consume as much public information as they can. They train on it, they learn from it, and then what they try to do is piece together from all that information the best answer for whatever is being searched for.

And then to piece together that answer, they kinda look at two different components. One is first-party information, so that's obviously what you put out about yourself, how you speak about yourself if you're a brand, who you're for, who you're not for. And then the second piece is third-party information.

So this is like a corroboration layer. It's for AI to say, "Well, okay, I've read that this brand is talking about itself in this light. Does this match up with what's been said in the public arena?" And that might be a variety of trusted sites. If you're on Trustpilot, it might be Reddit. But it's looking to basically qualify what you're saying about yourself with other information on the internet to kind of back up what you're saying.

Do they match up? Do they differ?

Galen Low: That gives a hugely good point about it's corroborating and it's not just you pumping out your image and your brand, and that's gonna stick and be fine. It also matters, like, how people are talking about you. And, and to your point, it's like it's trained on this.

It's not just retrieval. And I mean, I may be simplifying, you know, search in the past, but, you know, it's, it's actually doing research, going to multiple sources, and to your point, trying to stitch together something that answers the query in the best way possible. Something that already had a lot of context, you know, requirements.

You know, it knows a bit about you already, and it's going out and it's gonna pull together advice, I guess you-- one could call it, based on multiple sources, not necessarily just your own. It's gonna take that first-party data or that first-party sort of base content and then it's gonna try and corroborate that and sort of like let you know if it's like, okay, well listen, people on Reddit are saying, yeah, it's not, not totally true.

Matt Slater: I, I think this is interesting where the, the nuance comes into it because it's kind of also how Google historically worked it. And, and you could have 10 people saying, "I'm the best singer in the world." You wouldn't know how to separate those, like which one is telling the truth. And if you're a tool, you might have 10 project management softwares saying, "Well, we're the best project management software."

And the way the third-party corroboration works is obviously, and it's the same with Google in many ways, is it tries to bifurcate those things and look at what experiences people are actually having. But where the nuance comes in that's really interesting is, as we were talking about before, when you go down this rabbit hole of well, I'm a small team.

I'm five people. This is what I need. Then there's more information for the LLM to go on from your side to try and pull the best recommendation for you. So it might not always be the same list that Google historically might have shown as the best project management software for small teams. You can really get into the details.

Galen Low: Yeah, that's actually-- It's interesting 'cause it's personalized. So, you know, you and I, we've worked with tools that are like, where do you stand in the SERP, the search engine results page, for this region, for this keyword search? And it's there you are, you know, you're number two. And I don't know if that's necessarily definitive, but it's treated as definitive.

Whereas depending on what people are asking for and what information they've provided, like that list is gonna be different. This is no longer a, hey, as long as I'm number one on every top 10 list, I'll be fine.

Matt Slater: Yeah, precisely.

Galen Low: I wanna come back to the reputation thing and the third-party stuff because, you know, it stands to reason that in addition to your content strategy of things that, you know, you're creating on your website or what have you, you would definitely also want other people on other platforms talking about you.

And you're not just optimizing your own content, you're actually managing a reputation. To your point, this is not necessarily new. Google Search was working this way for a while under the hood but now it's, you know, it's quite personalized and it is corroborating. So I, I guess when it comes to like content strategy, is it, is it worth it to have like a, I don't know, a separate blog or a YouTube channel or to just spend a bunch of time on Reddit or LinkedIn or have your like CEO go on podcasts or, you know, send your like employees to go and like other influencers' posts on, on other platforms?

Does any of that matter? And also if that's the strategy, how does one even measure the impact of whether they're being found and whether the algorithm is actually paying attention to, you know, what they're doing?

Matt Slater: I think firstly, you have so many platforms at your disposal to essentially own and control your own narrative with social media.

I mean, this whole shift, SEO and GEO don't really stand alone as-- They-- While they are their se- their own disciplines- Yeah ... this all just fun- falls under the umbrella of my brand and positioning and how do I want to come across on the internet. So everything that you mentioned from Like thought leadership, whether that's publishing your own content, whether that's going on other podcasts, and just creating authority and establishing that on the internet.

I think the louder you are and the, the more that you can kind of grow your footprint on the internet with the positioning or your opinions, kind of the better. I mean, if the information isn't there, there's nothing for the LLMs to learn from or train on. And so you have to put things out there, and social media is one of those, a blog is one of those.

And I think it, it definitely does favor those people who have an opinion and don't sit on the fence, or if you win an award, you release a press release about it, or having some perspectives on particular things. So speaking sort of plainly and clearly with clarity about this is who we're for, this is who we're not for, and, and spreading that, I think, through all of the tools that you've got available to yourse- to you with social media is definitely something that would form part of a strategy.

And, and as you can tell from when I've been talking, this kind of falls within Like marketing as an umbrella, not just-- We're not just, we're no longer just in SEO and GEO here. And, and it, and so I think it's a good thing. It, it means closer ties and collaboration. Kind of SEO has always lived as, as this weird cousin of marketing that straddles a technical piece, and I feel like these two disciplines of SEO and GEO have been brought more into the fold of marketing and closer to brand and, and that's how it should be.

But to answer the second part of your question about measurement, I, I think this is a piece that's definitely not fully been solved quite yet. You can definitely gauge visibility. There's tools, and you can benchmark yourself against a competitor set for the same terms, and that's all well and good. But I think the one thing that's got even more difficult is attribution.

A lot of people won't necessarily click from even a search result or within ChatGPT anymore, and you might end up with a customer on a call. I mean, if you're talking in terms of like a software platform, the people still need to book a demo, and they still need to get on a call with you, and the click might show that they came directly to your site.

But actually, if you ask them on the call, they might say, "Oh yeah, well, I found you in a list on ChatGPT when I searched for this very specific thing." So quite a difficult time for attribution and, and I wouldn't hold that data too tightly because the actual anecdotal information you get from customers might vary with what you see in your own data.

Galen Low: Yeah. No, that's fair. I've heard stories of you know, agencies going into a pitch and just picking the measurement tool that favors their angle, where it's like, "Well, listen, you're doing great. This tool says you're doing great. You're showing up, you know, and we're gonna come and improve." Or we'll pick the other tool that measures a bit differently or uses a different data set, and we're gonna say, "Wow, look, look at you guys.

You guys are like bottom of the barrel. You know, like any increment is going to you know, make you go gangbusters." But really it's like it's, it's, it's their sales pitch. They're kind of conveniently selecting the data and tool, maybe accidentally sometimes, to be honest. But you know, these tools are like, if I'm picking up what you're putting down, it's not a, it's not a science.

It's, it's much more of an art right now. You might find out anecdotally how people found you, but there's not some, you know, all-knowing attribution tool or engine right now that's saying, "Okay. Yeah, here's exactly where you stand." And to your point, the searches are so nuanced now. It's not ranking for, you know, a grouping of three keywords or like a, you know, a really basic search intent.

It's like you might be quote unquote "Ranking or showing up For just, you know, mom and pop bakeries in Detroit, you know? And I was like, n- it's much more personal and individual. And actually, as you were saying that, like this I, I like what you're saying about this, like the, the relationship between marketing and AI search and how SEO probably should've been all along, even though sometimes it like works in a corner and just like it's more technical and it's, you know, not seen as part of the big marketing machine.

But like it strikes me that the job now is to sort of convince the internet, humans, and machines about your brand and where it sits. And I, I, I actually found it really interesting that you said be opinionated, don't sit on the fence, which definitely means you don- you need to understand your brand.

Like you need to know who you're gonna alienate if you're gonna not sit on the fence. Sit on one side because you know your customer, you know your ICP super well, and it's okay if the non-ICP is gonna be like, "Wow, that's, that's a hot take that I don't believe in." But then also it's like sort of like managing that reputation across platforms.

I didn't expect you to say, you know, make a lot of noise. But when you said it, it makes sense 'cause it, like it needs data and, you know, it needs sort of that content to engage with. But also, that's how people find out about stuff, right? You know, I'm thinking about the content consumption regimen, if you will.

And yeah, there's like the like, you know, almost daily you know, people who post or the podcasts that are weekly, and it's just like it helps me develop a relationship with the brand and have enough inputs in my brain. In frankly, a world that's already very noisy, the things that resonate with me will stand out even like through the noise, and it will convince me that that brand is true.

And I guess what I'm saying is yeah, I, I kind of expected this to be like, oh yeah, tech- like the technical side, you have to do this, or you have to, you know, use this tag or structure your content this way. But it's not. It's actually much more connected with brand, knowing what your brand is, communicating that across, and like convincing people that that is true.

Not just from your own content, but like what people are saying about you on the internet elsewhere and on all the platforms. For me, it begs the question, it's like, okay, well, you're a one-person agency helping brands get visibility in AI search. But this is not just like a, oh, I'm gonna turn this dial and you're gonna be fine.

What is your first move when you go in and start working with a client? Like I know you cut across a lot of different industries but yeah, what's your first port of call to assess where things are at and start making an impact?

Matt Slater: Yeah. I, I first wanna learn from a business what's their ICP, who do they wanna speak to?

And then I match, I basically put that up against what's the website and all of the content that they're putting out across channels, what does that match what they're saying in their ICP and their targeting? And then from there, we can work on a content strategy that I think the first party piece is what I usually focu-focus on as the, like, primary approach is how do we talk about ourselves on the internet and that reach.

Secondarily to that is the third party piece, and looking at how others talk about the brand and how can we impact that? Like, how can we kind of wrestle back a little bit of control of the narrative there?

Galen Low: I really like that. It's like people forget often, or at least like the people I talk to that SEO, AI search, like it's competitive.

It's not set and forget. It's not turn this dial or use this tag and off you go. It's not, you know, white text on a white background with all your keywords. Like this is it actually is evaluating trustworthiness and authority and, you know, there's a lot of inputs that go into it, and it's not one of those things where, you know, someone might have thought, maybe me, but to your point, right, like the, the, the queries that are coming through LLMs and with AI search, like they're not structured that way.

They're much more personalized. They are not gonna be the same answer for everyone. And yeah, I li- I like some of the things that we were talking about earlier, where it's like understanding the pain points of their customers and how they solve them, like needs to be, A, out there on, on the internet to be found.

B, like it needs to corroborate that, and like you're going in, you're doing the research to be like, is there a disconnect between what people are saying online about this brand and what the brand is saying about itself, and does this brand actually even know what their brand is, right? W- where they stand, who they're for, what their ICP is.

And if those things are not true, it's I don't know. We're, we're all things to all people, let's go. We'll sit on the fence, and anyone who has money, we'll take it. And then you know, and we're virtuous and we're, you know, we treat people well. We're one of the best employers. And then meanwhile on Reddit, people are, you know, or Glassdoor, it's getting trashed and panned and this product's no good.

Trustpilot, you mentioned earlier, and some of these sites that have authority, these platforms that have authority that, you know, are known to have transparent human opinions, will sort of start shifting that, like the calculus there. That's interesting.

Matt Slater: Yeah. I, I, I think AI does wanna hear from the brand itself first, but it doesn't mean that it's always gonna take that opinion.

And so if there are a ton of really negative Reddit threads, for example, then that's gonna be factored into the weighting. But to your point, to your earlier point of using like customer data or anything that they've raised issues with, with the, with support. If you put a solution out on the internet, I mean, you could imagine it as you've opened a session with ChatGPT and, you know, maybe they've arrived at the idea that your software is the best one to go with, but then they might start asking really nuanced questions about your pricing or seats available or specific features.

And oftentimes I found that that can be like hidden behind, like within an app or you have to log in and, and AI can't, is not privy to some of that. And I think I saw recently just one software this week who's, who was historically gated a lot of content, so had PDFs and Used it as lead magnets probably.

They said, "Okay, we're gonna un-gate everything. We're gonna publish all that content." And the reason for that is for AI search to see that they're an authority. They've probably done a lot of really good studies and create a lot of first-party data. I think that's another thing that AI is definitely looking for is there's a lack of net new research and first-party data.

You kinda get this loop of somebody publishing statistics. They, they get quoted everywhere, and AI picks them up and also quotes them, and they may or may not be correct. So one of the things, one of the approaches that is really worthwhile if you have capacity is to, to publish net new data and, and information that's gonna help the industry.

And it's just one of the ways and layers of citation and becoming authority in the space. Sorry, went off on a tangent there, but-

Galen Low: No, no, no. I think it's really good because I think the lead magnet thing you mentioned, you know you know, things that are, like, behind a reg wall, you know, give up your email address, get this PDF, otherwise, you know, locked to the internet.

It, it has been a play for so many companies you know, still is. But I, I like this idea of the unlocking of some of this content or even writing the content that you wouldn't normally have thought to write because you're like, "Oh, I don't know. They can call and, you know, they'll-- we'll give them the demo and the pitch, and we'll talk about pricing there, and it's different for everybody."

If you're not having that conversation to your customers on your on your site, in your presence, somebody else is having that conversation somewhere else on the internet. They're gonna be like, "Oh, listen," "they just tripled their rates. You know, the prices is, is, you know, I, I can't afford this tool anymore.

You know, they're the kinda company that's just gonna jack their fees, you know, at a moment's notice to please the board." That, that conversation's gonna happen anyways. So you need to you know, the competitive nature of it is that you need to manage that and provide information around that so that it balances the conversation rather than keeping it, you know, behind a gate.

And I love what you said about the, the reports, right? You're like, it sounds-- it's hard to get data. I, you know, I mean, traditionally it is. It's hard to, you know, publish a, a report and, you know, make it look pretty and, you know, de- develop these things. It takes a lot of time and energy. But I think it's really funny the fact that because that's true, everyone's got it locked.

The people who don't have it locked, the one whatever paper out there is the one that gets cited even if it's wrong.

Matt Slater: Yeah, and, and, and that's-- there's a huge opportunity there because I think the-- what you see is a shift towards the lighter lift things. What can we do now that's gonna impact us next week versus the longer term doubling down on something that m- while it may take longer or more resources or more investment and time, is actually the more worthwhile thing to do.

Galen Low: It's so funny because we're so wired you know, agencies and brands, marketing teams you know, anyone really to look at the machine as okay, you know, what intent should we go after? How can we attribute these clicks to revenue? And then how can we say that this is working? And then basically f- this whole conversation is like, well, you can't do that anymore.

That's not how it works. It's not like this quantifiable number like, yeah, this is your like, you know, AI search score, and this is how much money it's making you. It's like that's all gone now actually, and it's, it's throwing people for a spin because most people do want certainty, right, in their business.

Is our strategy working? Are we investing the right amount of energy to develop these reports for free? Gosh you know, our internal cost is thousands of dollars, and we're just gonna give it away? And the answer is yes, because it'll help. And then the answer to the question, is it helping, is I think so, probably.

Are the leads coming in? There's no like scoreboard to be like, "You spent $4,000 building this PDF. You gave it away for free, but don't worry, you made $18,000 in deals the next week," is not how you see it anymore or measure it anymore.

Matt Slater: Yeah, I, I think for the, the people that want to attribute a direct ROI to an activity is inherently gonna be a difficult task.

But probably the purpose of producing a report in the, like pre-AI was likely for, not for a direct ROI. It was probably to go out for sales and to say, "Look, we know the industry and we understand it, and here's what we've learned about it, and we are now the best positioned people to do X piece of work for you."

Galen Low: Yeah, like there's a thought leadership aspect, yeah.

Matt Slater: Yeah, precisely. And I think a lot of what we see and a lot of the tactics that have been implemented are not really net new ideas. The-- They've been going around a long time. It's just the format and the way that we're putting them across is slightly different now, and there is more of an eye to how a bot's gonna receive this as well as humans.

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One of the things I've been thinking about and we've been talking about in my community is that this is new technology relatively, right? And yes, it's based on you know, some of the search technology that we're, we're used to, but of course, it's new, it's in demand, everybody wants it.

And so, of course, there's people who are, like, trying to game the system or who have a, You know, are, are looking for some shortcut or some way to b- blow their competitors out of the water by, you know, playing a little bit outside of the rules. And I imagine, I imagine... You don't have to name names, but I imagine that you get asked a lot of weird things from your clients.

And in my community, I know a lot of the project professionals or, you know, agency operators and owners account people they're finding themselves, like, navigating these conversations about AI search and having to push back on things that might be unethical or unrealistic. I thought I'd maybe ask just what advice do you have for someone responding to a client or a stakeholder who's asking them to hack their way into AI overviews, you know, using shady methods or, you know, masquerading on other platforms as real humans even though it's them, or flooding, you know, flooding these channels with data that is, you know, m- mostly fabricated.

You know, what-- For these you know, gray area requests, A, what are some of them that you've seen? And B, like, how do you navigate that conversation to be like, "Listen, it's not how it works. This is not realistic," or, "It's not ethical, but here's what we can do instead"?

Matt Slater: I was hopi- I'm hoping it's quite obvious by now that cutting corners is really not the way to go.

We, we had this with SEO the first time around, and we've got another go around this time with GEO. One thing I've actually seen is LLMs are actually learning quite quickly. They're implementing some underhand tactics, let's say, and I've seen them actually called out in the results. So here's this list.

These are included, but I, I'll caveat it with this. I think that kind of leaves you with a bit of brand reputation work to do rather than the growth work that you would rather be doing, because if somebody sees that in your business, and especially in the C-suite, I don't think they're gonna be too fond of having a caveat at the bottom, despite the fact that you're in the list.

So I, I built my home-- my whole business model kind of around demystifying legitimacy in AI search, and I think I'm probably a person to ask this question to. I think, like, when you're speaking to someone who claims to be an expert, I, I think don't be afraid to do your due di- due diligence. Like someone that's deep in the details and is working in the arena consistently, they're not gonna be afraid, they're not gonna shy away from transparency and a communication style that kind of meets you where you're at.

I would wanna see typically some verifiable results, some case studies, testimonials, and referrals. I mean, this kind of classic if you were to vet an agency or a person or, or anyone for a job if you're hiring someone. And then like red flags I would look for are guarantees. Like- Mm ... there are no guarantees that can conceivably be made in this current state of AI search for we'll get you into this list.

And things like the buzzword. If you feel like you're being purposely confused by jargon, then it's probably a flag that, that the person is trying to do that just to, to sell you the work. So yeah, I, I think it's fall back on usually your gut instinct is, is quite right when something seems off.

"This doesn't seem like something my brand would do. Why should we start doing this now? It doesn't seem authentic to us." And then due diligence, like I, I think Open and honest conversations with people that you're gonna part- partner with and they're gonna do things on behalf of your brand are really important, and I personally would want to get into those conversations if I was to go and work with someone's brand.

I would expect those questions of me.

Galen Low: I really like that, the, the due diligence part, and like it strikes me even like, well, I don't know if this is like kind of like seeing if the people who make the phone book are good at making phone books, but like you should also be doing a search and asking your LLMs about the, you know, agencies and partners that you're going to be entering into business with for things like it being discovered in AI search.

Because, A, yeah, there, there, there, there should be a presence, right? There should be some kind of like proof that like they've done it before, and the brand itself, like their brand, like an, an AI search agency or a contractor or, you know, fractional consultant or whoever should have a presence that shares their knowledge, and they should be doing the transparency thing versus, yeah, the buzzwords, the mystery, and like the certainty, right?

The guarantees that, "Don't worry, I'll get you," you know, "You'll become," whatever, "number one most recommended person in all of the LLMs for this particular, you know, search intent or query." Doesn't work that way.

Matt Slater: I, yeah, I, I, I think some of the best conversations that I've had w- that have resonated with clients and potential clients are where I say, "Okay, I worked in-" this exact industry or a tangential industry.

I've worked with this brand, here's what we did, and these were the results. I, I don't think you can really throw too much argument when you kind of lift the lid and it's I don't think it's going too far to present that information. That's kind of, like, how you build your reputation. This is brand building for me personally, right?

So anyone that's kind of afraid to do that probably hasn't done it before or hasn't got the results that they're claiming to get. So yeah, I, I think that makes the whole conversation a lot easier when you're able to show the work that you've done, and that's your yeah, your body of work essentially.

Galen Low: Guess that's why you called your agency Receipts, isn't it?

Matt Slater: There's a little bit of that, yeah, exactly. That's why I said I'm a good person to ask this question to. I believe I've got a few receipts to share, yeah.

Galen Low: What stands out to me also is that it's an understanding of the ecosystem, not an understanding of the current state of how the technology is assessing trust and surfacing results for people.

It's much more, you know, I I hate to say it, but it's it's much squishier than what most businesses are seeking out to begin with. They're like, "Well, I just wanna show up every time someone searches for door manufacturers, website builders, or whatever, anywhere in the world I wanna show up." And if someone's like, "Yeah, I can guarantee I can make that happen," then they probably follow it.

But also the way to have incremental success in this arena right now is actually more back to basics. Brand, talking about yourself, being transparent, building actual trust, not like shortcutting to trust, but building actual trust with real people across the internet, across the world building trust with these LLMs who are trained to look for underhandedness and are, like, built to call it out.

To your point that, that would be awful. Could you imagine the little caveat that's "Oh, but you know, I, I, I should mention that-" Galen's actually an underhanded bastard. I don't think that could be a thing.

Matt Slater: I, I, I think the truth is there's a lot of pressure from C-suite and CEOs, founders, CMOs that want results tomorrow.

And the reality of this work, much like with SEO, is that it's, it's compounding. It's consistent applied effort over a period of time. And you can look back in a year or two years and say, "We, we did this newsletter. We published this newsletter, this podcast once per week. We published this content to grow our authority in this space."

And that is the thing that I would hang my hat on. I, I wouldn't go so far as to say guarantee, but I would say you, you're probably gonna see some growth if you're applying yourself in the right areas consistently. And oftentimes that's kind of what we call the boring work. It's like putting in the hard yards and you reap what you sow somewhere down the line.

And that's not to say that all of this has to take six, 12 months. I think you just need to build a foundational approach that you believe in, and this whole shortcut that might get you a few months of visibility before the rug's pulled out from underneath you. I think the lower risk path has a much better payback period, and it's worth the investment in upfront to build, like what you said, it's, it's trust to build a brand and how do we represent ourselves on the internet now with AI search involved.

Galen Low: I love that. Yeah, and I, I love that sort of consistent applied effort and patience, right? And I think I've worked in a lot of organizations where, you know, that's our Achilles heel. It's like we might have had a great idea, but we didn't stick with it because it didn't go viral or because it didn't get 300 reactions on LinkedIn or because, you know.

But that sort of like conviction, belief in the brand and the problems that it's solving for the people that they are, you know, there to support. Like it's so back to basics. It is, you know, you need to have a strategy. It is, you know, talking about yourself. It is understanding who your customer is.

But it's not well, I need to be inside of every LLM's brain and understand how all of these things work and get like deep in, you know, in, in the tech side of things, looking for a shortcut versus actually just running and supporting a business that's about something.

Matt Slater: Yeah. And, and the pressure is right on the money.

I think you see, as I said, CEOs, founders, CMOs who want the thing tomorrow, and you've got agencies come in who will be like, "We'll get you this thing tomorrow." So that, that meets their need and, and, and they'll be inspired by Twitter thread or A LinkedIn post that shows whatever growth in whatever short period of time.

And I've also seen so many threads that also then go back after two or three months, and that graph is heading not in a direction that you would want it to. So I, I think that's why I talk a lot about kind of cutting through the noise to get to the signal. The noise is all of this going around inside the business.

If you're in charge of growing your organic presence and you've got a lot of stakeholders who believe that it can be done tomorrow, I think that's the one of the more difficult things to manage as somebody working internally in a business.

Galen Low: I feel like I can't let you leave without us talking about zero-click searches.

I know we touched on it at the beginning. Lots of folks, you know, are asking questions to LLMs and, you know, other search tools and getting answers, but maybe not clicking through actually to a website at all, maybe never even visiting it. And, you know, for, for you and I, like we know there's entire businesses out there whose existence relies on acquiring traffic through search.

And while I know that like LLMs and AI search, like they'll have the citations and everything there, like you said, right? Like it'll, it'll say where the information's from. You can click through, but you know, I don't know, and I think you mentioned it like earlier, right? Like stats are saying that you can get your answer and not click on a thing even if the link's there.

And actually for a lot of searches for me, I'd almost rather not visit a website at all, right? I'll just get the answer and I, I have my answer. I don't really need to click through. But my question is will all searches become zero-click searches in the future? And if so, what kind of changes do organizations need to make to their business model to like account for that?

Matt Slater: I think what, what you're alluding to is more and more true for informational terms. So what time zone is New York in? Or who's the Prime Minister of the UK? A thing that can be answered within a search result, whether that's in ChatGPT or Google, and you see it now, and you don't need to go anywhere.

You've got your answer. That's what you came for. You didn't know who the UK Prime Minister was. You now know, and you can go away. You might click into who their spouse is. But if you search for something like, let's use an example that we used before, like a what is a project-- what's the best project management software for a 12-person team working across these time zones, needing this amount of seats?

You still need to do that research. The person still needs to book a demo. They still need to arrive on your website and interact with you. And as I said, this might come directly as a channel, but they'll arrive much more well-informed, well-researched, and essentially comparing clicks with clicks of one year ago, two years ago, five years ago is just a complete misnomer.

You will have a graph more often than not that goes down. When you actually start to speak to customers and you realize that they're really well-informed, they know your products, they're almost ready to convert, you don't have to do all of this legwork on the sales side because, to answer the second part of your question about how do you manage that and control that, it's just perfect.

Close the circle of it's the content that you put out about your business your features, your support, your FAQs how do you represent yourself as a brand? And this is that whole ecosystem we've been talking about the whole time you need to build. Someone is making their own mind up They're just using ChatGPT or Claude to help them refine that and give yourself the best opportunity to be the one that is ticking as many of the boxes that the person needs.

Because as you see with every ChatGPT or Claude search, it-- You will get a question at the end. You-- It will be more interactivity. There'll be infinite interactivity if you want it. And so at some point, you will get it down to one or two things. I think, yeah, the, the better you can build your presence and the clarity with which you do that is you're gonna stand yourself in good stead for being surfaced more.

Galen Low: It's a really good point. The word that comes to mind is quality of traffic. I don't even know if that's the, the right word. But they've already started engaging with your brand before they started engaging with you. And as a result you know, I, I think it's a good point. You could be looking at a chart that's oh my gosh, we have you know, we've lost 90% of our clicks from from search.

But it might be the case that it's just filtered out all the people who are looky-loos trying to figure out if they were the right ones, you know, and maybe just bouncing off the site, versus the ones who are like, "Yeah, I, I'm, I'm already kinda convinced that this is the right path for me based on a conversation I had with an LLM.

And now I'm going to engage," and the, you know, whatever. I'm, I'm thinking of it as a funnel. Not everything's a funnel. I, I get that. But, you know, in a funnel world, it's like, okay, well, they're already aware. They're, you know, they're not coming in cold off the street. They've already self-identified as, you know, someone with the problem that you can solve, and they've already kind of decided that this is something worth looking into.

You're already four steps into the sales process with something that's pretty much qualified, I guess, in my books, right? Someone who's kind of qualified themselves, opted in, showed up, started a conversation. That's meaningful. It might even be the same number of people once you cut out the traffic of people who just kind of, decided it wasn't for them and left.

So yeah, maybe there is more attribution than one might think is still gonna show up, right? As, as how successful your business is, pipeline and, and steadiness of you know, like the reputation of your brand and how it talks about itself. Yeah, it might not be like, okay, yeah, we turned this dial and that tripled the clicks from, you know, from Claude, and now, you know, I can say that tripled our revenue.

Not exactly that model, but still there's like a, okay, well, it's still servicing the business. It doesn't mean that nobody finds out about our brand. It might mean that, whatever, the lead magnet that was a glossary of terms, yeah, that might not pull people in anymore, right? They're gonna get their answer from search even, not even just AI search, right?

Now it's gonna show up in the answer box. They're gonna get their answer, off they go. But if they're looking to transact and look for, you know, a business or a brand for something that, you know, matches their need, that's still gonna lead to engagement.

Matt Slater: 100%, you're right on the money, and I think this is why when you go back to something like measurement, you need to factor in revenue leads pipeline and the conversion rate of those, because I'm sure people in the business would take less clicks if their conversion rate went up by the equivalent amount.

And as to your point, higher quality traffic, much warmer leads, much more ready to convert. There's a lighter lift on the sales team and That's a better scenario all around than a ton of traffic that is just gonna bounce or are not relevant or they're just completely not for what you need.

Galen Low: Yeah. Totally agree.

And actually, I mean, you know, it's funny 'cause we started this conversation-- Honestly, I entered this conversation being like, we're gonna talk technical, like nerdy LLM stuff, and like how, how it works and, you know, how it's predicting and, you know, gathering information. But it ended up being more about brand, which I kinda love, to be honest with you.

And then I, I, I like this idea that like SEO teams and sorry if I'm painting SEOs with a brush here, but has always kind of, in places I've worked, like that team kinda sits somewhere left of center, like off to the side. It's tied into things, but it kind of stands freely. No one really gets what they do.

They're kinda like these sorcerers in the corner. Versus when it comes to AI search, it's now-- It's, it's, it's much more to me, it makes much more sense to look at it as part of the engagement funnel. Not just putting up a billboard and hoping somebody, you know, dials the number on it, like side of a highway kinda stuff.

This is actually like starting the conversation so that you're getting like, yeah, qualified leads like fewer poor fits, to be honest with you. And it's like part of that process of starting that dialogue. And I, and I know the marketing people are like, "Yeah, duh," like that's what we've been doing this whole time.

But I like this idea that that conversation with AI in the search process, still part of the conversation with your brand, so that when they get to you, it's already a, a pretty good fit. And it's almost like a referral. We were talking in the green room about referral business and it's, it's done that legwork.

But in order to get there, you need to do the legwork and talk about yourself and know what you're about and put it out there into the world and have it match what people say about you in order for it to actually pay any kinda dividends. But it still can. It's not like that revenue model is gone.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there's some, you know, pay-per-click models that are probably getting very disrupted right now. But in terms of most businesses with services on offer or products to sell, then, you know, that's-- The, the search bit is still important. And even if it's not like everybody clicking to find out what you're about, it could be about some people clicking because they know that you're about what they're about.

Does that make sense?

Matt Slater: It makes a lot of sense, and if people get the, the impression that you want them to have and they are a good fit, they will find their way to you and through all the information that they just soak in f- that you've pub- that you've published. So it-- The, the good part about this is SEO and GEO is moving closer to marketing and brand, and that can only be a good thing.

There's never been a world where they should really sit distinctly apart. Marketing is inherently technical as it is creative, and I think a good mesh of those two things really makes for like a, a, a really strong search campaign. Sort of how am I showing up online? That's- ultimately the, the channel, channel spread.

Galen Low: I won't ask you to give away all your secrets on the podcast. But you know, clearly you've got a deep understanding of the ecosystem and, you know, how AI search works and what, what brands need to do to sort of be discoverable there. But for folks who wanna learn more about you and Receipts, where can they go?

Matt Slater: Yeah. I publish tools, guides, case studies. I lift the lid on The specific tactics that I see working on my website that's receipts.agency. I also have a YouTube channel under the same name. I also share some insights on LinkedIn under my name, Matt Slater.

Galen Low: Matt, thanks again. Hey, just for fun, do you have a question that you wanna ask me?

Matt Slater: I do. I'm always curious about how people use AI and interact with ChatGPT or Claude. So I'm curious personally, what's something that makes you trust ChatGPT or a Claude recommendation? Whether you're making-- Whether you're buying a new camping stove or a new piece of software, like, what, what's the turning point for you that really is "Okay, I have made my decision now"?

Galen Low: I think that's so funny because I think you know, you and I and the companies we've worked for I almost know too much now about, like, how all these things work, and I'm, Which is makes me infinitely happier about what you're saying about how AI search works because, you know, it-- Back in the day or not so long ago, it was like, it, you know, there's a lot of pay to play out there.

There's a lot of you know, best toaster oven is the same toaster oven for whoever has the deepest pockets. So I like, I-- It's funny, like at home, like my sister-in-law, she'll be like, "Oh, you know, we're, we're, you know, I, I-- ChatGPT and Claude both say that this particular carpet is the carpet that we should get."

And my immediate reaction is I don't trust that. Like I because there is so much sort of history of like marketing to be on that list. But for me, it, it, it is that, and it's interesting watching how, you know, the, this technology's advancing because it is still in its best interest to be able to parse what is trustworthy and what is not.

Yes, it's an ad platform in some cases like Google, and yes, there's business behind it, and there's money, and there's data, people's data, and everything like that. Yes. But also, it's in their best interest to have something that will surface something that's trustworthy by doing the due diligence, by, you know, like finding different sources.

And I think that's like the turning point for me is like where I can kind of like attach a couple things that I already trust, you know? Maybe it's yeah, you're, you're Wirecutter people, right? Or maybe it's just this forum, or maybe it's because it's these like random you know, anonymous people that I kinda recognize on Reddit because they talk about this sort of stuff.

And that kind of you know, I'm collating all that information. I'm still putting it together myself. I'm not sort of relying on AI search to be like, "I did all the legwork for you." But I think yeah, my, my, my indicators are where I've attachment to trust that I've already built somewhere else.

And yeah, ultimately it's in a lot of cases it's the human perspective, not necessarily what a brand is saying about itself. That's important too because that's a decision. But also, you know, who are people that I trust who have, you know, talked about this, and how can I assess that? But honestly, a lot of the time it's like, gut Right?

And I think that's the thing. You know, coming all the way back, like full circle, yes, we have all this technology, all these tools, all these techniques, all these playbooks for, you know, getting results to grow businesses and blah, blah, blah, but a lot of the time people making decisions about this stuff, it's just does it resonate with me?

And you know, have I given my... Have I... Is there enough information out there to validate what I'm feeling in my gut?

Matt Slater: That's, that's a hell of an answer. But no it's, it's human behavior, and I th- I think a lot of people would be nodding along with your answer. I think you feel like it comes from your gut.

Part of that might be the psychology of advertising and placement. I think the, the use of influencers and social media is undeniable that they can and will influence. So there are many ways to get people to arrive to a decision, but super interesting. Great answer.

Galen Low: Great question. Matt, thanks so much for coming on the show. It was always great. It's always great chatting with you.

Matt Slater: Galen, the pleasure was mine. Thanks so much for having me.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for this episode of Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening.