SEO veteran Matt McGee shares how he helps real estate agents build lasting authority online without relying on paid leads. From content strategy to IDX challenges, it's a masterclass in long-game SEO for an industry that loves shortcuts.
https://page2pod.com - We sit down with Matt McGee, founder of the SEO Savvy Agent, to unpack why most real estate agents struggle with SEO, and what to do about it. From earning organic leads to dealing with IDX duplicate content, Matt shares decades of experience from journalism, in-house SEO, and working alongside major digital platforms.
This episode is essential for any real estate pro ready to ditch paid leads and build a long-term, sustainable SEO strategy that actually works.
🎧 Whether you're a realtor trying to scale your business or a marketer navigating AI disruptions, this episode is packed with timeless and tactical wisdom.
🏘️ In This Episode
• Why short-term real estate marketing fails
• Matt’s career shift from media to real estate SEO
• The real reason most agents resist SEO and how to overcome it
• How IDX listings create massive duplicate content issues
• Why Google trusts brands with branded search volume
• Using E-E-A-T principles to create standout real estate content
• The reality of AI in real estate search (it’s not there yet!)
• A powerful story about career transitions, personal loss, and resilience
• How Matt helped his wife become the top agent in her region
• Practical KPI tips every agent should track today
This episode is your blueprint for building digital authority in an industry that resists change. 🎯
✅ Enjoyed Matt’s take on long-term real estate SEO? Hit Subscribe so you never miss another expert-packed episode.
💬 Have you tried moving away from paid leads in your real estate business? Drop a comment below and share your experience!
🧰 Key Resources & Tools Mentioned
• Matt McGee on LinkedIn
• The SEO Savvy Agent Official Site
• Cari McGee Real Estate Team
• Sierra Interactive Real Estate CMS Platform
• Search Engine Land
• Ask the Realtor Content Series
EP095_Matt McGee
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Jon Clark
In real estate, the leads are either bought or earned. But what happens when the market cools and the ad budget runs dry? Matt McGee is the founder of the SEO Savvy Agent, a consultancy that helps real estate professionals get found organically. Before that, he was a journalist, an in-house SEO, and even worked at a major digital marketing platform. He's seen how agents lean on short-term wins and why that's a problem. This episode is about the long game.
how SEO content and reputation building stack up against the quick fix of paid leads. We talk about the business model of real estate marketing that this agents buy into and why Google shifting landscape makes things both harder and more hopeful. The real story is about trust, how to build it, how to rank for it, and why most agents don't. walks us through what a sustainable marketing strategy looks like in an industry that's often anything but. Matt's challenge is convincing agents that SEO is worth the wait.
especially when the pressure to close deals fast can override long-term thinking. So Matt set out to do something different, to teach agents how to build authority the slow, sustainable way. And he's learned a lot about what actually works and what definitely doesn't. Here's our conversation.
Jon Clark
Welcome to episode 95 of the Page 2 Podcast. As always, I'm your host, John Clark, and join with my partner in crime at Moving Traffic Media, Joe DeVita. I were very excited to welcome Matt McGee to the show. Welcome.
Joe DeVita
Hi
Matt McGee
Hey guys, thank you, it's great to be here. How are you doing?
Jon Clark
Not too bad, it's a busy start to the than slow, right?
Matt McGee
Yes, exactly. Always good to be busy.
Jon Clark
so what did the dive right in? You've had such I don't know, a unique and interesting background that started in sort of TV and broadcasting. And then around the 1990s, you sort of moved into web development and we had a great conversation, with Marshall Simmons, who also is sort of an OG in this space. And he talked a lot about just, there not being a lot of resources to learn from.
Matt McGee
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
⁓ yeah.
Jon Clark
And so I was curious from your perspective, like how did you, sort of make that move and also find resources about an industry that was so new?
Matt McGee
Yeah, I, it was, ⁓ it was, it was, it was like, look back on it very fondly right now, just because, you know, nostalgia and that kind of stuff, but boy, it was really different. And it was, it was, yeah, it was very, very difficult back then. I mean, I, I made, I started doing like hobby websites and building personal websites and just absolutely loved it. And I was doing TV sports and, you know, in a small town and, you know, lugging around.
You see camera people now that they have these little, it's really easy to carry. Back then, the camera equipment I was carrying around was 40, 50 pounds and I'd have to run up and down the football
Jon Clark
my God.
Matt McGee
field for three, four hours on a Friday. I was just like, this is not for me. I'm getting too old for this. I just decided I was having so much fun doing the website. I was like, let's try to make a business out of it, make a career out of this. There happened to be a local company that was hiring. That's how the transition happened.
Like finding resources though, you're right. It was, it was really difficult. There were, there were some, some, some, you know, very few websites out there where you could learn about stuff like that. There was like, I remember there was like Adobe Photoshop two or three or something, that probably had some help documents, but it was very much like learn as you go, figure it out as you go. And a whole lot of, of R and D like, and by R and D, I mean, rip off and duplicate like.
Boy, I really like that website. I really liked that design. I really liked that content. How much of it can I learn how to do myself? that was a whole lot of it. And then SEO came along, you know, like we would build, we would build websites for local companies here in, ⁓ in Tri-Cities Washington. And they would be like, they'd come back like six months later and say, we really love our website, but nobody can find it. Like, you know, we're not getting any, how do we get traffic? So I kind of had to, you know, like teach myself SEO and.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm.
Matt McGee
Thank God Danny Sullivan had his, whatever he used to call it, the webmasters guide to search engines or something like that. That's sort of how it all started, I guess, back in the day.
Jon Clark
Well, mean, it's kind of interesting because remember reading a ton of your content on search engine land. because that was when I was starting to learn about SEO, you know, the, 2013 era, you know, and I know you left there around 2017, but,
Matt McGee
Okay.
Jon Clark
You know, it's kind of fun to talk to you because I feel like you were that resource that you didn't have when you were learning about web development, because I've read so much of your content, ⁓ you know, through that platform. but when you left search engine land, I remember reading something and, and, you know, there were just a lot of like, posting, you almost acting like you were going away from the industry completely. was that like?
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Jon Clark
Did it feel like you were, you know, stepping out of SEO given that you were such high visibility at that point or, know.
Matt McGee
Yeah. I mean, I mean, in all honesty, I didn't know what I was next. ⁓ I didn't really have a plan at that point. it was, I had been thinking about, so I, so I started working, I started writing for search engine land. think it was around 2008 and then, you know, I was a columnist and then became like a staff writer or something. And then became, I don't remember the exact titles we have, but it was like, like three steps. then around 2013, Danny.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm.
Matt McGee
was, was going to leave his role as editor in chief and like take over this. Like. Again, I don't remember the title was like in charge of all content for the websites, the conferences, the Legion angle, right? The whole thing. And so like I became editor in chief and all that sort of stuff. And it was wonderful. Like, like I looked so fondly on those days, like the, like the meetings we would have, we, like at every SMX show.
We would get together the staff and just have like editorial meetings. And I just wish those could have lasted all afternoon. It was so, but we obviously had
Jon Clark
Hmm.
Matt McGee
to get to our next sessions, you know, to, do the moderation stuff. just, it was just like, I loved it so much, but I, my kids were getting older. they were getting ready to go away to college. Coincidentally, Danny has kids, two boys about the same age as mine.
And so he was thinking the same thing and he made his announcement to the staff that, Hey, I'm going to be stepping away. You know, I want to spend more time with my kids. And, and I was like, dang, I was going to say that like, God, if Danny's leaving, how I can't go. Right. Like what's going on? But it just got to, I think it just got to a point where I was like, well,
Jon Clark
Ha ha ha ha.
Matt McGee
After I, after like a month or two, was like, look, even if it's going to cause like all kinds of problems, I'm ready to leave as well. You know, my kids are getting older. They're going away to college soon. I want to spend more time with them. I want to, you know, do all that sort of stuff. I think, I think like that was like probably the main thing going on. This is going to get this. Here we go. Here's the point of the conversation where we go off in an, in an area where you probably weren't expecting.
Jon Clark
Let's do it.
Matt McGee
My dad died in 2015. my mom was very ill in 2016 and 17 and we, knew she didn't have much time left. She ended up dying a few months after I left search engine land. think I left in July. She died in October. I was not in a good place mentally. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was going through situational depression. Like I was like, it was just like, that just wrecked my world when my parents died. And so.
Like I think under the surface, like on the surface was the stuff with, know, just wanting something new, wanting to be more time with my kids under the surface, everything going on with my parents dying and being in poor health. I think that was just like, just like that was the subconscious thing. ⁓ so yeah, it was just, it was, it was a difficult time. didn't have any plan at that you know, but, but I knew that, you know, my wife was in real estate. She had been in real estate.
at that time for 13 years and had a pretty successful career, more successful than most agents. Like she was selling 20, 25 homes a year. The typical real estate agent sells about 10 homes per year. So she was doing well, but like she wanted to go to the next level. And so like, knew if worse comes to worse, I could just like become her marketing guy. I think I probably sent some resumes, some applications out.
Ultimately just decided all right lights I'm just gonna join her, you know be part of her real estate and we were just gonna become like You know a team kind of thing. So yeah, it was a lot going on You know when I left search engine land that there was I didn't realize it at the time But like what was going on with my parents I think was was really impacting me as well And I didn't realize that till years later. So
Jon Clark
Yeah, it's crazy how situations like that can impact you mentally, but also sort of set you up for success in the future. ⁓ Meaning you make decisions that you may not have otherwise made, but in some ways it's probably the right decision if maybe you look back on it.
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
And you don't realize it until years later.
Jon Clark
Right, exactly. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That's a pivotal point in both your career and personal you talked about your wife's real estate company, and I thought it was really interesting that you sort of been surrounded by real estate your entire life for the most part. Your dad, correct me if I'm wrong, it was 50 years he owned a brokerage?
Matt McGee
Yeah, something like that. was, started in 1953 and I think he retired in 2001. Something like that. my gosh. Yeah.
Jon Clark
And I was struck by just because you have other family members, I think, who are also in real estate and then your wife as well. Were you sort of, you know, intentionally staying away from real estate just given that you were surrounded?
Matt McGee
Yes. ⁓ heck yeah. was, I
I was a kid, my God. Like, like I played little league baseball, you know, and my dad could never be at the games because he was too busy.
Jon Clark
Hmm.
Matt McGee
every night, you know, showing houses to people and working with his clients and all that sort of stuff. And on, you know, literally you play on weekends while on weekends, he's out doing his open houses and all. So, I hated real estate, you guys. my God, there was no chance I was ever going to get into real estate. Yeah, it was awful. Like I like I was like, Nope. And then even like when my wife
Jon Clark
Okay. Okay.
Matt McGee
like we got married in 91 and she worked in retail and you know, did like management, you know, lens crafter stores and Maurice's and Eddie Bauer and that sort of stuff at
our local mall. But then she was like, I think I want to get into real estate. I'm like, no, God, no, don't do it. So yeah, I resisted forever. The whole real estate thing just.
Jon Clark
Yeah.
But now you're knee deep in it. So let's talk about it a little bit. We have a couple of real estate clients. My first real agency role was at an agency in San Diego and their primary vertical is real estate. So I've been sort of in and out of the industry for many years as well. And I think there's
Matt McGee
Like.
Jon Clark
One thing that smaller, maybe real estate agents or just agents starting out always face is this idea of buying leads, right? You have platforms like Zillow and Nextdoor and like all these other types of sites where you can solicit and buy leads. And, you know, just in reviewing your LinkedIn content, there's, you know, constant references of don't do that, like invest in a long-term strategy. So I'm curious, like,
When you start working with a Realtor who is doing that, how do you ease them off of that lead stream in exchange for building something that is a little bit longer term, but maybe not something that delivers the results as immediately?
Matt McGee
It's very, very difficult as I've learned the hard way over the last couple of years, because there is such, there's a huge portion of the industry that is very, like needs that instant gratification and is not focused on, you know, what does my business look like a year from now? What does my business look like five years from now? I think,
like the biggest problem, there's systemic problems with real estate. Number one is that it's way too easy to get your real estate license. Like it is easier to get a real estate license than to get licensed to cut people's hair.
Jon Clark
Okay.
Matt McGee
like, know, like just about any industry that you find that requires licensing, it's probably more difficult to get that license than it is a real estate license. It's just way, the bar is so low.
you get a lot of like people who like they're on social media, they're scrolling Instagram, they see all the realtors doing, you know, their glamour shots where the dude is like
leaning up against the Maserati, you know, just finished my listing appointment or the, the gal is sitting on the, you know, the Island in the kitchen of the luxury home and they make it look easy. And so a lot of people get into real estate, just with no idea that
Jon Clark
Sorry.
Matt McGee
how difficult it is to find business. like there are stats, there's internal stats that's like something like 87 % of real estate agents fail within five years. And which is just, it's just a crazy number, right? Like if you knew that, why would you get into this industry? And so,
Jon Clark
All right.
Matt McGee
I don't know, it's very difficult to convince them that SEO is something they should be doing.
because they don't have the patience, their business is not built on.
the patience and the long-term thinking they're like, my Lord, where is my next lead coming from? Where is my next sale coming from? If I don't get another lead or another sale in the next month, I'm going to have to go get a part-time job. it's, it's, it's very, how do I do? I mean, I, I'm not really good at it I'm being honest with it, because like I've been doing, you know, my own business for the let for two year, a little over two years now. And like, I really struggle to convince agents that.
that they should be doing this. so I'll say like, I posted this a year and a half ago and I said, you guys should probably be focusing on SEO. Imagine what your business would look like now if you took my advice then, right? And it just, I don't know, think it just like, goes over, it goes over their heads.
Jon Clark
Okay.
Joe DeVita
I don't, saw
on your, your people can just request a consultation with you through your site. They need 30 minutes, a Q and a or an hour. They don't want to become a retained client. are you mostly talking to those up and coming? This is my first year in the business. I need, I need some advice. mean, those guys are just chasing their next meal. You know, like how do I survive this year? Or who, who are you speaking to mostly? Who's reaching out to you?
Matt McGee
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
That so in, starting my own business, that right there has been the number one problem in figuring out who I am speaking to because, like finding my audience, because I thought like, like SEO has never been a priority for most real estate agents. So, so, so a couple more stats that may blow your mind. according to the national association of realtors, they do an annual member profile every year.
Only 28 % of realtors don't have any website at all. 44 % just have the, like the generic one or two page website that their brokerage gives them. And then the other 28 % are, are agents that have an actual website, the way you and I think about websites. like one out of four agents barely have a functioning website, um, which is just crazy. Right.
so I went into this thinking, I'll just show them. Like if, like they're, they're always like,
buyers and sellers are on, you know, social media every day. So I'm going to be on Instagram, which is true, but buyers and sellers, as we, the three of us know, they might be on social media every day, but they're not looking for real estate agents every day on social media. They're not looking for homes for sale every day. so like, nobody goes to Instagram and types homes for sale in location, right? They know they don't go to Instagram typing.
who's the best real estate agent in location, right? They go to Google for that. And so I just thought if I showed them, by the way, all your, the people that actually are looking for you are over here on Google. Maybe you should be too. I thought it was going to be easy, but no, maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just a terrible salesperson. I don't know, but it's been very difficult to get them to understand that.
buyers and sellers are over here are the ones that are ready to buy and sell and find an agent are over on Google. They're not just like swiping down their Facebook feed and all that sort of stuff. It's yeah, it's really, really difficult. so Joe, to get back to that thing about the consultation that I offer on my website, the only agents that ever sign up for that are ones that already appreciate SEO. And so like, like I never get,
a tire kicker or somebody signing up for that to say, you know, what is SEO? You know, that kind of stuff. Those folks, they just, yeah, they, they don't, they don't ever reach out. So.
Jon Clark
Hmm.
I mean, I guess in one way that's a more qualified potential lead. But yeah, mean, that's a fascinating stat. One in four don't have a website. I mean, it's...
Matt McGee
Yeah, none at all.
Jon Clark
Yeah, that's, that's wild. you have a obviously very deep background in content and. You know, I think the real estate vertical is arguably one of the most difficult from a content perspective for a variety of reasons, which hopefully we can dig into. One is, ⁓ there's just so much generic content out there. Like everyone is creating moving guides or.
Matt McGee
Crazy.
Jon Clark
you know, tips in X city and that sort of thing. So when maybe a realtor who has a website comes to you and says, Hey, I'm trying to figure out this content thing. It's just not working. And they're putting out, you know, lot of just really generic stuff. Like how do you help them add their own eat or some sort of, you know,
Matt McGee
Hahaha
Jon Clark
to the content that allows it to stand on its own in a very crowded space.
Matt McGee
I would first say that it's not as crowded as you think. I mean, there are some agents in some markets doing some really good work. ⁓ But if you were to Google something like, moving to Columbus, Ohio, Columbus might be too big a city, but like take it down to like whatever the next, Toledo, Ohio, maybe.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm.
Matt McGee
You will probably not find a whole lot of real estate agents in the top 10 for that. You will probably find moving companies. ⁓ You'll probably, you might find Redfin. at the high level, right? Like New York, Seattle, the big cities, Phoenix. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's competitive. But for agents in smaller markets, I see a lot of, of, of open spaces where they, where they can do stuff.
Jon Clark
All right. So.
Matt McGee
What I think they get wrong, no matter the size of the market Jon is
They don't understand what buyers and sellers are googling and looking for so they'll put a lot of content on their website like real estate glossaries and like what is an appraisal and what is a home inspection and all that sort of stuff and
Jon Clark
Hmm.
Matt McGee
the person that, and to be clear, there's a million searches for what is a home appraisal. There's a million searches for what is a home inspection. But those people are already, probably already in the middle of a transaction, right? Because their age is like, okay, well, the next step is we're gonna do the home appraisal. And they're like, we're gonna do what? And so they need to understand, so like I spent a lot of time saying this is what buyers and sellers are actually Googling. They're like, what's the cost of living in this city?
Jon Clark
Well. Thank
Matt McGee
What are the best neighborhoods in the city? What do I need to know about relocating to the city? What are the pros and cons of, you know, this of living in Seattle versus Portland, right? A lot of, there's a lot of comparison searches in real estate. So that's kind of like, that's kind of the main thing. And then the other thing, you know, speaking to EAT and there's like this whole thing, and I'm sure, you know, it's the same in every industry is like,
Well, I'll just have Chat GPT write my blog post and just put it on my blog. And they think that's going to be the miracle cure and it's not the miracle cure. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of misconceptions in there that are happening right now.
Joe DeVita
I've listened to a lot of your podcasts over for a long time and I've heard you say more than once, the general advice is like for a real estate agent, for a small real estate agency, you want to be the expert of your neighborhood. Like try to figure out like how you can be unique to just this area that you're serving.
And I think, I think that probably makes sense for a lot of home services businesses too. Whereas where John and I might have created a content strategy in the past that said, let's try to answer these general questions that people ask when they want to get a new roof or their toilet breaks or the refrigerator's leaking. It doesn't seem like that content really works anymore. Maybe it did a few years ago. It's not working anymore. So now it's with the EAT principle, the advice now is like,
What something you can say unique to this conversation? You've been saying this years.
Matt McGee
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I,
yeah. And I always, I always tell them like, even if you're going to have, you know, Claude or GPT or whatever, write your blog posts, you need to put your Like you've probably had an experience with a buyer or seller where the transaction kind of almost went off the rails or the buyer seller like made this mistake.
You need to tell those stories, right? Like that's, that's, that's your expertise. It's something local about the area maybe that like, that they can't get directly from GPT or Claude or whatever. Like that needs to be in those articles so that you can, you know, stand out, be different, like separate your content from, from the rest. There's an agent ⁓ that I just spoke with last week
She's in San Antonio. She's not a client or anything. She has written some blog posts, very detailed for the state of Texas, for the San Antonio market about VA assumption loans. Very, very niche, very specific. But now you go to Chat GPT and start asking about VA assumption loans in the state of Texas.
She comes up and she says she's gotten like five leads in the last two months just for people talking about like wanting information about VA assumption loans. like, narrow in and be really specific and like talk about your experiences and your expertise and get that on the page. Like I say, like you can be the best real estate agent in your market and have the most sales and all the great reviews.
But if you are not putting your expertise on your website, then Google has no idea how good you are. You have to do that.
Jon Clark
amazing thing about realtors too is they're the ones having the direct communications with the potential buyers or sellers.
They're in a, such a unique position to hear the types of questions that are getting asked like firsthand and just being able to translate or transpose those into, you know, a piece of content with their own expertise or even sort of regurgitating the answer that they gave them, I think is, you know, almost invaluable because a lot of those conversations for clients that we work with happen on the customer service side or with the salespeople and.
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Clark
Unless there's like an effort to sort of bring all that or make that content and those conversations visible, you don't always get that level of detail. these essentially business owners are having that firsthand. There's just so much value in those conversations.
Matt McGee
And I've said this to real estate agents and I wonder, so I'll ask you guys a question. Like, do you find this in other industries? Like I've said, if the buyer or seller is asking you the question, you can bet others are Googling it as well. Is that the same way in other industries?
Jon Clark
Thank
Yeah, I would say, yeah. mean, the volume may be less, but honestly, to your point about VA assumption loans, that volume may not be high, but that person is really targeted. ⁓ Exactly. In some cases, even though the search volume may be less, the few who actually click through are going to be extremely qualified. Arguably, that's the goal, right?
Matt McGee
Yeah, high intent.
That's exactly who you want. Yeah. The ones that are looking for something specific that you can deliver. That's perfect.
Jon Clark
No.
Yeah. wanted to talk a little bit about some technical items specific to real estate. We had Zach Chahalas on the show who manages apartments.com and is part of that larger network. And I asked him if there were any questions that he would want me to ask you. to know about how you
Matt McGee
⁓ god! Too funny.
Jon Clark
⁓ try to manage for duplicate content. right. IDX feeds, NLS, like basically pumping out all the same content. And then you have these, you know, CMS platforms that sort of take all that same content and essentially like repackage it onto the page, which, you know, creates a lot of duplicate content issues. So I'm curious, especially for like smaller. ⁓
Realtors right who may not have like a big technical IT team or something like that Like how do you recommend that they try to manage for some of that stuff?
Matt McGee
It's a huge, huge problem because all the home listings are the same, right? We're all using the same MLS feed and yeah, like it's a huge, huge problem. So different real estate platforms give you different options to sort of like massage or kind of finagle your way through this issue.
⁓ I have been working most recently with, ⁓ a platform called Sierra interactive, which is probably, I mean, if I had to say, if you pulled the industry, they probably, most people would say it's probably the most SEO friendly of all the platforms.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Matt McGee
There are some other ones that, you know, that, are pretty good. so, so like, so like what I do with, with a client is for the IDX is first.
Like what's available to us. And so in Sierra, we will customize the title tag to like be as unique as possible, right? Like there's certain things that you want in the title tag. And Zach knows this from the work he's done with apartments. Like obviously you need the address in there. You need the MLS number in there. But people also tend to search for like they'll, if they drive past a house, then they're going to want to see photos of address or whatever it might be.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm.
Matt McGee
So you just kind of like, like customize the title tag as best you can to, hit on whatever you think people might search. And then Sierra itself has, ⁓ a little thing. I don't remember what they call it in the backend, but you can add custom content to the property detail page.
which will only show on your website. And it's literally the only way that I know to like make that page any different from what's gonna be on the next agent and the next agent's website. And it's really all you can do at that point. And so in my experience and the next real estate SEO you interview and
Zach's experience may be different.
But in my experience, it then comes down to overall strength of the website. Like how much does Google trust your website versus the next agent's site? And the one that it trusts more, Google's gonna say, all right, I'll use their property listings, their IDX listings. Because there's, yeah, I mean, you're so limited in what you can do to play with that data. It's
really, it's really.
Jon Clark
And they're very strict,
right? Like you, you can't, you can't rewrite descriptions and you can't like change. So you're very limited by really what the feed gives you. So yeah, the option to add custom content is, is huge.
Matt McGee
Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
like for most agents, I mean, I mean, you guys know it like my client, if I had a client in Seattle, they're not going to rank for Seattle homes for sale. mean, that's Zillow that's Redfin that's, you know, that's all the, all the big sites, but can they rank for Seattle, you know, Seattle homes for sale?
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm.
Matt McGee
You know, two bedrooms, three baths, whatever it is, like the more specific stuff, you know, near a school or can they rank for homes for sale near, you know, some landmarks, some golf course, the space needle, whatever it might be. That to me is where the opportunity is for the local agent. When it comes to IDX, if you can create these sort of custom landing pages, maybe not, not
at that, at the property level, but at the neighborhood level, there's a lot of room for, ⁓
you know, success there in my opinion.
Joe DeVita
Is it, John, is it too early to make the obligatory jump to AI or we want to?
Jon Clark
I actually noticed we made it almost 20, almost 30 minutes before we had a Chat GPT reference. So I think we're beyond our quota. Let's do it.
Joe DeVita
So Matt, query's getting longer, people getting more comfortable talking to a search tool. Are you looking at prompts at all from, are you trying to understand how the prompts are changing now that people are more comfortable talking, having like full on paragraph queries with the newer search tools?
Matt McGee
here's the thing. a lot of this stuff in my experience, and again, I'm just limited by the sites I have access to and the clients I work with and my wife, obviously as well. a lot of what you hear and see on LinkedIn and Twitter or wherever it might be social media is not happening yet in real estate. So, like my wife's website, for example, gets a lot of Google traffic.
Um, I think she's had only like all year, 2025, what are we were September. I think she's had like 110 visits from AI for the whole year. And so when I see like a lot of the, the, the, the, people in our industry, you know, they post like, you know, Oh, here's my, my Chat GPT traffic and you know, thousands of visits every month. I'm like, that is not happening. In certainly in real estate. And I suspect it's probably not happening a lot yet.
in a lot of small business scenarios. So when I go and I look at longer queries, I mean, don't we all wish we'd had better data on this, but like there was that trick that came out three, four months ago where you do the regex in Google search console to see queries that are at least 16 or 32 words long or characters longer, whatever it is. The funny thing is, at least for my wife's website,
The longer queries are other real estate agents asking how to do their business. Like, wish I could remember what like it's, it's like, I'm a real estate agent. My buyer is wondering, you know, if they are allowed to keep looking at other properties, even though they just had an offer excepted, this okay? And like my wife, my wife gets, gets,
Joe DeVita
That's cute.
Matt McGee
gets traffic for a query just like that. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She did a video. We had a segment that we should probably restart given the way people are asking questions now. We had a thing that she did four or five years ago called Ask the Realtor and people would submit questions and she just answered them in like these two or three minute long videos. We put the transcript online. yeah, so like that's a question that
Jon Clark
Does she have blog content about that? that why? Okay.
Matt McGee
that people ask, but like I said, I'm seeing it's like a lot of other realtors asking that question, like what am I allowed to do with my clients and that kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean, I think it's happening, but I just don't see it as prevalent in real estate, at least in the sites I'm working on. Maybe I'm not as good an SEO as I think.
It's just not as prevalent as what I see some of the folks that do B2B marketing and, know, SaaS and all that kind of stuff.
Joe DeVita
We I mean, consumer behavior sometimes just changes really slowly and we get used to the extra steps we have to take. remember looking for a house and like fell in love with Redfin at the time.
Matt McGee
Mm-hmm.
Joe DeVita
They had every filter that I wanted, you know, let me check all the boxes that I want. But now if you could just say, I'm married, I have two kids, I'm looking for a house in this neighborhood, we would love to have a pool, we definitely want a deck, patio, you you say it all and then something magically appears. It can't be that far away. ⁓
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I want to believe that too. have you done any searches lately? Have you gone to like Chat GPT or perplexity and like typed in like Tucson show me a list of two of homes for sale in Tucson that are between 500 and $750,000. Have you have you have you happen to do that lately? It's the most God awful experience ever.
The reason is they don't have access to that data, right? Like MLS data is highly protected. You have to have contracts and licenses in place and like to like, even to get a website that's allowed to show that data, like the steps that an agent has to go through in the signatures and the broker has to sign up that, ⁓ it's ridiculous. So that data is really protected. So Google doesn't have that data. They can only scrape what's on Zillow. And so the...
GPT and perplexity, you don't have any. So it's just, it's a terrible experience if you do that kind of search on an AI tool. And so like there some platforms that are trying to bring AI into the home search experience, but they're really struggling because people search for things in so many weird and different ways. Like they'll be searching for
a waterfront home in a certain school district or whatever. And then all of a sudden, because the real estate agent put the word water in the property description to describe the fact that there's maybe a little canal, you know, running in the backyard. Like that shows up in the search results and the search results get polluted by how, non uniform the data is. Does that make sense?
Joe DeVita
Yeah.
Matt McGee
Right? Like
it's a really tough nut to crack and I want to believe that it will come soon, but I'm not convinced that it will come soon. think filters on sites like Redfin or a local agent site for the foreseeable future will be the way to find exactly what you're looking for.
Joe DeVita
I agree with you. hope John disagrees just so we can have some conversation. So the other thing, like with Redfin, you know, the filters are great. You can filter in Zillow too. You can filter to exactly what you're looking for, but the result is all visual. And that's how people shop for property. The first thing they want to, like, they get their 10 filters, all those boxes checked in and it's like, what does that, now what does it look like? I'm not ready to read anything just yet. I just want to look at pictures for a while.
Matt McGee
Hahaha!
Mm-hmm.
Joe DeVita
And you can't do that with AI search just yet.
Matt McGee
Right, yeah.
Jon Clark
So, so I just, I just did, I did the search while you guys were talking. did a deep research on perplexity for show me a list of homes in Tucson, Arizona. And it only came back with two. ⁓ which is like a wildly different experience than, than search. And unfortunately I don't disagree with you guys for the conversation perspective, but I think the,
Matt McGee
Right. Exactly. Yes.
Jon Clark
way that all this is moving, right? I think the will be the search experience of the future, but no website is really incentivized to enable that, right? Like even think about the Redfin's and the realtors.com and all these huge sites, they make a ton of their revenue on display advertising, lead volume, right? There's so many of these revenue generating
Matt McGee
Mm.
Jon Clark
components that rely on the actual visitor. And so for them to say, yeah, I want to enable this experience to only happen within an AI environment is kind of counterintuitive to their entire business model. I think, I think when AI first came out, was, it was a lot of that talk. And I think the realities of it are starting to play out a little bit. I mean, in the future,
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Jon Clark
One day, sure, I don't think it's as near as maybe a lot of us thought when ChatGPT first came out. ⁓ Because of all those things, right? Like, how do you displace all that revenue?
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, real estate, just in general, whether you're talking about marketing or operations or whatever it is, is an industry that has been very, very resistant to change. resistant probably isn't the right word because I don't think they, it's not that they don't want change. It's just, it's like kind of been immune to change.
Like, you know, like there are headlines from 20 years ago that, you know, when 30 years ago, guess, no gosh, boy, yeah, it's 20s, 25, but you can go back and find like New York times and wall street journal headlines from the nineties where it said, boy, people are using the internet. We're not going to need real estate agents anymore soon. here, real estate is still, you look at the stats now, like 90 to 92 % of all transactions happen with a real estate agent. Like the real estate agent has been.
just like SEO has been pronounced dead like for decades and decades and the real estate agent is more needed today than ever. it's, yeah, the industry just has, does not change very quickly. It just doesn't.
Jon Clark
There's an expertise associated with being a realtor, you know, that I don't want to have to go out and learn myself. And so that's where the monetary exchange like happens, just as with SEO, like there may be a great marketer, but that person may not know SEO really well. And so again, there's that.
Matt McGee
Mm-hmm.
Jon Clark
monetary transaction in exchange for the knowledge. know, there's, there's value in that profession, I guess is where I was going with that. But speaking of AI, you are very adamant about like, keep scrolling past the doomsday, which I think is where we were sort of talking about already.
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Jon Clark
Like what, guess what tips do you have for people who, you know, are getting sidetracked by the shiny objects or, you know, the people who are saying they're experts in GEO already and things like that. There's a lot of, you know, muddiness to wade through to get to what is actually factual.
Matt McGee
so yeah, I mean, I just, I just keep relying on data for that kind of stuff. Like I was just at a real estate conference, two weeks ago and they were talking, you know, like one of the, the, the people on stage was like, know, you still use Google that's antiquated. I'm like, well, no, I mean, there's actual data that shows, you know, how many people are still using Google versus how many people are using GPT or perplexity or whatever.
And I think, and I think the other thing that, that, that I, I, there have been some posts and you've probably seen them on LinkedIn or wherever, where if you look at like how people, like how people use Google, they, everything you do on Google pretty much is search, right? Like people don't go to Google to have conversations, but if you look at how people use Chat GPT, like the number one thing they use it for is like what personal therapy or something like that. And like self-improvement and
There's Mark Williams cook did a had a post like a month or so ago Where he he showed he'd had a screenshot like there are entire subreddits of people Who are talking about how AI is their boyfriend or their girlfriend and they spend all day? Having conversations with their AI boyfriend and girlfriend and they go and then they get on reddit and they talk about it like today my AI boyfriend told me how wonderful
And I'm like, how much of GPT activity is that versus how much is search? And Profound had some data at some point where it's like almost 50 % of Chat GPT uses is just chit Chat. And I'm like, all right, like just give me the data. like, I, so I just, I just rely on the data. Like I see data like that. like, it is not as big a deal as you are making it.
And I can see the data that on my wife's site and my client sites. And it's just, it's, it's not there yet for, for the people I work with. And if you work in B2B and you are seeing that, you know, that huge Chat GPT traffic go up, then by all means, you know, focus on it more. But for me, it's just not a huge priority right now.
Jon Clark
I don't know if you saw this post from Brody Clark. I think he published it today. It was similar web data that showed the overlap of Chat GPT users who also use Google. And I think it was nearly like 85 % or 75%. So I think there's this perception that
Matt McGee
Mm-hmm.
Jon Clark
A lot of those searches are getting stolen by ChatGPT, but I think to your point, it's just different conversations happening over there. There's still a lot of...
Matt McGee
Yeah. And one of the things,
yeah, one of the things we see in local search, and I see this in some of the other local SEOs that I communicate with, because
in, in GPT or perplexity or whatever you're using, because some like the sources aren't always self-evident. Like it's not easy to find where, know, where to, like a lot of times they'll do a search like, Hey, I need a realtor to help me sell my mid-century modern home in Richland, Washington. Who should I be talking to? And then GPT will give them a list and then they'll go and they'll Google the names, right. To figure out, right. We see that a lot in local search. So like, that's one of the other things that I'm trying to impress upon.
the real state that I talked to is that, like you were just saying, John, it's there's,
there's sort of a, like an additive kind of thing going on here. Right.
Jon Clark
Well, and that's what's so interesting, right? Like the AI engines or models or whatever you want to call them, the search experiences haven't figured out how to allow for that connection, right? So it gives you a list, but it doesn't give you an easy way to contact them from that platform. I now have to go to Google. And so you can just imagine how far away the actual real estate
Matt McGee
Right.
Jon Clark
you know, searching and buying experiences when they can't make even something as simple as that, you know, a pretty fluid process. I mean, it'd be amazing if you could say, okay, contact all of these with this message and, you know, and you know what I mean? Like that would, that would be incredible, but we're, not there yet. But let's, ⁓ let's, let's maybe talk about KPIs because you're seeing some of these things, but
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, that is true. That is true.
Jon Clark
It sounds like a lot of the traditional KPIs that you would evaluate as success from an SEO perspective are still, you know, what we would probably commonly think about. So for, Joe and I, right, when we're thinking about putting a report together for a client, it's things like traffic and leads, and maybe there's some rankings in there. When, you know, you're working on your wife's site or maybe even a client's site, are there different metrics that you're looking at outside of those?
like specifically for realtors that would lead you to believe that things are moving in the right direction.
Matt McGee
Yeah, I think, I think I do. I do still look at a lot of the traditional ones. The, the, the one that I've gotten more interested in in the last six months or so last eight months is branded search volume. Like I
like because we like we know from the the various court documents and whatever and other things that that our industry has discovered is that like Google sees you as more important when people search for you by name right like we all know that that's a thing now that it's kind of been confirmed as much as anything in SEO gets confirmed and so like I probably around like I think was last September so almost a year now I was like all right I need to figure out a way
how do I get people to start searching for my wife more by name? And so we started doing some stuff on social media and here and there and there. And so like right now, when I go into her Google search console, her name, Carrie McGee, is always one of the top queries for her. And that to me is a win. Because I want people, like I want Google to think, hey, people are looking for this agent. She must be good. She must be important. And so when I work with clients, I'm doing the same thing. Look, we need to...
get increase your branded searches. That is a KPI. That is a metric that really matters going forward. So what can we do to get people to search for you by name? So that's probably like the one thing that years ago I didn't look at much, but I really look at now. I think it's really important. And I think if I were, whether I'm working in real estate or any industry, I'd be looking at that. Like, how do I get people to, how much branded search volume am I getting?
Jon Clark
I mean, there is this mantra in the industry of SEO moving more to be like a brand demand channel. Is that something that you, you know, I guess, agree with?
Matt McGee
Yeah, totally, totally in real estate, especially because they're in real estate. There's, as we talked about earlier, there's a whole level of agents that have no idea what they're doing and they're, they're just, they're new, they're inexperienced. And then there's the ones that are more experienced and know what they're doing. And I think
there's a lot of data inside real estate that sell, like when you ask sellers and buyers, like, why did you choose the agent? And they list the reason, like there's a lot of surveys where it shows that they are selecting competence and experience. And so I think you need to like, that's kind of like what I'm trying to get my wife and my clients is like, we need to show your, your, your brand, your experience, your competence. Like you need to be the one that they think of as the.
Jon Clark
I'm to ahead start the question of
Matt McGee
competent, experienced agent that can get me to my goal, whether it's buying, selling, relocating, whatever it is.
Joe DeVita
You ever see a result in those surveys that the person says saw his face on a bench in front of a bus stop?
Jon Clark
Yes.
Matt McGee
Ha!
Jon Clark
Yeah.
Matt McGee
I have never seen that specific one, Joe. mean, I, I mean, that's so good.
I mean, I think there's, there's possibly value to that kind of thing. If it increases brand awareness, like if, like, if, like if we were going to run bench ads for Carrie, I wouldn't put her phone. would say Google Carrie McGee. Like that's what I would do. Cause that, cause that's literally what I want them to do. I want everyone to Google her by name because
Jon Clark
I
Matt McGee
The search results are really good. The Google business profile is really good. And the more search volume for her name, intuitively trust that that is going to boost her business. So yeah, I wouldn't even put her phone number
Jon Clark
All right.
Matt McGee
there.
Jon Clark
I loved on Kerry's homepage and this, maybe this is your wordsmithing, as soon as you land on the page, don't worry. We've done this over 600 times. That's awesome. Love that. Okay, one last I don't know, this is probably a horrible segue, but before we get to the rapid fire and sort of wrap things up, you had a...
Matt McGee
Mm-hmm.
Thank you, I appreciate that.
okay, okay,
Jon Clark
You had a great post on LinkedIn about ageism and trying to find your next role and sort of working through that process. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was about a year ago. And what reminded me of it was your comment about experience. So again, really loose segue, but here we are. And I think if you browse Reddit or happen to...
Matt McGee
Mm.
was.
Ha ha ha!
Jon Clark
look at the news or anything like that, you hear a lot about people who are losing their jobs and things like that. know, both Joe and I are approaching that 50 year old mark. So I'm just curious, if you like, is there anything you would add to that post? We'll link to it in the show notes because it was was great. And ⁓ but do think there was anything you would add to that post in terms of combating ageism for folks who are looking for a job?
now that AI is, you know, another year old, right? And this perception of maybe technology and AI displacing jobs and things like that. I don't know if I'm asking this question well, but I feel like a lot of people could use these types of tips right now.
Matt McGee
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, because it's, I mean, it's certainly not just me. do you guys know who Ted Miller in the SEO industry as well. And he lost his job. Gosh, I, I don't even want to put dates on it because I I'll be wrong. He went through the same thing I went through what, where he is in his fifties and, and started a job search and just
Tons and tons of experience should have been snapped up like that and it took him I don't remember what it was eight months 12 months 14 months something like that for him to find a job it's like it's not just it's not just what happened to me and and for Real briefly. So like I when I went through my home light layoffs in 2023 I started applying for work could not get the time of the day
with like to even get to even get it to interviews. When I did get an interview, it was for roles that I was quote overqualified for and couldn't get hired. I mean, it was just really difficult. And then I found a coach. So there are coaches out there hiring coaches, HR coaches that like specifically work with the 50 plus set. The gal that I found her name is Colleen Paulson. She's on LinkedIn, incredible content that she puts out there.
And she had a post where she said, you've got to, if you're over, you've got to like strip your resume down. You've got to basically make yourself look younger. Like you've got to basically lie, which I hated, right? Because I'm proud of the experiences that I had in, in the nineties and pre whatever year. So anyway, I took her advice. I cut everything pre 2006, I think off my instead of my current
Jon Clark
Red.
Matt McGee
profile photo. I used one from 2013 when I was obviously much younger, when I was still in my forties and guys literally within, I think it was within the first month I had like, it's in the post, the details. was like three or four head hunters reached out to me. I got like three or four job interviews. I got like one offer that was for a job that wasn't really up my alley that I wasn't really that interested in. So I declined it.
But just like the night and day change that happened because I suddenly didn't look like, you know, I was over 50. It was just crazy. that's, mean, that's the backstory. So, so what I would say is if you are approaching your forties or you're approaching your fifties, like this is a known problem in the industry. Like there are stats that talk about how difficult it is for somebody above 50 to get hired these days. I would just say if you're approaching 50 or if you're in your like,
Obviously be aware of this and you better have a backup plan like you better be prepared Like are you gonna start your own business? Are you gonna like switch careers? Like are you gonna get into like? Like become a waiter or waitress or whatever it might be ⁓ Because like it like just the stories people people talk about on LinkedIn It's just it's horrifying the stuff that they're going through just because they're over they're over a certain number
Jon Clark
Yeah. Yeah.
Matt McGee
The average person stays at a job for four years. So why wouldn't you hire somebody who is 55 years old and is can give you four great years of their knowledge and experience and train your younger employees. like, yeah, like HR departments and corporate America is so short-sighted. You're boy, you really got me started. ⁓ I am so sorry, but, but yeah, it's like.
Jon Clark
You You
Matt McGee
Like
I do, I'm glad you brought up, because I do want people to be aware of it. Like it's been going on. I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon. it's just, it's ridiculous.
Jon Clark
Well, now that we got you going, we'll jump to the rapid fire so you can like. All right. What's one piece of real estate SEO advice that makes you want to scream?
Matt McGee
Okay
Alright.
Chat GPT, can put your AI content on your website word for word and you'll do great.
Jon Clark
Is there an opportunity that you turn down in your career that you still think about?
Matt McGee
there an opportunity I turned down? No, I mean, not off the top of my head. There's not, and I I try not to, I try not to, you know, live with regrets or, you know, the decisions you make are the decisions you make and you got to move on. So no, don't think there's, I don't think there's an opportunity that I've ever, that I've ever turned down that I, I'll probably think of one later, but right now, no.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm.
I know you posted a lot about ⁓ Danny Sullivan and sort of how he helped your career, but is there maybe someone else who gave you advice that completely changed the career trajectory for you?
Matt McGee
yeah, I mean, Danny is a good one. Great, great guy. Loved working for and with Danny. wow. I would, can I say my wife? Is that possible? does every year, she does this word of the year that she, announces it in, she, she determines it in December, January. It's her word of the year for the following year.
Jon Clark
Sure.
Matt McGee
And she just kind of like, keeps it in the back of her head and uses it to sort of like guide her son decision. And like, I was just kind of like, like this is the stupidest thing in the world, right? But I decided to do a word of the year this past December and, you know, thought about it and thought about it. And my word of the year for 2025 was go. ⁓ Because I have a tendency to be the type of person that needs things to be absolutely perfect before I take action.
Jon Clark
Hmm.
Matt McGee
But, but I just, I said, just go, just go do it and all this and like that. Yeah. So like this year has been a great, great year personally
and business wise, just because I said, I'm just going to go and I'm just going to do things even if they're not perfect. So yeah. So her, so her, yeah, her advice was really great there.
Jon Clark
Of that, yeah, that's great.
Are you going to do that for next year as well? Yeah.
Matt McGee
Yeah, I think I will.
Yeah, I think I will.
Jon Clark
Love it, love it. What's something about you that would surprise people?
Matt McGee
Something about me that would surprise people. People are surprised to hear that I am an extreme introvert. This kind of stuff, what we're doing comes naturally to me getting on a stage and talking to a crowd comes naturally to me. But standing at a mixer during an SMX conference and having small talk with people I don't know is the most painful. Don't want to do it. Don't want to be there.
Jon Clark
Mm.
Matt McGee
let me go back to my hotel room so I can get online and get some work done kind of thing. I, people, when I say I'm an introvert, they're like, yeah, you were on TV, you speak at conferences and I'm like, no, you don't understand.
Jon Clark
man.
I share some similar feelings about that kind of stuff. Like this is very comfortable, yeah, going to like networking like drinks or whatever is like my nightmare. ⁓
Matt McGee
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, surface
and shallow stuff is not good for introverts. Deeper stuff like what we're doing is easy.
Jon Clark
Yeah.
You ran a very successful YouTube fan site. And so this question is probably perfect for you. What YouTube album would you recommend to a teenager today?
Matt McGee
⁓ Oktung Baby, which 1991, it's the one that has the Fly and Zoo Station and One on it. It's not their, it's their second biggest seller, but generally considered their best album, even better than Joshua Tree.
Jon Clark
us.
All right.
So Joe and I, we don't work directly with our wives, but our wives are also in marketing. So they're sort of, when we get together for dinners and things, it becomes more like work conversation. Curious what you'd recommend to a husband and wife who are thinking about working together.
Matt McGee
get on the same page from the beginning about expectations and borders and all that sort of stuff? Because you have to keep the work from the marriage Separate to some degree that you need to have separate lives
My wife and I actually tried working together about 15 years ago when I much a my way or the highway person. And she was not as coachable as she is now. And it didn't work. And we actually ended up in marriage
counseling. So yeah, that's a, yeah, just get on the same page and talk about expectations and borders and that kind of thing.
Jon Clark
Yeah, I imagine, at least for my wife and I, like with COVID, now we're both, or since COVID, we're both sort of working from home and those lines of personal and work get blurred even more when everything's sort of in the same house. So yeah, those are great tips. All right, last one.
Matt McGee
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Clark
Not including business or professional development books, is there a fiction or maybe a non-fiction book that has really impacted how you think or maybe even your approach to life?
Matt McGee
Yeah. I'm a huge fan of, you guys know who John Wooden is? John Wooden was, yeah, coach John Wooden UCLA college basketball coach for many, many years. there's been many, many, many books written about him. Most of them are wonderful. At least the ones I've read. great, great man, but he has a book and I even see it on my, I can't see it on my shelf.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm. Coach? Yeah.
Matt McGee
there it is. It's, it's simply called wooden. W O O D E N. It is a book of his, of his teachings and quotes, how he taught his, cause he didn't teach his players about basketball. He talked to them about life. Like you've talked to any of his players. They will just marvel about what a great man and teacher he was. that book, like I refer to that book for like quotes and stuff like that constantly. And yeah, just, just.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm. Thank
Matt McGee
It's just called wooden and it comes in a, the hardback at least it's a small, comes in a, ⁓
like a Royal blue cover.
Jon Clark
Love it. Yeah, that's a good one. I'll have to check that one out. I heard Dean Smith was similar, like very into personal lives and teaching about life less, you know.
Matt McGee
Yeah.
And, and I, like, there's a whole, there's a whole generation of coaches who I think like are part of the, John, even if they didn't directly play for or coach with John Wooden, like he, he's like the, like the Steve jobs of college basketball, like to the, to the degree that a lot of today's founders look up to how Steve jobs did things. Yeah. He's a amazing man. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing man.
Jon Clark
Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a great comparison. Yeah.
all right. So we've started a tradition. It's more of a, maybe a prediction, ⁓ which you might have a good sense of because another one of your LinkedIn posts was about the born ultimatum when he's doing a search for a local business. And I loved it because it's one of my favorite movies. and basically the concept was he was doing a local, search for a local business and had it been in, you know, today's.
Matt McGee
You
Jon Clark
AI mode environment, right? The movie would have failed because it wouldn't have shown everything you needed. But the question is, if you go to Google.com, say in 12 months, what do you expect that search experience to be?
Matt McGee
In 12 months, I expect it to be something like AI mode. I like the little experiment that I haven't seen lately, but I saw it a couple months ago that they called it, I think they called it web guide or something like that. was like AI mode, but it's still linked out to a lot of the source sites much better than AIOs do and AI mode does.
So like that I could see being really, really cool. I think in 12 months, so it'll be more like AI mode, which worries me a little bit because I, I don't know. Well, you guys know, like a lot of the AI answers just are not great and not trustworthy and all that sort of stuff. yeah, think within 12, I'd be surprised if AI mode is not the default within 12 months.
Jon Clark
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that sentiment is pretty common, unfortunately. Because I think you're right. We're going to see, unless they figure out something like the web guide experience, we're definitely going to see continued traffic loss, which is unfortunate. But Matt, this has been great. Thanks for sharing your expertise.
Matt McGee
Hmm.
Yep.
Jon Clark
Congratulations to your wife on reaching that number one status in her region, which is pretty awesome. ⁓
Matt McGee
Thank you. It's been, it's, this has been a great conversation and happy to come back on anytime and Chat again. It's been a, a blast.
Jon Clark
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thanks so much. And remember, if you enjoyed the show, please remember to subscribe, rate, and review. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.