How Does AI Actually Decide Who It Recommends? [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 162]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;21;23

Bob Ruffolo

Right now while watching this, some of your market is asking ChatGPT who is the best company and does exactly what you do. Will you be the one that recommends or other factors you're not even tracking eliminating you from the recommendation. We say 92 AI answers across four platforms. Figure out how that actually gets made. And here's something surprising.

00;00;21;28 - 00;00;40;25

Bob Ruffolo

AI doesn't line everyone up and pick a winner. It eliminates most of the fields first, then recommends from whoever's left. Today, we're going to show you exactly how AI decides who it recommends in your market. Why? Most of what you heard is wrong, and the one thing you could fix this week. So you make the cut.

00;00;40;27 - 00;00;59;15

Stephanie Baiocchi

You're listening to the Endless Customers podcast, brought to you by the team at impact. Endless customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. If you want to learn the principles of endless customers and how you can implement them in your business, pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller wherever books are sold.

00;00;59;15 - 00;01;21;05

Stephanie Baiocchi

Ready to start implementing endless customers in your business? Talk to impact about how our coaching program can help you implement endless customers to success. And if you want to experience endless customers in person, don't miss our upcoming event! Endless Customers live in Hartford, Connecticut October 5th through the seventh, 2026. Registration is now open. And now on to the show.

00;01;21;06 - 00;01;23;27

Stephanie Baiocchi

Here's your host, Bob Ruffolo.

00;01;23;29 - 00;01;48;15

Bob Ruffolo

All right. Welcome to another episode of the Endless Customers podcast. I am excited today. This is something that we came up with probably about a month ago and its original research. And we're going to dive into some things I think would be really helpful for the entire audience. My man Brian Casey is here. Expert and Endless Customers coach been here for a very long time, has worked with probably a hundred clients at this time by this time.

00;01;48;21 - 00;02;05;17

Bob Ruffolo

Oh, yeah. So yeah, but Brian's been around the block and a very good friend of mine. And excited to have you on here with me today. So. So Brian's role today is he's going to play color commentary. He's going to talk about how he's recommending some of the things that we're going to be talking about with his clients.

00;02;05;19 - 00;02;18;14

Bob Ruffolo

The things that he's seeing is working with clients, some of the stuff he's going to be hearing, even for the first time. I know he saw the data not that long ago, but we're going to react to it because you're seeing things in the market all the time. And I think that's going to be a fun part of today as well.

00;02;18;16 - 00;02;46;19

Bob Ruffolo

So let's talk about what we're looking at today. So we did a research report. And what we wanted to answer is what actually matters to these AI platforms. When people are asking who is the best for me or who is the best in my market, how do they make these decisions? And I realized probably just a few months ago is like the best thing you could do to find that out is just ask the platform.

00;02;46;19 - 00;03;14;00

Bob Ruffolo

And I was amazed when I asked how it told me. It's very specific criteria of how it makes these decisions, of who it recommends in extreme detail. So I was like, all right, that's pretty cool. But what if we did this now a ton of times for a ton of different industries on a bunch of different platforms, and see if we can tell the consistencies and differences between different platforms and what matters to them.

00;03;14;00 - 00;03;37;29

Bob Ruffolo

And we were amazed by the data that came out of this. So what we want to know was what actually makes AI recommend one company over another. And we ran experiment. I'll show you exactly how we did this. So we asked the same question to four different platforms. Yes, Chad, should we take we asked Google AI mode. We asked Gemini and we asked perplexity.

00;03;38;00 - 00;04;05;12

Bob Ruffolo

And the question wasn't just, you know, who's the best. What we wanted to actually know is what was your process to screen, filter and select a company for them. So we ran that 90 something times. We got all the data from it and we synthesized that all with AI. And we have our findings. So if we hit go here you're going to see it's going to go right through.

00;04;05;13 - 00;04;23;12

Bob Ruffolo

And it is answering the question all the way through. And we're not going to go into this in great detail just now because we're going to have the the broader summary here very shortly. All right. So let's dive in and let's start talk about what we found. All right. So today we're going to go through two different sections here.

00;04;23;12 - 00;04;37;23

Bob Ruffolo

We're going to start by saying what were our biggest findings. And we had some really big ones. And then we're going to go very industry specific. So you want to make sure you stick around to the end. Find your industry here. And we'll have some some because there are some key differences between industries, which we also found extremely fast.

00;04;37;26 - 00;05;08;29

Bob Ruffolo

So the first one and Brian let's go right here. So the research shows the number one reason a business got recommended by AI wasn't price quality or reviews. It was saying in plain words it's saying in plain words exactly who they're the best fit for. And now we've been teaching this for a long time, being very clear who your company is the best fit for, saying who you're the best fit for, showed up in 90% of all the 92 answers.

00;05;09;01 - 00;05;36;22

Bob Ruffolo

It was a single strongest signal in the entire study. It was universal in perplexity. Every single time we asked perplexity to explain why it chose to oppose, it pointed to how clearly the business stated on its website who it was the best fit for. And that's that was 23 of 23 industries that we looked at. The only signal on the platform to hit a perfect 100% is the biggest single slice of ChatGPT, scoring roughly 25% of the weight when it scores.

00;05;36;22 - 00;05;57;00

Bob Ruffolo

And it matters more outside the trades. So specialization was only about 78% in services, but it hit 100% in both tech, B2B and retail. So. So Brian, let's break this down. We've been teaching addressing who you're a good fit for on your website for a long time, but this is a whole different lens to look at it through.

00;05;57;02 - 00;05;58;04

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah, I think.

00;05;58;05 - 00;06;21;26

Brian Casey

The most compelling thing here from a coaching standpoint, is it's easy for us to sit here and say, say who you're a good fit for, say who you're not a good fit for. What I often find is even people that we're working with are really poor at the disqualifying language. And what I mean by that is we use it almost like, like throwaways, right?

00;06;21;28 - 00;06;41;09

Brian Casey

It's like, oh, we're not a good fit for you if you like cheap contractors or if you're looking for the easy way out. And it's like, those aren't real. Those aren't signals that are going to build trust. Those aren't signals that truly help an AI agent identify who you are, what you do, how you do it, and who you do it for.

00;06;41;11 - 00;07;03;18

Brian Casey

And so I think there's a big mirror that we have to hold up to ourselves to say, like, how honest are we being when we come up with these qualification and disqualification based statements? And how are they going to be perceived by people, and are they real disqualifying statements? Or are we just saying like we're not the best fit for everyone?

00;07;03;22 - 00;07;08;26

Brian Casey

Dot dot dot. If you're cheap or if you don't want the best for you know.

00;07;08;27 - 00;07;14;05

Bob Ruffolo

Something, you want someone that's going to do a good job for you, then we're not the right one for you, right? But being very specific.

00;07;14;08 - 00;07;48;11

Brian Casey

Yeah, you got to be specific. And companies struggle with this. Like to take that real honest look at yourself and say we are not the best fit for you. If you're looking for this type of material or for this type of job, but that's the kind of stuff that is actually going to help AI and help you get recommended, not disqualified, which we'll talk about a little bit later, is just that real honest look at yourself and specificity and just the real qualification, real disqualification type language.

00;07;48;14 - 00;08;08;15

Bob Ruffolo

You know. And Marcus has said for years, our friend Marcus, he obviously said, you know, the moment that you say who you are not a fit for is how you become dramatically more attractive to those you are a good fit for. And now we're hearing the same thing applies for AI. If you want to get recommended by AI, say who you're not a good fit for, you become dramatically more attracted to AI.

00;08;08;16 - 00;08;10;16

Bob Ruffolo

We should give them credit for that.

00;08;10;19 - 00;08;36;08

Brian Casey

Yeah. I also think, like the next question that people probably have is like, where do I do this? How do I do this? One of the places that is awesome to do this on is your home page. You're About Us page. Like those are signals where people are evaluating you as a brand. Typically you're going to land on those pages with branded keywords like they would look up impact marketing or impact coaching or digital marketing coaching, stuff like that.

00;08;36;08 - 00;08;52;21

Brian Casey

And they would land on our home page or they'd land on our About Us page. So that's a good place to do it. And then I don't know how deep you want to go into this, but txt files are another really, really great place to put this language of who you are and who you are. Not a good fit.

00;08;52;21 - 00;09;15;08

Bob Ruffolo

For now, let me be very clear. Brian is available to help you with any of this. If you're you're listening is like what is an LLM txt file? What the heck is that? He can help you implement one of those in your site because they are becoming increasingly more important. And then you've seen so many people do the who we are a good fit for and who we're not a good fit for, just not the right way.

00;09;15;08 - 00;09;33;28

Bob Ruffolo

It's biased, and it's hard to do this when you're inside your own company and looking from your own lens because you are biased and you see things in a certain way. But having somebody from the outside who knows what they're doing. Look at this for you. It makes a world of difference. I know that's one of the things you work with clients all the time is is the fine tuning of the words.

00;09;33;28 - 00;10;02;02

Bob Ruffolo

And that could be the difference between actually showing up and not showing up. All right. Number two, the research shows that your star rating barely matters to AI. And we're talking about reviews. What actually rewards our reviews that are recent and specific. The second most important signal in the entire study to back this up. So substantive reviews are the number two universal factor.

00;10;02;04 - 00;10;37;16

Bob Ruffolo

77% of all response responses from roofers to law firms assess 77% of all responses that substantive reviews are the number two universal factor. Every platform said the same thing explicitly. Recency and specificity be a high star. Average ChatGPT ways reviews roughly 15 to 20% across the board, no matter what industry it was. It emphasized that 100% of the time in home services, 32 or 32 answers in healthcare 12 of 12.

00;10;37;22 - 00;10;52;27

Bob Ruffolo

All right. Reviews. We know they're important. And I think what we're pulling out here is it's not just how many. And the overall rating it's recency is plays a big role here. So what are you seeing.

00;10;52;29 - 00;11;17;26

Brian Casey

Yeah I'm seeing a couple things. One responses to reviews are also very heavily weighted. How you respond allows you to provide some of that context. If the reviewer didn't provide the context. And it's kind of like if you put your old SEO hat on, you can't keyword stuff. It's got to be natural language and just respond, but provide context.

00;11;17;28 - 00;11;43;21

Brian Casey

If you're a local company about a job that you did, one of the things that I've seen to be effective, is not just asking someone for review, but saying, as you're doing that, review a couple things that would be helpful for us if you were to mention this, this and this. Don't provide a template. That's something that, you know, an AI tool is going to pick up on very quickly.

00;11;43;21 - 00;12;08;25

Brian Casey

If all of your reviews look the same exact way, that's going to be one of those inauthentic flags. But if we use the example of a roofing company, if they were to talk about what type of job they did, where they were located, how long it took, something like that, any one of those three would help provide the context that AI that Google is looking for.

00;12;08;27 - 00;12;24;10

Brian Casey

Yeah. Reviews are such an interesting piece of this. I thought it's fascinating that, like, the five star isn't necessarily, you know, a green check mark. And recency plays a bigger factor than probably anything else.

00;12;24;12 - 00;12;50;19

Bob Ruffolo

You know. And Brian I'm going to call this the marketing. And maybe we should claim that term here. Duh marketing. And why I say that. It's like as long as you're just thinking like a buyer, AI is just trying to replicate what buyers would normally do, and it's just using technology to do it. So if you think about yourself as a buyer and you are in the market for something and you look at reviews and this is a good tip for any business, like, man, maybe I missed the boat.

00;12;50;19 - 00;13;07;19

Bob Ruffolo

I only have a handful of reviews. How am I going to compete with a company that that has a ton? But the reality is, if like you have a whole bunch of bad reviews or just a few reviews or spotty, unsubstantial views or whatever, and they're years ago and you just kind of stopped doing that. This is an opportunity for you.

00;13;07;20 - 00;13;25;22

Bob Ruffolo

All right. Let's put a system in place. It's got people to leave really good substantial reviews right now that are very detailed. And because they're recent, just like buyers are going to be like, oh, we're not going to pay attention to the old ones. We all get the businesses change, products change, the market changes, things are different. And let's focus.

00;13;25;22 - 00;13;42;14

Bob Ruffolo

We all are going to focus on the most recent ones anyways, and we want to see what's going on recently. Oh this one's from 2026 okay I want to see what that one says a five star rating or even a one star rating from 2026. That matters a lot more than a one star rating from 2019. It's a huge difference.

00;13;42;14 - 00;13;49;13

Bob Ruffolo

So that's why some of these things are when you almost think about this as a buyer with common sense, a lot of this stuff becomes a lot easier.

00;13;49;15 - 00;14;10;19

Brian Casey

Well, I want to dive a little deeper on something you said. If you're a smaller business out there, if you're trying to get your foothold in this, this, you know, reviews and social proof is this isn't an uphill climb as much as it used to be because of these changes, which is great. It's creating a more competitive landscape.

00;14;10;22 - 00;14;32;07

Brian Casey

The general behemoths of an industry that have historically one don't have to win. If now they suck, and if their service is fallen off, right. So don't look at it as this massive uphill climb. Like we'll never be able to get to 800 reviews. It's like, that's not a metric. The metric is like, how good of service are you performing?

00;14;32;09 - 00;14;44;11

Brian Casey

Or how good are your products? How good is your service? And you get a better chance than you ever have before. And I think the way that algorithms are updating like that will continue to be the case.

00;14;44;13 - 00;15;02;23

Bob Ruffolo

And I still think having a lot of reviews is a moat around your business, because I do think buyers look and say, okay. They've got 20,000 reviews and it's got a 4.9 rating that that is better than I have a 4.9 rating in two reviews because you're like, why they only have two reviews? Are they even really a business?

00;15;02;26 - 00;15;27;00

Bob Ruffolo

But to your point, we just had Aaron from Eco Plumbing, Aaron Gainer on from Echo Plumbing. They've got 20,000 reviews on Google and they got 200,000 reviews across all platforms. It's been a high priority in their business. But you're exactly right. And we talked about in the episode, it starts by offering a great product or service and delivering what you promise you're going to deliver.

00;15;27;00 - 00;15;44;03

Bob Ruffolo

And then everything else gets a lot easier from there. And that's exactly what you said, Brian. And that's, again, one of the things that a coach will do with you is they'll challenge you on the business issues. So if you're not able to get good reviews and and it's like, well, I this, this, this company won't do it or this customer won't do it.

00;15;44;03 - 00;16;02;08

Bob Ruffolo

And it's like, you know, we're going to dig through that and say, well, why won't any of your customers recommend you kind of a red flag? Now, I know some industries or some, you know, red tape there, but you can still break through that. Reviews are important and obviously AI is showing it. Okay, let's move on to the third one here.

00;16;02;10 - 00;16;28;03

Bob Ruffolo

You've heard that AI weights price at 5%. That's a very common thing people say across the board is AI will wait price at 5% across the board. But the research actually that we did show something a little bit different. Three of the four platforms never put a number on price at all. Explicit numeric weighting showed up in 19 of ChatGPT 23 industries versus just one across the other three combined.

00;16;28;05 - 00;16;56;22

Bob Ruffolo

So ChatGPT put weights, puts a lot of weight on it. The other ones only showed up once. Google does not exact a. Google does it in exactly one entry, which is sass, Gemini and perplexity never put a number on it in any of the 23 industries that we looked at. So when someone on LinkedIn says AI weights price of 5% across the board, they're describing ChatGPT, but they're broadly calling it AI.

00;16;56;24 - 00;17;18;03

Bob Ruffolo

So when someone on LinkedIn says AI weighs price at 5%, they're really just describing ChatGPT and they're calling it AI. So we are huge about talking about price here. And this one is very interesting that price matters so much more in chat and didn't even get factored in to the other platforms. So Brian, what's your take on that one?

00;17;18;05 - 00;17;43;02

Brian Casey

Yeah, I mean, if I think about the concept of like having pricing on your website, there is a AI play and there is a customer experience play. And so one lesson here is like, don't just hear one thing and just parrot it and say it and try to make it seem like your own. So like the AI weights price at 5%, I heard it.

00;17;43;02 - 00;18;07;18

Brian Casey

It's true. Like don't despair it. Second lesson here is like you having pricing on your website is not to appease a robot. When someone is evaluating you at a late stage and you do or do not have pricing on your website, and you give them that, you know that trust feeling, you give them that piece of mind before they reach out.

00;18;07;20 - 00;18;32;12

Brian Casey

That's a lot of the magical pricing page. And that hasn't changed. And that's not specific to SaaS. That's not specific to a general industry. So again, we don't live for robots, right? We're not living to appease the robots. And AI likes this. So I'm going to do it. We're selling the humans. We're selling to people that make decisions with their human brains, that are augmenting it more to AI than they ever used to.

00;18;32;13 - 00;18;40;17

Brian Casey

But at the end of the day, you know, pricing is there for people, and it's there to build confidence in who you are and what you do.

00;18;40;19 - 00;19;04;22

Bob Ruffolo

So, you know, a couple of big things I just picked up on what you're saying there. So this book in the philosophy and what's on your shirt doesn't say endless AI visibility. It says endless customers. Right? Being visible in AI is really important because it might get more eyeballs on your brand and opens the door. But what Brian's saying is, it's not going to get you more customers alone.

00;19;04;24 - 00;19;20;00

Bob Ruffolo

There's still more that you have to do to follow through the entire onboarding and customer experience, to the point where someone becomes a customer and hopefully a really long term happy customer. So that's one big difference there. But even with that being said.

00;19;20;02 - 00;19;22;11

Brian Casey

Have you ever heard of the brand Quince?

00;19;22;14 - 00;19;24;10

Bob Ruffolo

I haven't, no.

00;19;24;13 - 00;19;53;01

Brian Casey

I want you to look them up. If you go on there, they do clothing, linens, like bedding products they have on every product of their site material cost, crafting cost, packaging cost, freight and handling credit card fees. They break it down at a level that I've never seen. And like, I didn't know who the brand was a couple of weeks ago, and I've bought three things from them over the last two weeks.

00;19;53;05 - 00;20;11;07

Brian Casey

Oh wow. I don't think it's any, you know, surprise like that. Them having a radically transparent analysis of their cost helps me feel good that I'm not just, you know, you know, spending money in a place to fill pockets.

00;20;11;10 - 00;20;39;27

Bob Ruffolo

Oh, wow. I will definitely check out the brand if you're buying it. You're a fashionable dude, so obviously you rock. You mostly where endless customer shirts everywhere you go, I know that, but when you're not, you're stylish. Did. So I'll have to take I'll take take that tip. I was gonna say to even what we were just talking about with pricing and saying, okay, well, it three three of the four A's that we ran pricing through or we asked about didn't factor put much weight on it.

00;20;39;27 - 00;20;59;10

Bob Ruffolo

But chat should be did doesn't mean that ChatGPT is still not a very important channel and it's going to wait pricing. So even though we know we have to address pricing and know it's a part of the buying decision, we know it's going to give trust as a follow through once they are aware of your brand, but Chad still puts weight on it to so we can't forget that either.

00;20;59;12 - 00;21;30;00

Bob Ruffolo

All right. Number four, the research shows AI eliminates most companies before it ever ranks anyone. That was pretty fascinating. It eliminates companies before ranks anyone. The number one reason it cut a business was that it couldn't prove it had a real address. What couldn't prove it? You cut me because you couldn't provide a real address across 92 answers, and there were 283 separate disqualifying mentions.

00;21;30;00 - 00;21;55;14

Bob Ruffolo

Reasons to cut a business before it was ever considered. The number one category is it can't prove your real and current 24% of all this qualifiers. The single biggest red flag of all was not having a verifiable address. 67 mentions more than any other red flag in the study. The full disqualify or stack real and current 24% big price of 2,023%.

00;21;55;15 - 00;22;12;02

Bob Ruffolo

Then fake reviews, poor communication, licensing gaps as we go down the list here, but not being able to prove your real business specifically around an address, we talked about nap. Nap. So Brian, what are you seeing and what are you recommending these days?

00;22;12;04 - 00;22;35;23

Brian Casey

Yeah, I'm not surprised that not being able to prove that you're real is the number one on here. Just because there was a time not too long ago, where local businesses were putting up post office boxes as their addresses so that they could show up in a local area. But I guess what I'm really seeing is like, nap is like a very, very important piece of this.

00;22;35;23 - 00;22;59;08

Brian Casey

And Marcus has spoke to it being the number one trust signal that, you know, people care about and that AI cares about. And, and I think it helps to, you know, look at the big picture here. One thing that I have been seeing people struggle with from a coaching standpoint is like, how do we get a grasp on nap?

00;22;59;09 - 00;23;32;20

Brian Casey

Like, how do we, you know, MapQuest has an old outdated email address or Angie does. It's difficult to to find out your name, address, phone number, which is what Nap stands for and all the different platforms. And make sure that you're compliant. You may have a legitimate business that's at a verifiable address and still fail nap consistency because something might be outdated, or a small language tweak or something like that.

00;23;32;27 - 00;23;59;02

Brian Casey

Another piece just for kind of the the contractor side of it contractor license numbers on your website is a must. So the same way that, you know, Google AI are looking at your your address and saying, that's a real business, don't make anybody look to try to find your contractor license number. Put that in the foot of your home page.

00;23;59;04 - 00;24;18;07

Bob Ruffolo

And actually they come up in the trades. When we get down to that section today that did show up. And what's a tip for somebody to say? Okay. Well, I'm not sure if my name address, phone number is consistent across the board. What are you advising people to do to at least audit that right now?

00;24;18;09 - 00;24;39;17

Brian Casey

Yeah. We do not have an affiliation with them. But Bright Local is kind of the software that I've recommended people to use. I've heard people that use it get good results from it. It's like 40 to 50 bucks a month, but they will kind of scanned, scan the entire network and go to bat for you essentially.

00;24;39;20 - 00;24;57;29

Bob Ruffolo

And if you're going to be really cheap, what I do is I just go and ask Claude Wright, say I need to improve, you know, or even I want to audit our name, address, one of our Nap or our URL, our company, our brand. Can you do an analysis and give me a grade and tell me where I need to improve?

00;24;58;01 - 00;25;20;17

Bob Ruffolo

And it'll just tell you. And at least, at least that's a great start. And then once you get started and maybe upgrade to a software to to better manage that. But it's showing up as mission critical here. When we think about AI visibility, it's not something we can take lightly. All right. Number five. Number five, the research shows that a perfect five star rating can actually get you eliminated.

00;25;20;19 - 00;25;59;18

Bob Ruffolo

Google said outright that it filters out any 5.0 built in a single review. So that was actually AI in our analysis stated that multiple times. The AI is actively distrust any suspicious perfect score. Google AI mode literally filters out a 5.0 review based on only one review. ChatGPT in its Own words 800 review reviews at 4.8 beats 32 at 5.0, and 30 detailed reviews are more valuable than 301 line reviews, so we hit this a lot already.

00;25;59;20 - 00;26;22;13

Bob Ruffolo

Gemini Flags review bribery. So it's a you know, if they identify that you are offering something in exchange for a five star review, you will be flagged. They will find that and recognize that. So as not a good tactic to bribe your customer. Say if you give us a review or whatever it is, we'll give you a discount, will give you a free toothbrush or something like that.

00;26;22;17 - 00;26;43;25

Bob Ruffolo

500 great reviews, but nonetheless, nine months is also a red flag, which we hit a little bit already. But it's pretty fascinating to think, okay, if we're so worried about our overall score. Oh man, we're 4.6 or 4.7. I wish we were this. Other companies a perfect 5.0, but they of course they are. They got so many less reviews.

00;26;43;27 - 00;26;48;18

Bob Ruffolo

That actually is the truth is the opposite is better.

00;26;48;21 - 00;27;27;09

Brian Casey

Yeah. I don't know if you've seen these as well. These are review aggregators that people put on their sites that now provide AI overviews that say the good and the bad. That's another piece that I have seen come into play more often, and I love that. I love not just you hand picking the reviews that you want as the, you know, the reviews on your site or the testimonials and hand picking them, but bringing a tool in, having them be able to see every single review and then have AI commentary say people say this, this, this and those three things you don't control.

00;27;27;11 - 00;27;58;09

Brian Casey

They could be negative, they could be positive. It's going to drastically depend on, you know, how good of service or products you're offering. And then the other piece of this that I've heard is be leery of asking for reviews that have, like, people's specific name attached to them. And I think it kind of falls in that category of review, bribery, oftentimes, like companies will give out like incentives to like, hey, whoever gets the most reviews gets this prize.

00;27;58;10 - 00;28;26;09

Brian Casey

So one thing that I have seen is AI tools can actually be decentralized, that if you have a ton of people that are saying, John was great, John was great, John was great, John was great, they could view that as a potential, bribery play. So kind of back to the conversation about templates. It's like, do not send people templates.

00;28;26;11 - 00;28;46;13

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. Wow. You know, as you're saying that this is something that that, you know, I often think about what comes to all this stuff is, you know, AI, Google, what they're trying to do is they want to understand entities. And when I say entities, that could be a person, that could be a business, that could be a piece of work, it could be a place like a restaurant, whatever.

00;28;46;18 - 00;29;30;14

Bob Ruffolo

And they basically they they build these entities. They want to understand everything they possibly can about that entity, so that they can say whether we're going to recommend it or not. And they want as many signals pointing to that, to say this entity is strong and we recommend it, or this entity is weak and we should not and just I could be wrong in saying this could be an assumption, but when all the reviews for your company and that entity are not talking about the business entity, they're talking about John, the person entity, that's probably where the breakdowns happening a little bit.

00;29;30;16 - 00;29;50;08

Bob Ruffolo

So it's just a just an assumption that could be true. It could be could not be. Number six. The research shows a low price is almost worthless to AI, but being vague about your price is the second fastest way to get eliminated. So we talked about price a little bit, but here's a different take that the study pulled out.

00;29;50;09 - 00;30;21;03

Bob Ruffolo

When ChatGPT even scores price, it's 5% weight or less. We talked about it's the lowest of any of the factors, but vague or hidden pricing is the second biggest disqualified overall. And that was mentioned 61 times of the the 92 runs. So you're not getting bonus points for talking about your price. But when you're not talking about your price, you're actually it's the second biggest disqualified for not recommending somebody.

00;30;21;07 - 00;30;43;28

Bob Ruffolo

So that's pretty interesting. Bad pricing behavior means no written estimate, no hidden fees, high sales taxes. So that's probably also coming from reviews. So a low price barely helps you. But murky pricing a murky pricing page can get you cut. So we probably don't have to go too much deeper into this one because we preach pricing pages all the time.

00;30;43;28 - 00;31;04;01

Bob Ruffolo

And, Brian, you could talk about how to build a perfect pricing page all day. I know you're going to be doing one of those sessions when we have our expert exchange on Mondays, when we get all of our coaches and everybody together. But I mean, is there any anything you want to add to this one in terms of just not having a pricing page can get you all all together?

00;31;04;03 - 00;31;31;17

Brian Casey

Yeah, I think the mindset here is like, don't get eliminated. And a part of what will get you eliminated relative to being recommended is vague. Or it says a low price is almost worthless to AI. That to me would say like misleading price. If you have something that is like so far lower than the industry average, which all AI platforms understand, it's probably going to think it's a gimmick.

00;31;31;19 - 00;31;43;27

Brian Casey

But one thing from a pricing page standpoint is we can put this in the category of marketing, but like when you have a pricing page on your website, people expect to see pricing. They don't expect.

00;31;43;27 - 00;31;45;19

Bob Ruffolo

To see.

00;31;45;21 - 00;32;03;14

Brian Casey

You talking about the factors. And it depends like they go to a page, they have certain expectations. Don't hide it. Don't make them work too hard to find it. Don't be vague. Be direct. Be as.

00;32;03;15 - 00;32;10;25

Bob Ruffolo

Don't. Don't make them. Fill out a form to book a call to get the pricing. I'm talking to you, Gong.

00;32;10;27 - 00;32;32;09

Brian Casey

Yeah. And and then provide context after that. That's kind of the, the thing that I'm working with a lot of people from a coaching standpoint on is like provide the price, then provide the context, don't give all the, you know, the appetizers and then the main course is nested at the bottom of the page. Because from a user experience standpoint it's super frustrating.

00;32;32;13 - 00;32;33;29

Brian Casey

Yeah.

00;32;34;01 - 00;32;53;14

Bob Ruffolo

And Brian, you there are so many people that come to you and they're like, Brian, I don't know how I can possibly answer how much a cost on our website. What advice do you get to a company that's like our price is very so much or, you know, it depends. And that's of how do you advise them through that?

00;32;53;16 - 00;33;20;22

Brian Casey

Yeah. Unless you're a SaaS program that is true about you, your price is going to depend and there's going to be variables. I think if we look at the logic of this study, this original research report that we've done, you cannot be vague. That doesn't mean you can't provide a range. And then the second piece of it that I've been working with a lot more companies on is can you provide examples?

00;33;20;25 - 00;33;49;08

Brian Casey

So can you show a low end example, a medium end example, a high end example, and then provide some context of why that price was that price and build X-Com. If you go to their pricing page, you will see one of the coolest analysis analyzes of different ADUs that they have built and why they cost what they did.

00;33;49;15 - 00;34;00;23

Brian Casey

So it's like that level of context and you can provide examples. Examples are better than a range or ranges better than being crazy vague or saying it depends.

00;34;00;26 - 00;34;20;13

Bob Ruffolo

Write that down everyone. All right Brian we got we got one more. And then I want to get to industries. And we'll get ready to wrap up today with some actionable advice. The last one here, the research research shows that there's no single trust list anymore which is interesting. Maybe still leads for home services and professional service firms.

00;34;20;13 - 00;34;47;00

Bob Ruffolo

But in tech health care, B2B, it nearly disappears, replaced by a completely different set of signals. We talk a lot about trust nulls around here. The AI is named 128 distinct trust signals across 23 industries, with 287 total citations. So there's no longer one list that works for everybody. BB is really the single most cited signal overall with 20 citations.

00;34;47;03 - 00;35;11;27

Bob Ruffolo

So we talked about this in the show many times, having this great resurgence because of AI visibility. And I does love BB, which is exactly why you see it consistently. It dominates for home services and traditional, professional and regulated firms like lawyers, accountants, insurance, things like that. And that's the industries that people most search there, but is less important.

00;35;11;29 - 00;35;48;03

Bob Ruffolo

It nearly vanishes outside of those worlds. Perplexity mentioned BB zero times across all 11 of the newer industries. So tech, SaaS, cybersecurity, health care and more. And there are trust signals and they're trusting those such as G2 cap, Terra clutch, SoC two and other licensing boards matters so much more. So for. So Brian, let's just dive in. I'm going to move on from this last point here, BB but it's a very changing world.

00;35;48;05 - 00;36;08;22

Bob Ruffolo

We've talked about this on the show many times where if you're going to go back 7 or 8 years ago when you first started here at impact and the work we were doing with clients back then, it was all about optimizing your website, SEO, long form contents. You you outrank somebody and maybe you get a few like, links to your website and, and write an article around the term.

00;36;08;23 - 00;36;39;01

Bob Ruffolo

You'll be the first thing that people see when they land on your site. Those days are over. And we're I think we're living in a better world, because what really matters now is the strength of your brand, way more in the the optimization of your website. Huge difference today. And this is saying like, we can intake so much more information about what we understand about your company entity and, and based on how strong it is compared to other entities that you compete with, we're going to either recommend you or not.

00;36;39;01 - 00;36;45;21

Bob Ruffolo

And we're going to look at, in this case, 128 different trusted goals. So so build on that.

00;36;45;23 - 00;37;08;03

Brian Casey

Yeah. So I mean, the reality like if you're a business owner is a lot of these platforms are pay to play. So if you're talking about like a cap Terra like you can pay to get a higher placement when someone asks for a particular service. So my call to action here as a coach is not to go and start paying all these review platforms.

00;37;08;03 - 00;37;35;19

Brian Casey

It's one to make sure that you're on them, that you have a listing, and two it's if there is a natural way to spread the wealth, don't put all of your eggs in the Google review basket, but if you can disperse them among these ones that for your specific industry matter, you're more likely to be sending a broader signal that you're a trusted business than what I assume would be a negative signal.

00;37;35;19 - 00;37;45;01

Brian Casey

If you have a ton of Google reviews and you have your software company, you have zero reviews on G2. Yeah, that's looked as just a big disparity.

00;37;45;03 - 00;38;05;21

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah. You know, I think there used to be a mindset of like, all right, let's just focus on one channel and go all in on it and really do it well. And while there's some truth to that, one channel can change very, very fast if you're not diversified in terms of your marketing channels that you're doing. So give you a good example.

00;38;05;25 - 00;38;27;00

Bob Ruffolo

If you were 100% in on blogging, you know, and we just an episode on this too, if you're 100% in on blog and that was your main channel, we're going to focus on blogging and SEO, and we're going to rank for all these articles. And I'm going to show up everywhere. Like your world just fell completely apart if you were diversified and you said, well, we also did YouTube really well.

00;38;27;02 - 00;38;47;08

Bob Ruffolo

We had a really strong email list. We're doing email marketing really well. We did some offline things. We had partnerships, we had our Instagram going, we do LinkedIn or whatever it is now. You've got a lot more things going. So that say you have ten channels going decently well. If you lose one completely, 90% of your marketing is still there.

00;38;47;11 - 00;39;09;09

Bob Ruffolo

And I think that's that's true to to a lot of this stuff too, is I think what's pretty cool about AI and even the study is when you ask AI what matters most to my industry, my company, my market, what should I be doing more of? It'll give you a few channels or a handful of channels, and you can use those.

00;39;09;12 - 00;39;22;04

Bob Ruffolo

I'm going to strengthen these ones all the way. Some of you might be Angie's List, some of you might be kept Terra. It could be, it could be. It could be a wide variety of different things. But at least you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

00;39;22;07 - 00;40;06;05

Brian Casey

Yeah. I'd also just say you could be doing everything right from a sales and marketing standpoint. And if people find negative or competing mindsets as it comes to your reviews, that could be one of those signals you don't hear anything about, but why you lose a sale or why you get an appointment canceled. And so really, just this mindset around reputation management and being visible and consistent in the places where your audience is seeking third party approval and validation that you do good work is, I think, more critical than it's ever been.

00;40;06;08 - 00;40;33;26

Bob Ruffolo

You're exactly right. You're exactly right, you know, and these are silent killers. You might not know why you're not showing an AI, or you might not know why people are not buying from you. And to your point, it could be one review on one platform you're not looking at. That is a fake review, and no one's respond to it or address it or try to get it taken down.

00;40;33;27 - 00;40;55;03

Bob Ruffolo

But that's the thing that potential buyers are actually human doing their research, looking at. They land on this review and they're like, I don't know. This doesn't give me the warm and fuzzy it's I'm going to move on. And the AI is like, oh, you're disqualified. Somebody else. It could be as as simple as that. All right, Brian, we're going to for time purposes, we're going to hit these pretty fast.

00;40;55;03 - 00;41;22;15

Bob Ruffolo

But it's gonna be the show notes, industry specific findings. Maybe we'll just go back and forth on these and see what we're seeing in these. So, why don't you go first? Because you do a lot of business with companies in the trades of the research. What stood out to you the most of like, all right. For the trades we're talking about anything home services, HVAC, basements, roofers, cool companies go down the whole list.

00;41;22;17 - 00;41;30;29

Bob Ruffolo

What was different with them compared to other industries based on the the study?

00;41;31;02 - 00;41;53;23

Brian Casey

Yeah. If I, if I kind of look at the home service based businesses and I think one of the biggest thing that stood out to me is a lot of the like, warnings or barred flags, like the home service based businesses, AI is judging you the hardest. It is the hardest to get recommended because you're most likely to get eliminated.

00;41;53;23 - 00;42;18;28

Brian Casey

So if you are in a home service based business, everything that we're talking about, you kind of got to nail it. And and we talked about like the dumb marketing, like Doug leading a business piece. One of the notes here says, Jim and I warns homeowners about roofing companies that have out of state crews or they're storm chasers or they underbid.

00;42;19;01 - 00;42;31;12

Brian Casey

If if you're doing any of those tactics, if you're leading a business that relies on gimmicks or plays from a playbook that's outdated, like change your model.

00;42;31;15 - 00;43;04;22

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah, cool. All right. Business services, B2B services. The one thing that was very different with this industry compared to the other ones we studied, was 115 named trust signals and B2B, more than any other industry, which means you really if you're a accountant, CPA, a lawyer, cybersecurity, managed services, anything along those lines you really do have to nap is going to be critically more important.

00;43;04;22 - 00;43;28;10

Bob Ruffolo

Reviews across multiple platforms are really much more important. Clutch was one that came up consistently across those businesses. Even like marketing firms like us, clutch was critically important. So those are some of the differences that showed up in business services compared to other industries. All right, Brian, why don't you take retail here? I know you've had plenty of retail clients in your day, too.

00;43;28;13 - 00;43;57;22

Brian Casey

Yeah, retail AI doesn't know what to do with you yet. So I think this the call to action here for retailers is right now AI is falling back on Google Maps Chamber of Commerce like traditional local signals. And everything that we have talked about from a trust signal standpoint is likely to be embedded more deeply in a retail setting in the future.

00;43;57;25 - 00;44;18;10

Brian Casey

And and I would say Nap is super, super critical for retail. And that includes and you have higher thresholds for your opening hours. And like those things where if you go to a retail location and they are closed and it says they're open online, like that could lead to a bad review. Yeah.

00;44;18;12 - 00;44;40;11

Bob Ruffolo

I think you add in just the fundamentals with this one too. So just making sure that you are saying who your products and services are a good fit for it. That was the number of thing across the board. And to Brian's point, just make sure that your products, services or your company, you're not. You're watching those ones of like refund complaints or anything along those lines.

00;44;40;11 - 00;45;07;11

Bob Ruffolo

Customer service issues. It's probably it's much more broad. All right. Next one is health care. We looked at as well. And this one's really simple. It's like reviews reviews reviews reviews reviews. The weight on reviews. And the healthcare industry was so much higher than anything else. It was 100% across the board on every subset of health care that we we studied on every platform.

00;45;07;14 - 00;45;09;06

Bob Ruffolo

Brian legal.

00;45;09;09 - 00;45;39;03

Brian Casey

Yeah. The biggest difference about legal is that they care a lot more about who you are and how qualified you are, then how many reviews you have. So super important to on your website, on your platforms that you're on your profiles on those speak to how long you've been doing law based stuff and speak to your credentials.

00;45;39;05 - 00;46;03;02

Brian Casey

Those should be very clearly noted. If you have any type of issue with the bar or complaint history, like you're likely to get disqualified from a recommended platform. And then Best Lawyers and AVO are the ones where those third party sites that, when they are looking at reviews, the ones that they loop into the equation. Yeah.

00;46;03;04 - 00;46;09;13

Bob Ruffolo

And then SaaS, this will be the last one to look at here.

00;46;09;15 - 00;46;34;21

Bob Ruffolo

The pricing mattered most on SaaS. This is of chat put a lot of weight on it. It was the only time another platform, another industry that that actually picked up pricing was, was SaaS. And that makes so much sense because even to your point, SaaS can clearly explain what their costs are across the board, and that would be an issue if you're not able to explain that.

00;46;34;24 - 00;46;55;12

Bob Ruffolo

All right. So we're going towards the end of the episode here. We want to make sure we give everyone some actionable device. I think we gave a lot across the entire episode, but I think a general rule across the board that we heard is, is make it obvious who you're fit for. And obviously add to that who you're not a fit for.

00;46;55;15 - 00;47;10;13

Bob Ruffolo

That was that was a big one. Nap across the board. Verify your name, address, phone number we give software you can use. We also just on the cheap. Just go ask AI. Go ask Claude or something.

00;47;10;15 - 00;47;35;16

Bob Ruffolo

Really work to build reviews into your operations of your business. Not an afterthought, not a campaign, not a quarterly rock or something that you just you put a push on. It has to be something that happens as part of your operational cycle, the way you deliver your products and services. The review is just naturally built right in because recent reviews, specific reviews that matters the most across the board.

00;47;35;18 - 00;48;03;15

Bob Ruffolo

Pricing matters, even though chat will use that for wait a little bit more than the other ones. Not having it was a disqualified across the board. So having that really strong pricing page is mission critical and document your credentials, your licenses, insurances. Brian, you mentioned that extremely important for especially for the trades. All right. Hopefully this is a this is fun Brian.

00;48;03;15 - 00;48;05;13

Bob Ruffolo

This is fun doing this this with you.

00;48;05;15 - 00;48;07;14

Brian Casey

Yeah I like the format.

00;48;07;17 - 00;48;28;24

Bob Ruffolo

Yeah this is a little bit different. We haven't done an episode like this before. And I think the more we could bring original research to the forefront, the better. I know you've been pushing us to do more original research and this is an attempt at doing it. I'd be very interested in comments on this one too. So if you've gone through the entire episode here, let us know in the comments what you thought of this episode.

00;48;28;24 - 00;48;47;27

Bob Ruffolo

And if you're seeing different things, then what we're seeing, because we might be getting things differently. You know, again, we studied 92 searches. You may go new 500 and may skew the data. Let's go find out. And maybe we'll do that in a future episode. All right. So I think that's going to conclude the episode Brian, this has been a lot of fun.

00;48;47;27 - 00;48;50;12

Bob Ruffolo

Thank you for coming on today.

00;48;50;14 - 00;48;51;04

Brian Casey

Absolutely.

00;48;51;04 - 00;49;04;07

Bob Ruffolo

And if anyone wants to get in touch with you, they just go to our website. Impact talk asks specifically to talk to Brian and he'll be happy to chat with you. If there's something he said here that would be useful. So Brian, thanks so much.

00;49;04;10 - 00;49;05;11

Brian Casey

Thank you Bob.

00;49;05;13 - 00;49;11;29

Bob Ruffolo

All right. And this has been the episode of the Endless Customers podcast. Till the next episode. We will see you then.

00;49;12;01 - 00;49;18;07

Stephanie Baiocchi

If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers podcast.