Technology
We Can Definitely Get You First in ChatGPT
In this episode of Marketing Over Coffee, Christopher Penn and John Wall dive into the complexities of SEO in the age of generative AI, debunking myths and discussing the implications of AI on marketi...
We Can Definitely Get You First in ChatGPT
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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This is marketing over coffee with Christopher Penn and John Wall.
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Good morning.
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Welcome to Marketing Over Coffee.
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I'm John Wall.
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I'm Christopher Penn.
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And a bunch of stuff going out of the gate I wanted to go with.
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Let's go with Mythbusters first, which is a lot of hype in the past month about
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people saying, Hey, we've got basically S E O for a generative AI.
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Like this is and we've seen G E O and A E O people are trying to grab this land space.
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I am smelling NFTs everywhere.
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Like it's all baloney, everything I have seen so far.
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But I guess there is that baseline of it.
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You could put it all the way like branding.
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Like you could do a bunch of stuff.
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And if you see more traffic, you can assume that that's what's doing it.
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But like that's all I've got.
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So am I off mark on that?
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Has this progressed anywhere?
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So here's here's where things are right now and take this even this with the grain of salt.
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Number one, no one can know what people are typing into chatbots like chat GPT.
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Open AID is not release that information.
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Period at all, except in like court ordered cases.
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But no one can know you cannot know what someone's typing in.
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And as we have seen with these tools in the past, even a one word change in a prompt
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can deflect and change the results substantially.
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Back last year, Tim Solo and Olga Andrienko, respectively of HREFs and Semarach at the time,
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each shared the chat GPT said that they were the top SEO tool.
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There was a one word difference in their two problems.
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That was it.
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And they got different results that said that their company was on top.
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So you cannot know what someone's typing, particularly because these things are often conversational.
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So number one, anyone who says that they know what people type into chat GPT or other similar services,
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total total, total immediately disqualify them because they're lying.
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Second, you can know what searches prompt an AI overview in Google because that is a
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noable thing, right?
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That is something that companies like HREFs do test Semarach tests that as well.
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They run thousands and thousands of keywords.
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They look to see if the AI overviews box pops up, right?
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That's that's pretty straightforward.
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That is a noable thing.
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The third thing, and this is where there is a lot of sneak oil.
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If you look at the way that tools like chat GPT and Gemini and Google AI moden stuff work,
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they do a lot of what's called search grounding, which means that if they're not confident in their answer,
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they kick off a web search.
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What does that mean?
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That means basic traditional SEO still works.
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And in fact, that's one of the best ways to feed these models is by doing a good job with the SEO.
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You already do so that when these tools start doing web searches,
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they're pulling from the right data sources.
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So if you suck at SEO, you're going to suck at the alphabet soup of whatever we're calling this thing.
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And there are a lot of folks in the search space who are relabling their SEO services,
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you know, whatever the acronym of choice is adding a zero onto their prices and saying,
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yeah, we can get you optimized AI.
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And because you can't know what people type in a chat GPT, they can't prove or disprove that what they're doing is working or not.
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So there's definitely the cold breast snake oil.
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For that.
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But the bottom line is that people use these tools conversational.
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You can't know what's in the conversations.
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The single best thing that every marketer should be doing to get you real data today is this.
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On your contact forms, ask people how they heard it.
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And if they never say chat GPT or Gemini or Claude, then you know you've got a problem
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because you do know people are using these tools.
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If people say, yeah, I've asked chat GPT right.
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And do not have it be a drop down box.
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Have it be a free form text field that people can write their answer in so that you get good information.
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And there's still as far as I'm aware, there's nothing as far as like referral codes or whatever.
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Like anybody that's linking out from all of these tools, you have no way to know if that's just a direct search
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or is there some tracking going on there?
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There is there's referral domains.
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So you can see when someone clicks on a link in chat GPT.com, if you've set up your Google Analytics,
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and there's a free guide on the trust insights website, a PDF on how to set it up and Google Analytics for.
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So if they click out of perplexity, they click out of Gemini, they click out of chat GPT.
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You can see that traffic.
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You cannot see the conversation.
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You have no idea what it said, but you can see the click that came from chat GPT,
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arrived on your website, and of course you can see what page they landed on from that click.
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And that's one of the best click streams.
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But here's the thing.
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Most of the time, people don't do that.
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They will ask a question like, oh, you know, I need a good marketing analytics
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firm. Who's good?
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And it'll come with answers.
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And then what's the natural inclination the people have done due because they've done it for
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25 years? They Google it.
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Go to browser, right?
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Okay, so they come up short on that.
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All right, so well, you could at least though get a picture of like, okay, which
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models are sending the most traffic.
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So you could get an idea at least of where it's coming from.
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And if it's not coming from anywhere, you realize that your problems are
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bigger than normal.
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You're doing your same SEO, which is not giving you anything.
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I guess so.
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Exactly.
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My big advice here is to make sure that you were asking people how they heard of you.
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And you are doing the work using AI of analyzing those,
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those, you know, freeform text responses.
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That is the most reliable way to understand your audience and your data.
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And you should be doing this with market research.
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You should be in your communities.
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Remember, we've been talking about running our community for 10 years now.
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You should be running, you know, ask questions.
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You can ask, like, marketing over coffee has a text line.
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You know, John, you could text and say, hey, in the last 90 days,
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when you were talking a gendered AI, have you ever brought up podcasts to listen to and things like that?
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So there's so many ways to ask real people and get real information and ignore the gallons
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of snake oil flowing through LinkedIn every single day about who can optimize AI the best.
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The reality is this.
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Be everywhere.
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Create content as many places you can say, yes to any podcast that'll have you.
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Push out press releases and things like that.
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Do a good job, brand building.
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And then spend all your time on making people actually want.
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Right. Yes. That's the, this demand.
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Okay. So you mentioned LinkedIn, which we have to talk about.
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The algorithm, you've found some changes.
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You've documented it.
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This paper is running wild for us.
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We've had like over a thousand downloads of this thing within the first couple of days.
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So it's completely on fire.
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But so what's going on?
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What's changed that LinkedIn?
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And how does that change the way that we approach getting content on there?
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And what gets into the algorithm most importantly?
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Well, so we'll go back to the, this is the second version of this paper this year.
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The first one's in May, which looked at all 14 of LinkedIn's major systems that create the news feed.
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And that was the first paper we said, ignore the word the algorithm.
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There is no one algorithm.
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It's 14 separate separate intricate systems.
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Seven of those systems have been roughly replaced by one big language model that in the paper
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that they documents called 360 group.
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And it is a large language model, generative AI that has given a templated prompt with your data
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in it and repeatedly asked, you know, millions of times an hour, will this user like this post?
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Will they comment on this post? Will they be engaged with this post?
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It's rank trying to rank based on language, whether or not something's going to appeal to you.
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This is a big change because what used to happen in the old system was the second pass
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ranker system was a series of very complex regression analysis to try and figure out whether
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the probability that you would like something.
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And now they move to a language model because once they weed out the obvious crap
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through the first pass ranker, which to my knowledge hasn't really changed a lot,
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that filters down to a set of candidates of the things that you're most likely should be put
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front you. Then it goes to the language model says and says rank order these things by whether
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these users going to like them. It's bits that results that then goes back through the rest of the
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system, you know, trust and safety and all that sort of to make sure it's not obviously a violation
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of the terms of service. And so this system by the very nature of the language model is in development,
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they used mixed raw eight by 22, which is a well known language model. It's at their version
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highly tuned like they they customize the hell out of this thing. And it tells us because we know
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the architecture of the model, it tells us the things like recency do matter, but context, context
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matters so much. The words that you use in your profile, the words that you use in your comments,
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the words that you use in your posts, not in abstract, but in the actual stuff that you write
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in post and show up every day on LinkedIn. That is what the 360 brew model does at the heart of
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the new recommendation system. And so it is very, very powerful. It's pretty cool. And it also
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means the probability of you quote King the algorithm is zero. It is now zero because it's a language
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model. Hey, it's already probably ballistic in nature, but be now with these, you know, with
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a language model under the hood making the recommendations, it's going to be very, very difficult
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to get past the first pass rancor, get past the model and then get past trust and safety
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to come out on on top. So that's what's changed. There's a lot more detail in the paper. And in
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the paper, there's also a notebook LM instance. So if you want to ask questions of it, you can.
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That school will have links to that in the show. And so people can check that out. We also want
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to thank Insta360 for their support of the show. They've had a bunch of stuff. They go ultra camera,
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4k ultra portable. And we have also been talking about this crazy drone that they have
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Insta360 would like to send marketing over coffee that 360 drone. That thing looks incredible.
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I know. We'll make a pitch for that. We've got links for that in the show notes too. So if you're
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shooting, we've got that. I wanted to give a shout out. I found a great article about chatbots not
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getting better. I'm going to have a link to that. That's from Ethan Zuckerman who one of these days,
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I will have to get him on the show because he does some crazy work. He's been at MIT and
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just worked on a bunch of stuff that's ridiculous. So we'll get him going. I wanted to you
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actually got the AirPods Pro 3 in hand. So how has that been with some days testing finally in the
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in the queue? They are incredible. I would say that Apple's claim that the noise cancelation is
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twice as good as the AirPods 2 is accurate. Mostly because of the new tips, the ear tips are foam
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encapsulated in silicone. So the foam is not going to rot out or whatever because it's fully encapsulated.
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The silicone tips make it comfortable. The foam tips create a really solid seal. That's two
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things. Number one, it's more passive noise cancellation, which is good. And two, they stay in,
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which is even better. I love them. I wear them literally from the moment I sit down at my desk
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to the moment I get up my desk. I'll put them on the charger lunchtime while I'm eating so that
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but the battery life is about eight hours on them. It has the heart rate monitor in it. So if you
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wanted to work out and you didn't want to wear your Apple Watch region have it with you could still
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get your heart rate monitoring the stuff that way. But I love these things. I mean, they are,
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they live up to their billing. I would say on a quality basis. Now this is a 50 year old dude's
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subjective impression. I think the noise cancellation on these is as good or better than the Bose
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in your earbuds. And they're a lot more comfortable to wear. Yeah, that's a lot to say because Bose
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managed to stay ahead of the pack with that the same with Sony. But if Apple is even close to
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those guys now you've got just better integration across the board. You can't beat that. They're
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going to continue. As a hundred bucks less than the Bose ones. Yeah, that's isn't well,
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that's the age old complaint about you just can never make it in hardware. If you're not the number one
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everybody else is just getting crushed. I did have on another thing music wise. I would say
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about Spotify. They have it's a limited rollout. So not everybody has it. But mixing is available
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for playlists. So now when you have a playlist, you can actually go into a tool. And as if it like
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a lot of this DJ software, you can pick okay, where do the two songs actually cross fade? You can
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line up the beats so that it is a seamless transition as it goes through. And they even have,
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if you're into music theory, it's the circle of fifths. But they put it in a format that you can
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eyeball it. The idea is that the minor chords are B's, the major chords, the outside are A's.
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And so the closer the number is the smoother DJ transition you get. So basically you get into this
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whole music theory of DJing where you don't want to have two sharp changes and you can go from
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major to minor if you need to slow things down or bring them up. And so that that's just killer.
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And we're actually going to be talking to somebody from Spotify. I've got one of their folks coming
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in in a couple of weeks. So we'll talk to them about that. But the other thing that I've been doing
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with that is there's a great integration with Shazam. So I have Shazam on my Apple Watch and that
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integrates through to Spotify. So as I'm just walking around, if I hear music, I like I can just tap
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the Shazam icon on the watch and it automatically throws it on a playlist over in Spotify.
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So throughout the week, I can listen to 10 songs and at the end of the week go back and okay,
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what were these songs that I thought were cool and put them where I want them to go.
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I just thought that was a lot of cool stuff going on over there. The other thing that was insane
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on Gear Watch is Nebula, these projectors. I've got one of their laser 4K projectors in my home
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theater. They're just announced this Nebula X1 Pro, which is a mobile box. So it's a 4K projector.
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It has a 7.1.4 sound. So you basically have this box and like these arms shoot out
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that have speakers going in every direction. And it has twin microphones. So you can use it as
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like a PA or a DJ station. It's subwoofer built into the box, the projector. And then if you buy
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the pack that's it's 3,700 bucks, it comes with a 200 inch inflatable screen. So you basically have
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a full outdoor music theater Dolby Sound. This is only for the millionaire Christmas. It was
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just insane to me. I don't know. I'm kind of on the fence. I'm a little concerned about having
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your projector, your sound system, your PA system all in one box. It's like, okay,
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somebody spills a drink on that and now all your stuff is dead. And what is it cost you to get that
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repair it? So I'm a little bit, I'm definitely not running out and buying one. But it is just a
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ridiculous, amazing piece of hardware when you see the thing sitting there. So have you done any
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outdoor projection or would you ever be interested in anything like that? Yeah, absolutely.
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Oh, I stay indoors as much as I can. Have it indoors, man. Outdoors is where critters live.
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There's too many variables. The thing that gets me is I just see myself setting up a 200 inch inflatable
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screen and it ending up four towns away when the wind picks up. You know, I just don't see. Yeah,
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I mean, I'm the sort of person who like sits down with my 10 inch iPad, you know, like a foot
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from my face, put my AirPods in it. I'm happy. You know, or I sit at my office. My office has a 65
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inch flat screen. And the way that, you know, we work as a family and stuff, everybody has the
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wrong entertainment preferences. So the kids are all on their individual laptops or phones or
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tablets, whatever. So there's no need for like a communal entertainment center. Everybody's
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got their own thing in there. We were all just literally just as happy to be laying in our own
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little alcoves or whatever with our individual screens and really good headsets.
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Yeah, that is something that I've seen. There is, in fact, we got to put together a list.
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There was a list that I had come across of, here's the short list of like these are things that
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actually the whole family could be interested, you know, because so much of the entertainment
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spectrum now is, yeah, everybody has their own taste and it's just what you said. There's
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everybody's off watching their own shows because they're not interested in the other shows that
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are out there. So stuff that can be watched by everybody is actually a rare subset and is worth
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checking into. It's funny. You mentioned the portable screen. I do, I've got a link to a Tim
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Buckton Man purse that I've been playing around with. I have a, I have just an eight inch kindle
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fire. And so I just have this bag of stuff and it's like anytime I have to go do something on the
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weekend for a few hours, this is all the stuff that I would probably need. So now instead of like
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running around and grabbing all this junk, I just grab the bag and leave it in the car with me and
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go. And so it's a portable charger for the phone, laptop, sunblock, keys, leather man, you know,
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just all this, this random gear, you know, it does look ridiculous to wear the thing and I seem
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to never wear it. But it's like, at least if it's around, I have my stuff. So that works. So yeah,
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link to that. So people can check that out. What else did we have on the rundown? New cloud.
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Yeah, what's up with that? What's going on there? So in the ever ongoing arms race of
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genitive AI models, this week alone deep seek the Chinese model maker released deep seek version 3.2
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that supposedly has a brand new attention mechanism that allows bet allows them to keep or
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improve accuracy while cutting costs in half. And they're already silly cheap. So now they're
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like stupid cheap. You will spend more on a days worth of high intensity coding with deep seek.
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You will spend more on a large fry at McDonald's than you will on on their API, which is pretty
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incredible. Now granted, obviously, if you're using their API, it is subject to the data privacy rules
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of the people's Republican China, aka none. So keep that in mind. But the big news in the last 24
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hours as a time of recording this is anthropic released its newest model anthropic Claude
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Sonnet 3.4.5. This is a new model. It's it's their cheaper model. So it's not Opus. It's Sonnet.
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But it is the best coding model ever released according to their benchmarks, which of course,
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everyone you know, take that with a green assault. But it incorporates a couple of very,
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very interesting features, one of which is called context editing every AI model. And we've all
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experienced this over within the same chat within a single chat. If you keep a chat going long enough,
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it eventually loses cohesion, right? It starts getting och here. It's in coherent. It starts saying
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stupid stuff, forgets details. It's because the short-term memory of a chat gets full. Every chat has a
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short-term memory. Well, what anthropic has done is they have enabled the model and the architecture
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around it to say, Hey, you know what? My memory is getting full. I'm going to start compressing
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the first half of the chat, the stuff that we're no longer talking about. And or you know, either
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deleting stuff, deleting like, and this is specifically a lot of ways to coding, like deleting
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all, you know, tool results and test results and stuff and things like that. But selectively,
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basically compressing the first half of the chat to free up room, which if you are of a certain
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age, like me, where you've got a lot of gray hair, you probably remember back in the battle days
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in the 1990s when you had to do stuff to your computer, like called D-frag your hard drive,
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where you had to run utilities to rearrange and compress the memory and stuff, that's basically
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what this is. Everything old is new again, except now the AI knows to do it itself to make it more
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efficient and to improve the correctness of its answers. And as a result, Cloud 4.5,
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a software 4.5 has been out for about 24 hours now, as of the time of this recording. And
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everyone who is using this saying, this is a significant improvement over everything, including
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OpenAI's new coding model, a GPT-5 codex, which came out two weeks ago now. It's just much
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smarter because it's being more efficient with its own memory. And so Anthropics done a lot of
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really, really cool stuff under the hood with this one to make it work. And we've gone out to all
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of our clients and saying, hey, for your cloud subscriptions, now is the time to make sure
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you're everything is updated and stuff so that you're using the new model. It's really fricking smart,
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particularly for coding. It's still good in other areas, but the coding changes, the fact that they
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now have upgraded their coding utilities. I've got a supervisor utility running in the background
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that is, I went to bed last night with a particularly thorny coding problem. I said, go work on this
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thing while I'm asleep. Here's all the permissions, all the things you're allowed to do. And when I
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woke up this morning, I said, hey, I'm done. I ran the test, the test come back clean, you test it
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and make sure it's clean and tested it like, yep, it's done. The fact that we can do that now.
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And we can say, hey, here's the thing. Go work on it. And I'll come back later and delegate these
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tasks as though these were like very junior developers is amazing. Yeah, that's cool. It's a round
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the sun development. You can, you can become a round the sun person as you get your own code done
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while you're sleeping and have it run through. That's fantastic. Okay, we've got down to single
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digits for the London event. You've got to go October 31st. Oh, only two. All right. It's almost
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a mistake for me to talk about it because we're at Tuesday by the end of the week. They'll probably
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be gone. But it's worth a shot. Actually, I think there's a wait list we can put you on. You know,
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there's the chances of you getting in our next to zero, but we can grab you and also get on a list
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if we need to do another date in the future. I also talked to us to you. I've already had people
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talking about Seattle and Chicago at some point in 2026. So go ahead and feel free to give us a
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yell. You can of course sign up for the marketing over coffee text line at 617 812 5494. How about
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for the rest of the week? You're gearing up for travel all over the place. What's going on?
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Yeah, October is going to be a busy month. So I'll be in Denver the second week of October
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for SMPS the third week of October, the in Cleveland for Mayconn, then I have a week off.
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And then I have it will be headed over to the UK for the London event. Then I'm back for a week
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then as marketing props BDB forum. And so it's a it's a stacked stacked fall.
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All right. Yeah, we've got a lot going on. We've got a bunch of other stuff coming up with
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interviews while you're on the road. But that's going to do it for this week. So until next week,
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enjoy the coffee. Enjoy the coffee. You've been listening to marketing over coffee. Christopher Penn
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blogs at Christopher S Pen dot com. Read more from John J. Wall at jw5150 dot com.
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The marketing over coffee theme song is called Melo G by Funk Masters. And you can find it at
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Music Alley from Mevio or follow the link in our show notes.