Search Hustle Digital Marketing Podcast

Google vs AI: Who Wins the Search War?

So, Are We Still Googling Stuff, or Has AI Already Taken Over?

If you're like us on the Search Hustle Podcast, you’ve probably asked yourself recently: “Am I the only one still typing ‘best pizza near me’ into Google like it's 2012?” Meanwhile, your 14-year-old niece is having a full-blown conversation with ChatGPT about where to eat and what to wear.

This episode was one for the books — we sat down to hash out what search looks like now, how it's changing, and whether Google's days as the king of queries are numbered. Spoiler alert: AI came ready to throw hands.

Short Queries vs. Full Conversations: How We Search Now

There was a time when we all treated Google like a magic 8-ball with amnesia. You’d type:

• “Best Thai Tulsa”

• “Pizza open late”

• “Car won’t start clicking sound”

Minimal context. No punctuation. Just desperate vibes and hope.

But now, enter AI — the friend that actually wants to hear your life story. You ask:

• “What’s the best Thai place in Tulsa if I’m allergic to peanuts and trying to avoid MSG but also don’t want to spend more than $15?”

• And AI says, “Gotcha, here are three options, here’s a map, and also, here's a breakdown of their Yelp reviews like I’m your mom making sure you don’t get poisoned.”

We talked about how Google searches are short, usually 3 to 5 words. Meanwhile, AI queries are full-blown essays, because the interface makes you feel like you’re texting a human who might actually care.

The SEO Shift: What Does AI Mean for Google Rankings?

Let’s be real: if AI becomes the go-to place for search, then suddenly, the traditional SEO game changes. Keywords still matter, but now it’s about context, conversation, and intent.

We joked that ranking on Google used to feel like trying to win a spelling bee while someone moves the letters around. Now, with AI, it’s like sitting down for a job interview and hoping your website sounds smart enough to get hired.

Some big takeaways:

• AI prioritizes well-structured, helpful content over keyword stuffing.

• Brands need to be ready for users to ask weirdly specific, long questions.

• Google is catching on, with AI-generated results showing up as “overviews” or “snippets” — but it still feels clunky compared to real-time AI responses.

Not everyone is ready to ditch Google. One of the podcast hosts pointed out that most people — especially older generations — are creatures of habit.

You can upgrade their phone, buy them an Alexa, and show them ChatGPT… and they’ll still open Chrome, type “weather,” and click the first link.

So, yeah, Google isn’t dead. Yet. But it’s definitely feeling the heat.

Search Engines, AI, and the Death of the Homepage

One interesting rabbit hole we ran down was how AI could kill the traditional “homepage” as we know it. If people get their answers straight from AI summaries or snippets — guess what?

They never click through.
They never see your beautifully designed page.
They never admire that new font you spent four hours choosing.

It’s not just about being on the internet anymore — it’s about being interpretable by AI.

The Hustle Continues

At the end of the day, we’re still hustling. Whether it’s Google, ChatGPT, Bing, or something that hasn’t even been invented yet — the rules will keep changing.

That’s why we do this podcast. So you don’t have to read 500 blog posts or decipher Google's latest animal-named update. You just listen, laugh, and learn.

Catch more episodes of the Search Hustle Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
And hey — try typing that into AI and see what it says.

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I Took a Marketing Class—Now I Know Everything

Welcome to the "Did You Try Geofencing?" Era

In the world of digital marketing, there’s a sacred moment that happens in every agency office. It starts when a business owner calls and says the words:

“So I just got back from this conference…”

That sentence is the marketing equivalent of someone watching one YouTube video about open-heart surgery and then walking into the ER with a scalpel like, “I got this.”

And look—good on them. Learning is great. Self-education is noble. But taking a four-hour workshop on "How to Use Instagram Reels to Dominate the Market" doesn’t make you Gary Vee. It just makes you someone who now thinks “meta descriptions” go on images.

Which… they don’t. Please don’t do that.

In this episode of the Search Hustle Podcast, we tackle one of the most common (and accidentally hilarious) marketing problems agencies face: business owners who want to be involved in marketing—but don’t really know what that means.

“What’s Our Strategy on... Meta Descriptions for JPGs?”

There’s a real conversation that happened where a business owner asked us:

“Have you ever done a meta tag in a meta description on an image?”

That sentence is like asking a chef if they’ve ever cooked a microwave. It’s just... not how any of this works. Meta descriptions describe pages—not images. But to the freshly-minted Marketing Class Alumni, it all sounds the same.

And we get it. You heard some buzzwords. You got excited. You came back from the seminar with a hotel pen, a three-ring binder, and a burning desire to say, “Are we using geofencing?” at least twice a day.

But here’s the thing: digital marketing is not a set of magic words you say to make money. It's not Beetlejuice.

It’s a craft. It’s layered. It’s slow sometimes. It’s not one thing—it’s a system of many things, each one dependent on others being set up correctly. You can’t start with the cherry on top and then ask where the cake is.

SEO Isn’t a Checkbox—It’s a Strategy

Let’s talk about SEO for a second. A lot of these conversations start like:

“Are we doing SEO?”

That’s like asking your contractor, “Are we using nails?” Like, yes. Yes, we are. We’ve been doing that since Day One. But SEO isn’t a single button we press. It’s technical, local, content-driven, link-building—all of it.

But what most business owners really mean is:

“I heard a new word. Are we doing that word?”

And listen, if we had a dollar for every time we’ve heard “schema,” “geofencing,” “Core Web Vitals,” or “EAT,” we’d be out here geofencing a yacht.

The Post-Conference Glow-Up

There’s something about conferences that fills people with a temporary glow of confidence and a small packet of absolute chaos. The owner comes back from a hotel ballroom in Des Moines with 50 pages of notes and a dream.

They burst into the office like:

“Have we ever done content repurposing for maximum funnel conversion via omnichannel AI automation?”

No. Because that’s not a real sentence. That’s a podcast Mad Lib.

But we’ll still answer kindly, professionally, and only scream internally.

Let’s Be Clear: We LOVE That You Care

All jokes aside, let’s clear something up.

We love that business owners want to be involved. We love that they’re learning. We love that they want to know what we’re doing with their budget. That’s fantastic.

But there’s a line between asking good questions and accidentally becoming the guy at the BBQ who argues with a doctor about how “WebMD said it could be gout.”

When a business owner learns one term—like “geofencing”—and suddenly wants it all over their Google Ads account without providing an ad budget, it makes things… interesting.

When You Know Just Enough to Be Dangerous

A big theme of this episode was what happens when clients come in with just enough marketing knowledge to feel confident—but not enough to know when they're off base.

Think of it like trying to land a plane because you watched Top Gun twice. You understand the vibe—but you’re about to crash that SEO into the ocean.

Common Off-Base Requests We Hear

Here are a few favorites from the podcast team:

• “Can we SEO the PDF?”

• “Can you make our Facebook post go viral?”

• “Are you targeting keywords in the header of our YouTube thumbnail?”

• “What’s our funnel doing on TikTok?”

Each of these questions reveals good intentions but shaky understanding. And that’s okay! But it means the marketing team has to spend time explaining instead of executing. That costs momentum. That costs efficiency. That can slow down results.

Trusting the Process (Even When It’s Boring)

Marketing isn't always sexy. Sometimes it's doing the same thing 40 times—like creating title tags, resizing images, rewriting meta data—because that's what gets results.

Imagine going to a personal trainer and saying:

“Why aren’t we doing backflips yet? I saw it on TikTok.”

Because you still can’t do a push-up, Kevin.

Great marketing comes from boring consistency, not flashy trends. And your marketing team needs room to focus on the work that actually moves the needle—not just the work that sounds fancy.

When to Ask Questions (and How to Ask Better Ones)

Here’s what we recommend to all our business owners:

1. Ask for Strategy, Not Buzzwords

Instead of asking if we’re “doing schema,” ask what our content strategy looks like. That invites a real conversation.

2. Focus on Goals, Not Tools

Rather than saying “Should we be on Threads?” ask, “How can we improve brand engagement this quarter?”

3. Share Your Ideas—Then Let Us Translate

Have an idea? Awesome. Tell us. Then give us space to translate it into something that works within your funnel, brand, and tech stack.

4. Let the Experts Drive

You wouldn’t grab the wheel from your Uber driver because you saw a shortcut on Apple Maps. Same thing applies here.

Collaboration Over Control

If you own a business, it’s awesome that you want to be involved in your marketing. But being involved doesn’t mean taking the reins when you don’t know the terrain.

It’s okay to not understand everything. That’s what we’re here for.

Your job is to grow your business. Ours is to help people find your business. Let’s each stay in our lane (but use the same map).

How AI is Reshaping the Marketing Landscape

Today on the Search Hustle Podcast, we’re diving into something that’s shaking up the entire digital marketing world—AI. It’s not just a tool anymore; it’s becoming a co-worker. A really fast, always-on, data-obsessed one.

We're talking about how AI is transforming the way marketing companies get clients found online. It's not just about search engine optimization (SEO) anymore. We're now entering the age of "Search Everywhere Optimization."

From SEO to Search Everywhere

As platforms evolve and content discovery happens in more places than just Google—like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and even AI-driven answers—marketing strategies are shifting. William kicks off the discussion by talking about how AI has changed their workflow, especially in early research.

Smarter Audience Research with AI

Dave has spent a lot of time engineering prompts that help identify a client’s audience avatar and value propositions by analyzing data like reviews, survey responses, and form comments. Instead of manually sifting through that feedback, AI now crunches the data and returns insights—statistically sound ones—that guide real decisions.

AI in Branding and Strategy

We used to rely solely on our branding teams for detailed reports that include unique selling propositions, multiple audience avatars, and company vision/mission. Now, we can feed raw info to AI and get eerily close to that same output—20-page decks full of actionable insight. It’s not a replacement, but it’s definitely a booster.

Creative Tools Catching Up

And it’s not just words. AI-generated imagery is getting better every day. You can now pair your brand strategy with visuals built through tools like Midjourney or DALL·E. The future isn’t human vs. AI—it’s human with AI.

 

🎧 Tune in to hear how four marketers are navigating the future of search and strategy—balancing the power of automation with the irreplaceable value of human judgment.

Hosts:

William Nozak | https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjoseph/

Dusty Hope | https://www.linkedin.com/in/dusty-hope/

Dave Victorine | https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-victorine

Scott Emigh | https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-emigh

 

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How Working From Home has Maximized our Team Productivity

In this episode of The Search Hustle Podcast, Dusty, Dave, William, and Scott gather around the mics (in a very cozy attic setup) to talk about something a lot of businesses are still figuring out—how to make working from home actually work.

What started as casual Work-from-Home Fridays evolved into a full-on lifestyle shift. The crew breaks down how they went from a traditional office setup to fully remote operations, what the transition looked like logistically, and how everyone adapted with dual monitors, wraparound screens, and some surprisingly robust home studios.

You’ll hear candid thoughts on what’s working, what still feels weird, and why this wasn’t as big of a leap as it might seem from the outside.

🔍 In this episode:

• Why WFH Fridays were the perfect soft launch

• How the team built out their home studios in advance

• Honest talk about productivity, collaboration, and comfort

• Trade-offs and tips for teams thinking about going remote

   

  Hosts:

  William Nozak | https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamjoseph/

  Dusty Hope | https://www.linkedin.com/in/dusty-hope/

  Dave Victorine | https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-victorine

  Scott Emigh | https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-emigh

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Preview of Chapter 1 | Search Hustle: Digital Marketing Strategies Audio Book

In this episode, we delve into the world of digital marketing and explore how it has become an integral part of our lives. With the internet dominating our daily routines, from communication to learning, grocery shopping, and transportation, most of our transactions and research now happen online.

We begin by understanding what digital marketing truly means. It is the art of promoting and selling goods or services through various online channels and technological devices. While traditional methods like handing out flyers or sending sales letters still hold some value, the efficiencies offered by digital marketing have transformed the game. Email newsletters, banner ads, and retargeting ads are just a few examples of the vast array of tools available to marketers in the digital realm.

One of the most captivating aspects of digital marketing lies in its ability to leverage data. By gathering and analyzing information, marketers can fuel their strategies and stay ahead in this fast-paced digital landscape. Agility is key to success, as recognizing patterns is no longer enough. Marketers must constantly stay updated with the latest digital techniques and be willing to adapt their approach. Digital campaigns require continuous maintenance and care, including tracking metrics, monitoring performance, and fine-tuning strategies to achieve optimal results.

Throughout this episode, we explore four fundamental principles that underpin successful digital marketing:

1. Attract Your Target Audience: Discover the strategies and tactics to effectively draw your desired audience to your digital platforms and engage their interest.

2. Engage Your Audience: Learn how to captivate and connect with your audience by creating compelling content, interactive experiences, and meaningful interactions.

3. Convert Prospects into Buyers: Explore the techniques that help turn interested prospects into loyal customers, ensuring your digital efforts yield tangible results.

4. Retain Buyers for Long-Term Growth: Discover the secrets to nurturing customer relationships and fostering loyalty, enabling sustained growth and repeat business.

Join us in this episode as we unravel the principles of digital marketing, uncovering the strategies and tools that empower businesses to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

 

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SEO Basics | Sneak Peek of Chapter 3 of the Search Hustle Audio Book.

This episode is a sneak peek of our upcoming audio book. Chapter 3 focuses on the SEO Basics.

 

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Why You Should Claim Social Profiles

In this episode, William goes over why you should claim multiple profiles out there on the web even if you're not currently using them.

 

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Psychographic Targeting

In this episode, William covers Psychographic Targeting and why it's important for your business marketing strategy.

 

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Other Peoples Audiences

In this episode, William talks about the importance of utilizing other peoples audiences.

 

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Content Syndication

In this episode, William talks about the importance of Content Syndication and things you should ask for in return.

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