Search Generative Experience and SEO with Drew Diehl | 2024 NADA Show

Kyle Mountsier: 0:06All right, hanging out with drew the SVP of digital marketing. We

‍Paul J Daly: 0:11

should make him tell us what that is. Give us the long form.

Drew Diehl: 0:16

Yeah, well, I went when I was six, the internet, the internet came through. And just kidding. Yeah, no, basically, I look over and kind of lead the strategy for our paid search, SEO and digital and social, specifically paid social channels at stream. So I read a lot about search, basically live on LinkedIn, just keeping up with industry experts across automotive, but also outside of automotive, you know, big piece for me, I think. So many people and marketers in general can learn from just going to other marketers, other advertisers, thought leaders, you know, that other industries and then kind of take that and tailor fraud.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:53

Who are you paying attention to right now outside of odd? Yeah.

Drew Diehl: 0:56

Who's Isla Schwartz is somebody that I absolutely love. He's an SEO expert. He wrote a book called product lead SEO. And my background is really SEO, I got into everything else. And now touch everything. But so

Paul J Daly: 1:08

he's the expert on SEO that wrote a book about SEO. So if you searched

Drew Diehl: 1:13

on SEO, that's right. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:18

yeah. SEO is a it's a complex thing. And not just that, but in the last year alone, really q4 of last year, Google has just changed the rules over over it. Yeah. What are you looking at right now? Like, how are you measuring success are giving dealers the opportunity to make sure they stay successful when it comes to organic?

Drew Diehl: 1:38

So yeah, I mean, they changed so much last year. And it's only getting diff more different as time goes on. Search generative experience is really all I'm paying attention to right now. Search generative, generative. So it's generative AI and Google basically released it as a beta to counteract chat GPT becoming famous and becoming well known. So Google is afraid they're going to you lose searchers and users, because

Paul J Daly: 2:00

people are just going to go to GP and say, Tell me how to do this answer, which means they're really listening

Kyle Mountsier: 2:04

to being right.

Drew Diehl: 2:06

They're losing the data to like the you know, that's where Google makes so much money is that data. So they released this SGX search generative experience, I guess, as a beta earlier in q1. And it's they're changing so much, and what it's going to become when it's fully released, there's no timeline yet, what it will become, is people won't go to websites anymore. And that's, you know, that's dramatic. They'll go to websites, but Eli Schwartz is talking about 30 to 50% of a traffic drop. When this is released, and like transactional aspects, people are still gonna buy a car from a car dealership. Yes, I know that works. So let's say if you search, how often should I get my oil change? So I open Google, right? Yeah, let's start at the beginning. The Internet again. Generally, the lowest common denominator. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. Open Google. Yes. Go into the search bar, on a computer on a computer. Okay, carrier pigeon, and you type in how often should I get my oil change, right. And what's going to show up is this section where you can either click the generate button, which is like an opt in Module, or it has an collapse module that you can open up, and it will basically take all of the information from the entire web instantaneously. And Google will provide the most accurate answer for that search

Paul J Daly: 3:24

based on real time. available information. Yeah.

Drew Diehl: 3:27

So there, it won't just say, you know, stream companies.com recommends you get an oil change every six months, it'll say, experts recommend and you get an oil change every six months. And you this site recommends this and this site recommends this. So it's kind of like for a user. It's fantastic, because they're getting it. How's that going? It's a great question that we don't know yet. So in some instances, searches showing up paid searches showing up above the generative experience, some instances it's below. And if you can imagine, like this much information is showing up on the Google SERP. It's pushing everything down. Yeah. So people don't need to go through and click through to a website. They're just sitting there, getting their information. And then they'll leave. One interesting piece that we've been following. And I've been kind of thinking about is using the SG E and you know, organic listings as a brand experience, right? Because you might not click through to the website, but if my dealership shows up in the generated the generative results. Now when exactly when a dealer is like, okay, for dealer near me, this one dealership is showing up and they have a 4.7 google rating and they have 2000 Reviews. I'm not going to click through to their site within

Paul J Daly: 4:41

four seconds. They just gain credibility 100%. And like even when you're saying like, in the general site, if it's experts say, Yeah, I think people generally accept that if Google and Google said we checked it with all the experts. We know my person like I don't know more than they do, which is why I'm Searching

Kyle Mountsier: 5:00

this in the first so in automotive like our website tech is typically not set up, not be ready for the Google to really understand what's happening on that website current day and even just the crawlers because of the speed of the site, or because of the data structure of the site aren't typically set up, how are you preparing dealers to make sure that they can be ready for that type of Yeah, level of information that needs

Drew Diehl: 5:23

to be a part of it is education. And that's a huge piece, because so many dealers don't necessarily know that this is going on. Yeah, so we have to ready dealers to say like, look, 30% of your organic traffic may be gone. And it's never coming back, potentially, which is crazy. And I feel like Chicken Little like the sky is falling talking about this. But when we talk about what's on the website, yesterday on the plane, I was doing some research and looking into different searches, and the one search was Honda Civic lease deals. That's it. And the results that were showing there were three local dealerships to me showing in the result. One local dealership as the closest one to me wasn't like, Oh, that's weird. Yeah. Why is burns Honda not showing up? This is really, really interesting. And so I went to the site, and their lease deals page, the offer was a graphic, it wasn't hard coded in Yeah. So then Google is not able to crawl and able to pull out and say, here is the lease deal that the user wants. And Google doesn't want to know that you do lease deals. When you search something like Honda Civic lease deals, they want to know what the lease deal is for that Honda Civic. And so the dealership that was showing in the generative search experience, it was specifically a $290 per month lease deal. 36 months $2,000 down. And that was the only thing on the page. That's on that was Lincoln that it was linking to. That's it. Let me think about the

Kyle Mountsier: 6:49

data. The exactly the body textures. That's all it was.

Drew Diehl: 6:53

And that's like it. For a user. It makes so much sense because it for the longest time. Most people think SEO is gaming the system like you're trying to trick Google into ranking. That's all that's all you did you keyword stuff that you just structured these things to make sure your

Paul J Daly: 7:09

background.

Drew Diehl: 7:12

Yeah, and so easy to go back. But now like what, and I think good SEO is for a long time haven't been doing that, because there's been so many Google algorithm updates that they've gotten better and better and better using, you know, algorithmic learning, and machine learning all that stuff. But now truly, SEO is building for the user. And so for a long time, it's like, alright, let's just do a bunch of content and whether it's helpful or not helpful or not. It's like, Let's build it just to get people to say why. Yeah. And so now we're thinking about like, alright, what content are we building? How are we crafting this user experience on this site to get like, truly provide value to the users? And when we get them to the site, how are we making the process really simple for them to go to from landing page to conversion?

Paul J Daly: 8:01

Funny thing that that work works that way? My

Drew Diehl: 8:04

guess is the conversation we're having right now, in this booth hanging out in this podcast. If I had to guess that this exact conversation is not happening anywhere else on this floor. It's all about paid media. It's all about, I hear you're actually right. I guarantee it. And I know that is that seems I bet you that conversation is not happening. So I really appreciate that. Yeah, I hope the audience is listening is something we need to prepare for. It's coming Yeah, we don't know when yet and Google's keeping in their back pocket, but eventually it's going to drop hard. It's gonna draw hard and if you're not prepared, I

Kyle Mountsier: 8:40

mean, scary. There you go. Prepared your thanks. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate that. Yeah.

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