Dan Leibrandt lives and breathes search. He runs an SEO agency called Pest Control SEO. We sat down to talk about how search is changing right now, and a lot is moving fast. Here’s what I took away.
This episode is part of the Pest Control Millionaire podcast. For more on getting found and winning leads, see how Jasmine Almeter turns Facebook into local pest leads.
Everyone thinks ChatGPT already took over search, but Dan says that’s not true yet. He gave me a stat that surprised me. As Dan put it, “Google gets about 14 billion searches a day and ChatGPT gets about 1 billion searches a day.” So Google still gets 10 to 20 times more searches than ChatGPT.
But ChatGPT is growing faster than anything he’s seen, and the young kids will grow up on it. So we can’t ignore it, but we don’t need to panic about it either.
If you win on Google, you win on AI
Here is the good news. You don’t have to chase two games. As Dan put it, “there is a direct correlation between ranking on Google and ranking on large language models.” So if you rank well on Google, you tend to rank well on ChatGPT too. The work you already do still pays off. That made me feel a lot better.
We tested ChatGPT live, and it picked the wrong company
This was my favorite part, so I had Dan pull out his phone right on the show. We asked ChatGPT who the best pest control company in my town is. It did not say my company, it picked a small local company instead.
So I pulled up Google to check. My company has 486 reviews, while that other company had about 16 reviews on one profile and 7 on another. They don’t even have a website, but they have been in business over 30 years.
That told me something. Reviews and a slick website are not the whole story, because an old, trusted, local name still carries weight. And the answer changes from person to person. The result you get is shaped by your own account and your own search history. So the same question can give two people two different answers.
Build your entity first
Dan split search into two buckets. Internal signals and external signals. Internal signals are the things you control, like your website, your social profiles, and your listings.
He said to set up every main profile with your exact company name, like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram. Then link them all back to your website. That tells Google and ChatGPT you are a real business.
Dan calls this building your entity. “A noun is a person, place, or thing,” he told me. “So I’m an entity, you’re an entity.” Your company should be one too. This is basic stuff. It worked 10 years ago and it still works today.
Get reviews everywhere now, not just Google
This one was a change of heart for Dan. He used to tell clients to only chase Google reviews. Now he says spread them out.
The reason is that ChatGPT pulls from everywhere, like Google, Yelp, Angie, Thumbtack, and Facebook. When you have reviews on all those platforms, Dan said, “that is a trust signal.” It might be the thing that sets you apart from a company that’s only on Google.
Google reviews still matter the most. He doesn’t think those ever go away. But don’t stop there anymore.
Get on the “best of” lists
Here is a tip I’m going to use right away. Dan said getting cited in the right articles is huge for AI search. If a page is titled something like “best pest control companies in your city,” and it links to your business, that’s a strong signal. He said it works even better on ChatGPT than on Google right now.
Google itself is changing fast too
We talk a lot about ChatGPT. But Google is changing just as much. Dan pointed to AI Overviews. Those AI answers now show up on about half of all searches. They eat a lot of that top traffic.
He also brought up Google’s AI Mode. It’s newer and most people haven’t seen it, and it mixes a normal search with a chat-style answer. Dan talked to a top SEO news guy right after Google’s big event. He said the head of search at Google called AI Mode the future. There are no ads in it yet. That part is going to change. Search on Google is going to look very different soon.
Check where you actually rank
Dan cleared up something a lot of owners get wrong. Guys tell him they rank number one on all their keywords but still get no calls. The reason is that Google Business Profile is based on how close you are.
You rank great right by your office, but you might rank fifth across town. Dan said to use a map scan tool like Local Falcon or BrightLocal. It shows a heat map of how you rank across your whole area. Then you know the truth instead of guessing.
Voice and convenience are the future
People want things easy. Dan said the younger crowd already uses voice search most of the time. It’s up to 80 to 90 percent of the time. They don’t want to type or call anyone, they just want to ask out loud and get an answer.
So we have to match that and make it dead simple to book and pay. There should be almost no wait and almost no effort for the customer. That’s what the best companies do. Think about how fast Amazon is. We have to feel that easy too.
AI agents are coming
This part got me thinking about my own shop. Dan sees AI moving from a helper to a real worker. As he put it, “we have an AI assistant right now, but what it will eventually look like is an AI employee.”
He thinks a lot of basic tasks get wiped out by this, with the AI handling routing, scheduling, and even rain days. It checks the weather, moves the jobs, and reschedules them for you. We’ve actually got something like this in the works already. I’m excited to see what it does.
Your brand is the one thing you own
My favorite takeaway is about brand. No matter how search changes, your brand is yours. Dan said it’s not just the wraps on your truck or a good logo. “It’s ultimately your reputation. What are you known for?”
Picture the glasses or the AI picking a company for someone. Your name and your rep can be the reason they pick you. So build that now while you can.
The bottom line
Search is moving fast. Dan was honest about that. Even he can’t keep up with all of it. But the basics still hold up. Build your entity. Get reviews everywhere. Get cited on the right lists. Be easy to work with. And build a brand people trust. Do all of that, and you’ll show up no matter what tool people use to search for you.
Big thanks to Dan Leibrandt for coming on the show.
