Why Google Isn't Enough Anymore (And What Contractors Should Do About It)

Google isn’t gone — but it’s no longer the only way homeowners are finding contractors.

In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith break down how search behavior has dramatically changed and why relying on Google rankings alone is no longer enough to drive consistent leads.

From AI Overviews and zero-click searches to ChatGPT, social media, YouTube, and neighborhood groups — discovery is now fragmented across multiple platforms.

You’ll learn:

• What’s changed with Google Search (and why clicks are declining)
• How AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are influencing buying decisions
• Why contractors must adopt a multi-channel discovery strategy
• What “Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)” really means
• How to structure your website so AI tools can “cite” your business
• Why video and social media are no longer optional

If your strategy still revolves around ranking #1 on Google… this episode is your wake-up call.

Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let's get started.

Caitlyn Noble 0:30

Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors. I'm Caitlin Noble.

Meredith Medlin 0:34

And I'm Meredith with Fat Cat Strategies. What are we talking about today?

Caitlyn Noble 0:38

Yeah. So today we're going to talk about why Google isn't enough anymore. What that really means for home improvement contractors and what you should be doing instead. I mean, we get these qu this question all the time. So what are you guys going to do besides Google?

Meredith Medlin 0:52

Yeah, no, and I mean it's a super pertinent question because homeowners, your potential customers, aren't finding businesses the same way that they used to. Um, and because of that, your strategy needs to change and make sure that you stay visible and booked up all through 2026. So we're gonna dive into that today. And first we're gonna start out talking about what has changed with Google search.

Caitlyn Noble 1:15

A lot, everything has changed.

Meredith Medlin 1:17

If you've been listening, um, I think you heard us talk about how there was an average of was it like 13 at least 1300 algorithm changes or 13 something? 13, no, 13 a day. A day. That's oh, something egregious.

Caitlyn Noble 1:30

Yeah, 13 changes a day to Google.

Meredith Medlin 1:33

Yeah, so their algorithm has been changing. But um in terms of search though, I mean we still use it. Yeah, oh, a hundred percent. And we're gonna stand by that. Um, not just for regular search, but also paid search and Google Business Profile. Google is such a large platform, it's more than just the old school, let me Google that. So um Google isn't gone. That's that's not what we're saying. Um, but it's not only, but it's now not the only way that people are finding your business. Um it's shifted dramatically. We've had a couple podcast episodes on AI, um, but you know, there's also more weight in social platforms and um new discovery tools too.

Caitlyn Noble 2:17

So today Google often doesn't even show traditional list of links. It just doesn't. I mean, if you were frustrated. If you pull up Google on your phone or on your desktop right now, and you were to search anything. I mean, it's just let's not make it about contractors, but if you were to search like pet groomers near me, you're going to see auto-generated answers. And I'm like, why do I want auto-generated answers? I just want to know where a pet groomer is. Um, so that's that's definitely gonna happen. AI overviews also not helpful, especially if they're not relevant to the location that I live in. Exactly. And results pulled from other Google services before any other organic listings. So that means ads, right?

Meredith Medlin 3:01

Yeah, Google Ads. Um, a lot of times you'll see the Map Pack, um, and not just regular Google ads, but Google LSA. Yep. Um, so there's so many different things that can show up before what you may know as that traditional organic SEO listing. Um, and you know, we talked about other than that, people are still turning to social media platforms, the rise of TikTok, um, Instagram, Reddit. Reddit. Um, and then outside of that, we had another um podcast on Chat GPT, and that along with perplexity and other AI search tools are gaining popularity. And um, it's it's really a common way. I know, I mean, I know I go to Chat GPT to search things.

Caitlyn Noble 3:47

I was gonna ask, I mean, and that's well, I mean, we see that in general, and if you're listening to this and you've looked at your analytics within the last year, which you should have, um, you're gonna see that users and sessions to your uh website from Google have significantly dropped. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that because people are fatigued about that Google landscape when they hit a search button for a dog groomer. Right. So, I mean, seriously, personal inform like personally, I mean, you're you're spot on. I I don't use Google as much anymore unless I'm trying to find directions, and then I'll use definitely Google Maps. Yeah. Um, I mean, what else?

Meredith Medlin 4:30

I mean, there all kinds of things. I mean, I think that, you know, in a in a personal life sense, it's something of like we we just went out of the country recently.

Caitlyn Noble 4:40

Oh, perfect, yeah.

Meredith Medlin 4:40

So Googling um, you know, the best road trip from Sicily to You Googled that. Or not Google, well, to be fair, I did Google it, but also I went to Chat GPT, yes, got curious. It literally spit out a full itinerary with stops and everything to do. So I can only imagine, you know, as a homeowner, if you go to Google, you know, who are the best roofing contractors near me, yes, um, you're gonna get overwhelmed with a lot of information. But if you go to Chat GPT, it's gonna spit out a ranked list with pros and cons already sorted out for you. Correct. And if you're a roofer and you're not trying to get on that list, what are you doing? You're missing out a hundred percent. Um, so that's definitely something to keep in mind. Um, we're gonna talk a little bit in a minute about how to make that happen, how to show up in these AI search results on Chat GPT.

Caitlyn Noble 5:33

So I know we were just talking about AI as the way most of us have shifted in terms of searching and the importance of that, which that's not going anywhere. I would also encourage beyond AI, if you are listening to this and you're like, I have no idea how to get listed on that AI list, uh, social. I mean, yeah, my parents, I also actively use social media to get a good volume of let's just like I wish I could edit that, but just say, you know, like social media can also be bad and also give you a lot of bad information. It's a double-edged sword. But I will say a lot of people lean on social media to get their answers through Facebook groups in the neighborhood.

Meredith Medlin 6:17

Uh oh my God, for I mean the number of times in a week I hear somebody go, oh my God, I read this article about X, and I'm like, what article? And they're like, actually, it was TikTok. I'm like, okay, so we didn't read an article, we watched TikTok. But exactly if you're showing up where people are going to quote unquote read the news or get updated, I mean, I know I've been scrolling TikTok and I've seen a handful of home improvement contractors pop up on my like Explore page. And it's not that with my personal TikTok I've been searching, but I mean, the algorithm knows, you know, fun fact, my husband is a home inspector. Um, I guess I've just talked about it with him before, obviously.

Caitlyn Noble 6:57

Exactly.

Meredith Medlin 6:58

I have home inspector, like organic TikToks pop up on my feed all the time. So it's not something that um, you know, is necessarily an ad platform. I mean, uh there are ads, yes, but having an organic presence is super critical. And I mean, the ones that I've seen have been really like low cost production. It's literally just the owner or the installer out on the job site. Um, you know, one of their, you know, other installers is videotaping them. They're walking around pointing out, you know, hey, you know, make sure you ask your roofing contractor this or look at this thing that somebody missed. And it's just really good. I mean, and I'll also add, it's really trust trust building to see like a real person out there. It's not just me having to read a page full of SEO content to figure it out. Don't get me wrong.

Caitlyn Noble 7:51

Exactly.

Meredith Medlin 7:52

There's a place for that, but lean into social, y'all.

Caitlyn Noble 7:54

Yeah, lean into social for sure as a place for where people are searching. Get involved in those local uh community groups on on uh meta. Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, I mean, I mean, the one for my neighborhood, uh, y'all. I mean, every single day. I need uh recommend like recommendations for a painter.

Meredith Medlin 8:13

Yeah, for sure. I mean, next door is like that too, but I feel like when you take it down into that like personal, like neighborhood community groups, like talk to anybody that works for your company, figure out what kind of community do they live in. Can they join the group? I don't know. No, I'm just thinking of things we could do.

Caitlyn Noble 8:30

And if you can't join the group, I would just encourage, in addition to when you're asking for reviews, hey, if you're a part of a neighborhood group and somebody mentions, you know, my service, you know, please mention our name and you'll get refer referral rewards. So, what has changed with Google search everything? What does this mean for y'all listening, home improvement contractors? So ranking high on Google still obviously matters. It's not going to not matter, but visibility is fragmented across multiple platforms right now, like what we were just saying. Yep. Contractors can no longer depend on local SEO alone. Right. So fewer clicks to websites, that means data is showing a growing percentage. I just talked about this. I jumped ahead, but I'm gonna say it again. But data is truly showing that there's a growing percentage of Google queries that are that result in zero clicks. That's that aren't even happening.

Meredith Medlin 9:28

Yeah, they get the homeowner gets the answer that they need without even having to click into your website because of those AI overviews or, you know, that kind of generated question at the top.

Caitlyn Noble 9:38

So I think that's a really good stat to note because impressions you're also gonna see have gone down from Google, but clicks have also gone down because you're getting your answer right there on the search page. That's what I was trying to say. Thank you. Yeah, words are hard. Words are so hard.

Meredith Medlin 9:57

Um what else? And you know, we also we we talked about this too. I you know, we jumped ahead, but um, discovery platforms in terms of um, you know, exploring videos on YouTube. That's a big, big, big one.

Caitlyn Noble 10:10

YouTube is Google.

Meredith Medlin 10:11

YouTube is a Google entity. Yes. Um, and I know a ton of homeowners. I mean, I don't know, I'm just now thinking about how many homeowners may be thinking about a DIY project. Yep. Go to YouTube to look at it, quickly realize, like, yeah, no, I cannot do that by myself. If you have videos, I love for divorce. Yeah, exactly. Not without a few divorces in there, but um, you know, showing up on YouTube, even if you're not running YouTube ads, if you don't have an ad budget, yes, organically putting those videos out. Um, and I think I'm gonna jump ahead again, but um, if you are recording video content, this is a way that, you know, we just talked about how it's important to um diversify the channels that you're that you're reaching your audience on. If you film one video, um, your agency or whoever's doing your marketing should be able to recycle that content and turn it into so many different pieces of marketing materials. I mean, you've got the video itself, you can crop that into shorter videos to put on the social, they can take that, turn it into a written blog post and spoiler alert, um, AI results love answers to questions. The majority of the times that a homeowner searches something, it's gonna be in a question form.

Caitlyn Noble 11:29

Sure.

Meredith Medlin 11:29

Um so being able to answer that is super important. And if you can record one video and then turn it into a bunch of different pieces of content, like why not?

Caitlyn Noble 11:40

Exactly. Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think that's definitely gonna play with the AI engines because Google, as a reminder, isn't enough anymore. So, what are you gonna do to adapt your strategy? I know we were kind of teasing a little bit of tips here and there. Uh as a contractor, you definitely have to have a multi-channel search and discovery strategy. It's not just SEO. What does that mean?

Meredith Medlin 12:04

Yeah, I mean, a little bit about what I was saying. Um, you know, yes, have an ad budget, be on Google Ads. That's not gonna stop being important. No. Um, but also if you haven't taken the time to look into getting on TikTok or creating video content, please um just try it. It really doesn't have to be that high tech. Um just set your phone up, you know, at the job site, record. I promise it's it's gonna be good authentic content. Um, looking at different local uh business profiles, obviously Google Business Profile is the most popular, but please be on it. There's other citations, right? Other directories.

Caitlyn Noble 12:44

Yeah, definitely. So that's something that's a must right now with AI. Uh when we're working with our clients, that is like the first thing we do is we make sure your nap, your name, address, phone number is the same across directories that you may not even know that your business is listed on. Google Google, not Google, but Google does. But AI search engines want to see your business accurately represented on directories. Uh directories, I mean, I I don't I'm trying to think of like a few examples that might come to mind.

Meredith Medlin 13:14

I mean, I think I mean Yelp is not talking about a paid Yelp, but sites like Yelp, um BBB, BBB.

Caitlyn Noble 13:23

I mean, there's more, like yellow pages. I mean, you name it. I mean, there there's a ton. Right. So uh and then just just so just keep that in mind. Diversify your presence. Don't put all your eggs in the Google basket. You can't anymore. Um beyond that, another tip you can do to continue to adapt your digital strategy is structured AI friendly content. Let's talk a little bit about that. I know we kind of have, but more specifically.

Meredith Medlin 13:48

Yeah, it's um it's like I was saying, Google or not Google, but um Chat GPT Perplexity, I mean even Google AI overviews, they are crawling the internet to pick up information to figure out what's going to best answer somebody's query. If you already have the content listed out exactly as the homeowner is going to ask it into the search engine, and you provide a quick, you know, clearly experienced response to whatever that question is, you're much more likely to show up in that search. Um I mean, one of the favorite things that we like to do is to go into uh Google and start typing in at the top. I mean, just for fun before this, I did um, you know, does James Hardy didn't type anything after that? The search results, the recommended questions that everybody else is searching, that can be a great start to figure out what you want to make your FAQs that you write about. Like, does James Hardy's siding need to be painted? Does James Hardy siding?

Caitlyn Noble 14:50

These were real prompts, by the way.

Meredith Medlin 14:53

Does James Hardy make shutters? Um, do they make vinyl siding?

Caitlyn Noble 14:58

Oh, that would be a good one to write about.

Meredith Medlin 14:59

You know, so there's gonna they're gonna give you a bunch of different questions that real prospects of yours are searching.

Caitlyn Noble 15:05

And if we were gonna talk about citing, just for this is C-I-T-E, like that's cite. If y'all are listening to this and you're old enough, I mean, do you remember like having to cite work?

Meredith Medlin 15:17

Oh my god. And like the bibliographies?

Caitlyn Noble 15:20

Correct.

Meredith Medlin 15:21

I don't think I've said that word in probably 15 years.

Caitlyn Noble 15:25

No, I'm trying to think of the other tool that we had to use.

Meredith Medlin 15:28

But I mean, like, I'm I'm just saying this to like an actual um oh my god, I'm gonna forget it. It starts with an E. Encyclopedia.

Caitlyn Noble 15:36

Like an encyclopedia, but like there was like an actual machine that you could go onto the internet back in the day and plug in where you found that that uh news article or that that writing. Oh, yeah, the website. Yeah. It's like a my like citation machine or something. And you would grab that to prove to your professors that I didn't copyright this. It's a direct quote. So this is what Google wants. They want you to physically be their citation machine. If that makes sense.

Meredith Medlin 16:09

I hope that makes sense. No, it definitely does. So if you're I mean, your website should be like the encyclopedia of everything a homeowner in the area would need to know about the product. Because the the more information that you have that's actually meaningful content that answers what they want to know, the more likely Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are gonna point homeowners to your website.

Caitlyn Noble 16:33

Definitely. I think uh we've heard this a lot lately, and you I'm sure have heard it if you're really following what's going on in marketing right now, but GEO, it's not geography. Speaking of school. Speaking of school, uh generative, generative, I can't say it. Generative engine optimization. Generative engine optimization. This is what this is. Like this is GEO. Like the AI search results, gotcha. GEO. So make sure your website, Tamaris Point, is something Google can cite. Yeah.

Meredith Medlin 17:08

And low-hanging fruit, FAQ page.

Caitlyn Noble 17:11

Literally the lowest hanging fruit.

Meredith Medlin 17:13

It's so easy. Grab a bunch of questions, um, use, like we said, the Google search to start asking questions to get ideas.

Caitlyn Noble 17:21

Relegant.

Meredith Medlin 17:22

And then I mean, if you want to record a video going through and answering those questions. Bonus comments. Turn it into a blog. Exactly. And you know, another thing that we can't forget to mention while we're talking about um, you know, what to be doing is local SEO still matters.

Caitlyn Noble 17:39

Has to.

Meredith Medlin 17:40

Um recently did a rewind episode on Google Business Profile and what's changed.

Caitlyn Noble 17:46

Um back and listen to that one.

Meredith Medlin 17:47

That is one of the things that increases your local SEO presence, of course. So go back and listen to that. But really making sure that you are in touch with your local community, I feel like is huge, especially with local SEO.

Caitlyn Noble 18:02

Yeah, definitely. Uh those reviews, visual content, uh has a presence across multiple platforms that your audience is gonna check. So use local SEO, don't get rid of that. And I don't think Meredith, you've talked about this next point yet. So maybe beat it home.

Meredith Medlin 18:20

Yeah, um, video and social content. I don't know if you've ever heard about it, but do it. Absolutely do it.

Caitlyn Noble 18:28

Do it, please do it.

Meredith Medlin 18:29

Please I'm gonna peer prush you into it.

Caitlyn Noble 18:30

Please, and I mean Meredith just said it, but I'll say it again. You know, if you're building out a list of blog posts that you're gonna write, just go ahead and get somebody, even if it's you, even if it's I mean, you could use a phone stand. Yeah, you could totally use a phone stand. Fat Cat has some. If you're interested, reach out. Reach out to us, we'll send you one. Uh because you can sit there and I would literally, I wouldn't say read off a script as you're building out your video content. But if you are writing to answer these questions that Google wants to see, that AI wants to see, go ahead and talk about it. I mean, you're the experts. Yeah, just sit there and talk about it. And you want to even level this up a little bit more? I do. Say that you record the video before you even write. There are free transcription generators. Transcription generators. I like query heads up. And then you've got your blog post.

Meredith Medlin 19:20

Boom. Record the video. Drop the mic. Actually, don't. We need to keep recording.

Caitlyn Noble 19:24

We're almost done.

Meredith Medlin 19:25

Almost done. Almost done.

Caitlyn Noble 19:27

So if your digital strategy still revolves solely around Google rankings, wah wah, you're missing huge opportunities for visibility and growth this year. Absolutely.

Meredith Medlin 19:39

And here at Fat Cat, that's what we help contractors do. Build modern digital discovery systems, not just marketing. I love that. Modern digital discovery systems. Let's change our tagline. Perfect. We have no branding with that on it. Nothing. Um, so you know, from AI ready content to local visibility, social, my favorite video, and multi-platform discovery tactics. We we got you. We got you.

Caitlyn Noble 20:02

And we mentioned this just a moment ago, but if you visit fatcatstrategies.com, which is much harder than what I'm about to say, but if you visit fatcatstrategies.com backslash brand, brand B-R-A-N-D. B-R-A-N-D, you can request a free phone stand to start recording your own content. Girls on that page too.

Meredith Medlin 20:22

Oh my gosh.

Caitlyn Noble 20:23

You can't make this up.

Meredith Medlin 20:25

I love it. I love it.

Caitlyn Noble 20:26

Thanks y'all for listening.

Meredith Medlin 20:28

Yeah, make sure you subscribe, follow us on any of your podcast platforms, and we'll talk to you soon.

Caitlyn Noble 20:34

We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit fatcatstrategies.com.