Publish & Prosper
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Publish & Prosper
Maximizing Your Chances of Discoverability in Generative AI Search
In this episode, Lauren & Matt dig into what discoverability looks like in a world where generative AI is changing how readers find books online. We look at what generative AI looks at when choosing what to cite or recommend, and share practical tips to help authors & creators appear in AI search results and, more importantly, to build lasting audience connections.
Learn more about CEX
š” Check Out These Resources
- SparkToro | 2024 Zero-Click Search Study
- Search Engine Journal | Meet the 7 Most Popular Search Engines in the World
- Googleās Rich Results Test
- Joe Lazer on Generative AI Hallucinations
š” Listen to These Episodes
- Ep #59 | Mastering Book Metadata to Maximize Market Reach
- Ep #60 | Book Publicity Simplified with Sarah Franklin
- Ep #66 | How Authors Can Use Long-Form Video to Build Their Brand
š” Read These Blog Posts
- Discoverability in the Age of AI Search
- Amazon Isnāt the Only Option: Going Wide to Diversify Your Book Sales
š” Watch These Videos
Sound Bites From This Episode
šļø [8:00] āHopefully we'll be able to help you understand a little bit better how these search results, these zero click search results, are being generated, how you can try and make sure that you're in there.ā
šļø [17:39] āOne thing that people should understand is that it still hallucinates pretty regularlyā¦ They can't all be right. They canāt all be accurate. And they can't all have good intentions.ā
šļø [40:09] āIf Iāve said it three times in this episode, then I still haven't said it enough. Your metadata is really important. Your book metadata, your website metadata, even things like your social media profiles and stuff like that. That information is really important for your discoverability.ā
š Canāt wait for our next episode? Check out our Resources page for links to our blog,
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š Sign up for our mailing list.
Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. I would love to open with a really quippy and funny intro right now, but I unfortunately have nothing going on in my brain at this current point in time. So I got nothing to offer you. Actually, I do have something to offer you. Specifically, you.
Matt: That was a very aggressive point.
Lauren: Youāre welcome.
Matt: Like, pointer finger. Iām worried that what you're pulling out of your pockets. Oh, is this for me?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Letās see, what does this say? Live fast. Park pass. Die fun. I like it.
Lauren: Thanks. Glad you like it.
Matt: Very cool.
Lauren: I made some new bracelets this weekend and that wasā¦
Matt: That meant you wrote ā
Lauren: āfrom a Lost Bros t-shirt.
Matt: You wrote some more words then?
Lauren: Again, not for my own book, but yes, yes I did.
Matt: Well whose book are you writing words for?
Lauren: Fanfiction.
Matt: We're definitely gonna do an episode on fanfiction.
Lauren: I would love to do an episode on fanfiction. I think it would be really fun and I think you'd get to make fun of me for 45 minutes straight.
Matt: I don't want to do that. I mean, I do that every day at work anyway.
Lauren: I know, but this would be like ā
Matt: But I think you need a reminder as to why you shouldn't spend all of your writing time on fanfiction.
Lauren: I'm not!
Matt: And some of it on something you actually are going to publish.
Lauren: I'm not. I would call this a writing exercise where I'm getting back into the habit of writing every day by writing some low pressure content.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: That I will hopefully be able to funnel back into my own original content once I'm getting back in the stride of writing on a regular basis.
Matt: All right. Well, thank you for my bracelet. It's very cool.
Lauren: Youāre welcome.
Matt: What do yours say today?
Lauren: I have one of those for myself and then my other two say Me and My Ghost and Idiots in Love. No further questions at this time?
Matt: Yep, no. No notes.
Lauren: Nope? Okay, great.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We are unfortunately talking about things other than bracelets today.
Matt: Unfortunately.
Lauren: Unfortunately. Yeah, it's not our primary content.
Matt: Yeah, because I would absolutely love to spend the next 45 minutes talking about bracelets.
Lauren: I think we could do an episode where we just, I bring my whole like, bowl of bracelets in and we go through every single one of them.
Matt: Well, that's a whole ānother story.
Lauren: Talk about the origin story of each one of them.
Matt: Oh my goodness. I don't know if I want to know the origin story of all of them, but I bet there's probably some bangers in there.
Lauren: There are some bangers in there.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: Maybe we'll get around to them eventually.
Matt: Then what are we talking about today?
Lauren: Today, we are talking about something that I think might be a little divisive, perhaps even amongst your two hosts. We are going to be talking about how to maximize your book's discoverability in a world where a lot of what we're used to when it comes to maximizing search and discoverability is actively changing. I mean, this is something that we can't even say like, oh, this is different than it was a year ago. This is different than it was a week ago. Right now.
Matt: Thatās true. Yep.
Lauren: At this point, who knows what it's going to look like in a month from now, so.
Matt: Different for sure.
Right now. Different for sure. So we'll call this a timely episode, but also somewhat of a timestamped episode.
Matt: Right.
Right now. Yeah.
Matt: So, well, yeah, there's definitely a timestamp there to a degree. I do think the general principles and concepts around all of this will remain somewhat relatively the same. I just think that, you know, the things that'll keep changing will probably just be the amount of information available each time you do a new search. I mean, cause these models are growing every day, right?
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: And they're changing the way sometimes that they scrape for this information or there's all these other external factors that are influencing the way this stuff is evolving. So. But I do think these concepts will pretty much remain the same. So I think you could probably listen to this episode again next year and a lot of it is probably still going to be relevant and stuff you should be doing, especially as it relates to AI.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: So yeah.
Lauren: Well, I'm also, I'm going to spoil my own thesis right at the top up here and say that most of the stuff that we're going to talk about in here about how to maximize your book's discoverability, while it's all stuff that we would argue we have learned is going to be helpful for maximizing your discoverability with AI and search and stuff like that, it's also stuff that you should be doing in general in order to maximize your discoverability with an actual audience of readers.
Matt: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Lauren: So this is all stuff that you should be doing anyway. So it should be relevant no matter what.
Matt: We'll see.
Lauren: Hopefully. But maybe we should just jump right in. Maybe that's the easiest way to kind of explain where we're going with this.
Matt: Yeah, let's do that.
[5:03]
Lauren: All right. I'm sure we're all familiar with this at this point, how things are different, even in like, the last six months. If you go on Google and you're searching on Google, it looks different now than it did a year ago.
Matt: It looks different now than it did six months ago.
Lauren: I mean, yeah, absolutely. But I went to a session at Content Marketing World last year in October of 2024 that was put on by people from SparkToro.
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: And they were presenting a study that they had done on Google searches and generated AI summaries and how that was kind of impacting click through rates and metrics and all kinds of different stuff about that. I've linked it in the show notes, if you want to take a look at it is actually really interesting. It's called the Zero Click Search Study from SparkToro.
Matt: Was it Rand and Amanda?
Lauren: Rand wrote the article presenting the survey. Amanda was the one actually presenting it. It was really interesting. And one of the things that they shared during that, that was just so shocking to me when they first said it, was in 2024, 58.5% of Google searches were what they call zero click searches.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Which does actually, if you think about what Google search results look like now, as soon as you start thinking about that, that actually makes sense. Because yeah, we find ourselves a lot right now where you go on Google and you just want to search, what was the opening day of Magic Kingdom? And the answer comes up in Googleās search page.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: You don't have to click anything. You don't have to go read a history of Disney website in order to find that out. The answer is generated right there.
Matt: Yes. And for everybody to listen right now, they're probably like, well, yeah, that's what we want. We want our questions answered. And yes, to a degree, that is what you want as a search consumer. You're searching for something you want the answers, and the faster they can be displayed with less clicks most of the time that's what you're looking for. As a business, as a brand, as an author, as somebody who's trying to sell something or promote something, that's not what you want.
And so there's been this weird juxtaposition right now where Google's whole revenue model was based on ad sales, right? Those little sponsored listings and things that you see, and to a degree they're in this weird limbo right now where ad sales for them are dropping because there's this zero click sort of ecosystem that's been evolving a lot faster. And so what they're doing is trading off that ad sales revenue for this idea that they want to keep people on Google longer. They want to keep people on the Google search pages or other pages longer so that they can develop some other ways to get money out of you to replace that ad revenue.
So again, I think there's arguments here, you know, as a search consumer, you're probably like, yeah, this is great. I get my information faster. Whether or not you trust it is a whole ānother story. But if you're on the other end of that, this is not a great thing and you're who we're talking to right now. So making sure that you appear in search results these days is not quite as easy as it used to be. Not that it was super easy prior to this, but hopefully we'll be able to help you understand a little bit better how these search results, these zero click search results, are being generated, how you can try and make sure that you're in there. And if you are still wanting to drive somebody back to your website or your social media channels or your email list or whatever that is, hopefully you'll come away with some ideas and tips on how to do that.
This really is to give you a pretty good understanding, at least of what the current search ecosystem looks like, how it is that people are getting discovered or not anymore, because of the onset of generative AI and chat AI in these search engines. But hopefully to make you comfortable with that and drive some creative ways that you might be able to game that system too.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's also maybe an attempt to underline some other points that we've made recently.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: When you're looking at that other 42...
Matt: What do you use chat GPT for in your personal life?
Lauren: Oh, in my personal life? I don't.
Matt: At all?
Lauren: I only use it for work.
Matt: Are you for real?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: So when you search, do you go by what pops up at the top that's generated by chat or do you scroll down to the actual search engine listings?
Lauren: It depends on what information it is that I'm looking for. And it also depends on what sources are provided by the generative search at the top. So if it is something thatā¦very factually, I'm just looking for what was the official opening date of Magic Kingdom.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: That I don't feel like I need to dive deeper into, I feel pretty confident that Gemini or whatever Google is calling their generative search result thing is going to give me an actual correct answer on that. That's a pretty straightforward fact. But if I'm looking for a list of the top ten best restaurants at Walt Disney World and it tries to give me a generated summary at the top up there, I might skim through it to see what's included in that list. But I'm also going to pay close attention to see what sources it's taking that list from.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And weigh what I take as reality from that based on those sources. And then I probably still will go scroll down and look at like, I want to choose the sources that I trust and read what their top ten lists are rather than what Google has randomly decided to include here.
Matt: Side note. To go back to what you said a little earlier or what you were talking about, I should say. Anytime you see something that was written by Rand Fishkin, believe it.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: There's probably no better resource over the years for all things search related. His first company that he started or the one he's probably most famous for was Moz, which is a massive platform for search and discoverability. A lot of those who might be listening that started their marketing career in search, like I did, you're very familiar with Rand Fishkin and Moz. And then he went on to found SparkToro, which is the tool that you were talking about earlier. It's a great tool, by the way, we use SparkToro. It is a discoverability tool, so it can help you do some of the things we're talking about or help you get to a better level of discoverability, should you choose to check it out. But nonetheless, any time you find anything written by Rand Fishkin, you can trust that it's probably very well written, very well researched, and it's going to be extremely detailed and analytical.
Lauren: And that isāthe SparkToro article that I have linked in the show notes was written by him. Which, I also think that we referenced or recommendedāand if we didn't, I'm belatedly recommending it nowāSparkToro in our metadata episode.
Matt: I think we did, yeah.
Lauren: I think we did. And that is relevant to this episode topic as well.
Matt: Yeah, it is.
Lauren: Very relevant. We'll, we'll get to that. But also if you haven't listened to that episode, I would definitely recommend.
Matt: I'm still amazed that you don't use ChatGPT at all in your personal life. What about Claude or Perplexity? None of them?
Lauren: Nope.
Matt: Man.
Lauren: I use those tools for work. And I'm not going to lie and say that I don't use them for work on a fairly regular basis.
Matt: Well, yeah. You shouldnāt do that.
Lauren: But I don't use any of them personally.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Oh well. Going back to my point, we just did the episode with Chelsea where we talked about the value of long form video content and having some kind of long form video presence, particularly on YouTube. And in doing the research for this episode, of those 41.5% of Google searches that have an actual click as a part of the result, 29% of those 41% are going to Google owned properties, which include YouTube.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Also, beyond that, YouTubeāor at least as of October of 2024, this is another article that I have linked in the show notesāYouTube is the second most popular search engine worldwide.
Matt: Yeah, that's important to know and continue to know. YouTube has been second most popular for the most part for quite some time. It's no coincidence that it's owned by Google, obviously.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: The fact that as recent as October of 2024, it was still registered as the second largest search engine is pretty amazing. I would imagine it will probably hold onto that title for a while because as you just said, and as we'll see, Google wants to keep people on their pages, on their properties. And so even as they continue to evolve the way the search experience is going to unfold and be used by search consumers, let alone advertisers, they're still going to prioritize things like YouTube results and other properties that they own. I don't think there's going to be any, any action taken to stop them from that anytime soon.
So that's an important thing to know for anybody who's not actively experimenting with YouTube content for what you do. I understand that sometimes for fiction authors something like a YouTube channelāand you know again, this is timely because we did just have Chelsea on here talking about thisābut for authors, sometimes a YouTube channel can sound intimidating or irrelevant orā¦or something you're just not interested in trying right now. But I would urge you to listen to that episode with Chelsea and just know that it's probably one of the easier channels to get started on. And there's a lot of great tips and stuff in there from Chelsea about how to overcome maybe some of that fear of being on camera if that's your thing or, or whatever that might be. But just being armed with the information and understanding that the second largest search engine in the world right now is YouTube should be a motivator for a lot of people to be using YouTube in whatever way they can.
Lauren: Yeah. Absolutely. Also, if you did listen to that episode and you'd like moreā¦ like a deeper dive into, so how do we actually do that? How do we get started? What are some best practices for stuff like that? Would love to have Chelsea back to talk more about that, so if that's something that you're interested in, let us know and we'll get her back here for more of a deep dive.
Matt: Why are you asking me?
Lauren: I'm not. I'm letting you off the hook. You get a free day one day soon. I don't know, next time she's back in the office.
Matt: I donāt remember what a free day is, but I'll take it.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: I'll take half a free day.
Lauren: I've seen your calendar. I know. I know exactly what that looks like.
Matt: It's just full of Publish & Prosper calendar invites.
Lauren: Yeah. I just block off weeks at a time on Matt's calendar.
Matt: I would rather record podcasts all day every day than a lot of the other stuff thatās on my calendar.
Lauren: Might be one of the nicest things you've said to me in this podcast.
Matt: Well, it has nothing to do with you, I just like being on the podcast. I'm just kidding. Of course, it has something to do with you.
[15:14]
Lauren: Anyway, let's get into this a little bit, because I think we actually have a lot to talk about in here. I want to talk a little bit about just what we've seen. And again, I want to preface this with: this is all kind of information that people are actively learning about right now. So I can't say with 100% confidence, this is definitely for sure exactly how AI tools choose what to cite or recommend, or this is exactly for sure 100% how all of this works. But as people are exploring these different tools and trying to get a better grasp and understanding of how they work and how they are delivering content and how they're choosing the content that they deliver, this is what we're starting to see unfold as āthis is what we think they're doing.ā
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Let's talk a little bit about that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I also asked ChatGPT to explain this to me because I thought it would be interesting to try to have a generative AI tool explain itself to me.
Matt: I've seen a lot of these that are really fun and a lot of that are scary,
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But let's see what you're saying.
Lauren: I mean, ChatGPT was scary enough this morning when I opened it and I asked it a question and it said, Hey Lauren, sure I can help you out with that. And I was like, oh no. When did you learn my name? I don't remember telling you my name.
Matt: It's attached to your account.
Lauren: It's fine. It just was startling. Startling when anyone uses my name.
Matt: Do you get startled when you open an email and says hello Lauren?
Lauren: Yes, especially if it's coming from somebody that I don't know.
Matt: All right. Fair.
Lauren: I don't want to be perceived, please do not address me by name. But if you are gonna do it, address me by the correct name.
Matt: You should literally start filling out everything now with your name as elder emo and that way you'll get marketing collateral that says dear elder emo.
Lauren: Thatās a great idea. That is such a good idea. All right. I'll keep that in mind. Anyway,
Matt: What did ChatGPT tell you?
Lauren: ChatGPT said that generative AI generates answers based on patterns in massive data sets and pulls in fresh sighted content from trusted sources when connected to real time search.
Matt: It's very fond of its accuracy, isn't it?
Lauren: It really is. It actually referred to itself at one point as a cautious assistant or something. It was talking about how it's very cautious about what sources it cites. I was like, mm, debatable, but okay.
Matt: It's interesting it says patterns in massive data sets and pulls in fresh sighted content from trusted sources when connected to real time search.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: One thing that people should understand is that it still hallucinates pretty regularly. You can ask ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or any of these tools that are out there now any number of questions and there's still a decent chance, depending on the question and the tool you're using, that you're going to get information that's not 100% accurate. And in some cases wildly inaccurate.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: So the caveat here, that we should say, you know, again, always double check. Or at least if your gut is telling you, I don't know if this is right, then go double check it some other way, because most of them still hallucinate. Most of them still are pulling information from other places that they didn't give you in this answer. So be careful with that. But it is more than likely how it says, it's being trained to scrape billions and billions of pieces of information, but. They can't all be right. They canāt all be accurate. And they can't all have good intentions. There's a lot of nefarious content out there on the internet. I mean. We can't have nice things, so.
Lauren: That's probablyā¦the really important thing to remember on here is that when it emphasizes things like massive data sets, or trusted sources, or high authority sources was another phrase it used at one point. You have to take into account what those sources actually are.
Matt: Yeah. Their definition of high authority.
Lauren: Right, right. ChatGPT or generative AI tools might consider Wikipedia a high authority source. And a lot of times Wikipedia can be a high authority source.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: But it is also a crowdsourced website that can have inaccurate, not factual information on it.
Matt: 100%.
Lauren: Or, you know, it will also, we know for a fact that it'll also scrape sites like Reddit. Which again, Reddit is a, is an open-source opinion-based community that might have some really good, really factual, insightful, in-depth information on it. And it might also be a steaming hot pile of garbage and opinion-based statements that are not facts at all.
Matt: It absolutely might be those.
Lauren: So it's gotta kind of getā¦ the point is that there isn't, there isn't that human filtering ability in there that understands the difference between factual presentation and opinion-based presentation or inaccurate, non-factual information. And if you are taking all of this just presented to you without any context, you might not differentiate between those either.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: The good news is that if you are looking for ways to maximize your discoverability and not necessarily looking for tips on how to use generative AI as a search tool, that could work in your favor. Because havingā¦having your book or having your content listed on these sources, or referenced or cited or whatever, on these sources that generative AI tools are considering high authority sources or known platforms or whatever. That is a great way for you to maximize your discoverability.
Matt: Yeah, always and in general.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: For sure. I mean, regardless of what's going on right now, I think, like we said, there's things we're to be talking about here where I think a year from now, a lot of them will still be relevant. There'll still be things you should be doing. They'll still be what is considered best practices. But yeah, anytime you can combine your content or something that you're doing with, with more authoritative platforms and or, you know, sources of validation, that's a good thing.
Lauren: Right.
[21:11]
Lauren: Sources of validation is a great next point actually, because that is another thing that these tools will consider is external validation. This idea that it's not just looking at one individual source. So your website could be the most optimized website on the planet that is just designed to hand generative AI your information on a silver platter. But if your website is the only source that mentions any of your content, that might not carry as much weight as somebody whose content and books and whatever are widespread on the internet.
Matt: Yeah, or at least have multiple other reference points, right?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So you could have a book or anything else for that matter, your product, your message, your service, whatever that might be. Essentially what we're saying is the more people that cite it or talk about it or mention it or included in something they're doing that are also of stand up nature, quality nature in terms of what they do, the better off yours is. It just boostsā¦it's similar to old school SEO where back in the day you wanted to have as many links out there pointing to your site as possible. You wanted the internet, you wanted Google to think that your site was trusted by all these other sites and that's why they were linking to your site, right?
And there were good ways to do that and there were bad ways to do that. People would create link farms and you could go out and buy a bunch of links back to your site. And you're going to see stuff like that happening now whereāif it's not already, actually, it probably isāwhere people are going to offer you, we'll have your content cited on fifty trusted educational websites around the internet. Well, theyāre fifty websites that were spun up by AI. There's nothing trusted about them. And you just paid $150 for some coverage that's really not going to do any good for the most part. So be careful with that, but. It's the same concept, you know? So if anybody understood link backs and things like that or back in the day, it's very similar.
Lauren: Yeah, and it doesn't have to be exclusively links or citations ā
Matt: Right.
Lauren: It can be mentions.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: It can be reviews. It can be this is āthis is my current TBR pileā and your book is included in the list of titles that, I haven't even read it yet, but it's on my list of books to read soon. Any kind of mention like that counts asā¦ The phrase I saw was semantic weight, which I thought was an interesting phrasing for that. That it's giving relevancy, just the mention of it is giving relevancy to your content.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. There are other factors that go into this too. I wanna, I wanna get to the part where we talk about how to actually maximize this and make this work for you.
Matt: Well letās go.
Lauren: Other factors I just wanna point out really quickly, AI loves to look for quotable, citable sources. And in order to do that, they're looking for clear, specific, and straightforward answers to questions. They're also looking for easily readable metadata. And I'm not just talking about book metadata at that pointāalthough I definitely am, so make sure you go listen to that episodeābut you can also make sure that your website's metadata is optimized for generative AI. Google has a tool called Google's Rich Results Test, I have it linked in the show notes, that you can use that to test how your website data looks in an AI search. So you can see if it's optimized for that or not.
Matt: Yeah. Sarah on our team has a lot of experience with that as well. That's something that SEO has been using for quite some time, but very relevant still.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of relevant, recency and relevancy in content is relevant in generative AI search. So, you know, even if you wrote a really, really, really awesome super relevant article ten years ago, that might not be weighted as highly as something that was published a year ago or six months ago.
Matt: Yeah, it's - it's hard to tell though too though because you could have wrote something that was, or that is, let's say eight to ten years old. But maybe it was highly technical in nature. It's been cited by a lot of, you know, really authoritative other entities and it might still hold more weight in terms of the value of the information versus something that was more newly published. And that's where we quite don't know exactly how AI is in fact weighing some of those things.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Because again, if you have this piece of content that's eight to ten years old, but by old SEO standards would still rank higher because of all the citations, because of all the other authoritative sites that refer to it, mention it, link to it, use content from it, and many other things. Again, you'd have eight to ten years of SEO built up behind that piece of content. And then something new or newly published, we should say, a piece of content that is just as technical in nature and probably just as accurate, but let's just say it's not nearly as mature. So it also does not have the amount of authoritative links and support that the other one does, we're just not sure how AI is handling that yet. We do think that in many cases it's prioritizing the newer version. So again, that's why we say be careful, check all the sources where you can, because that older one might actually hold more value for what it is you're doing. But yeah, recency and relevancy are super important, but we're still not 100% positive how it's treating recency. I think it's still really weighing relevancy a little more heavily, but we'll see.
Lauren: Yeah, I mean, again, going to reiterate the point that this is still very much something that we're all learning about.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: This is, this is not something that we can present to you as tried and tested true 100% fact for sure. This is something that we're all actively learning about right now. Like, I could go back to my desk immediately after recording this episode and get an article in a newsletter that is teaching me something new about this subject that we're talking about right now.
Matt: Definitely.
Lauren: So, probably will, honestly. At some point this week, I will get at least one article in my inbox, that I may or may not read because like we just talked about, I don't always read my blog posts that get sent to me, but I will read the book version.
Matt: Well I hope that email comes and it says Dear Elder Emo.
Lauren: That would be amazing. I will respond to an email addressed to Elder Emo.
[26:55]
Matt: Alright, so we've kind of covered like, what's going on right now with search specifically. So for this episode, discoverability, we're talking specifically about search, right? I don't know how many authors played the search game over the years. I think a lot have tried. I think many have appeared in search results just based on doing some of the things you should have been doing anyways and they were already doing them and so, voila, they've appeared in search results. Most authors I've talked to over the last nine years that I've been at Lulu did not spend any real amount of time trying to rank high in search engine results. Because it wasn't easy. Isn't easy.
I think again, what we're trying to say here is if you kind of just do the things that you really should be doing anyways, some of these things we're going to talk about right now, some of the things we've already talked about, you're already doing what you should be doing. And I think that you're going toāhopefully, if these tools continue evolving in the direction we think they areāyou might actually see your stuff appearing a lot more frequently on Google and some of these other search engines or outlets. So let's talk about some of those things that people should and could be doing.
Lauren: Absolutely should be doing, could be doing. None of this is going to be new information in terms of, if you've listened to this podcast, these are all things that we've talked about that you should be doing anyway. This is just really another reason why you should be doing them.
Matt: That's the beauty of it.
Lauren: It absolutely is. And if you are listening to this still and you're like, I don't know about if I care so much about Google search results, Google is not the only search engine. There are book-relevant search engines that I'm not going to name because I don't want to. But you can go read the article in the show notes about what the top seven worldwide search engines are, and go check out what number three is, and then tell me that this isn't relevant to you. Iāll wait.
Matt: I mean in general, yeah, you know, but yes.
Lauren: Yes. So let's talk about how to actually optimize your discoverability and start right away with sharing consistent, relevant content on your own platforms. You want to be an activeā¦ I don't even want to say enthusiastic, I don't know what the next word is in that sentence. So you want to be actively engaged on your own platforms, whether thatās ā
Matt: Actively and genuinely.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Authentic. How ābout that?
Lauren: Authentic is a great word for this.
Matt: That's the one thing AI can't do.
Lauren: Correct.
Matt: Or one of the things, but the big thing it can't do is be authentically you.
Lauren: Right, right. That's literally just you. Motivational words.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: From us to you.
Matt: Am I done for the day?
Lauren: Yes, you are.
Matt: Can I go eat second lunch?
Lauren: When did you have first lunch?
Matt: Before this.
Lauren: I got to start doing first and second lunch.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I don't have any lunch.
Matt: Missing out.
Lauren: I know. You're going to want to make sure that you are staying active on your own website. If you have a blog, podcast, on your social media channels, on YouTube, again, whatever it is, whatever it is that you're doing. Like we said, with the relevancy and recency, we're still not entirely sure which of those is weighted more than the other. So the way to maximize your opportunities on there is to make sure that you are consistently posting content. That you are staying active, staying relevant, staying recent. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that you're creating detailed long form content every single day. I'm not saying thatādon't burn yourself out trying to do this.
Regardless of whether you're creating, if you're a nonfiction author whose content lends itself to how to content or educational content, whatever that might look like guides, something like that. If you're a fiction author, you're creating behind the scenes content, reader guides, insights into your writing process, insights into what's coming next, whatever that looks like for you. Or maybe you're just taking some of your older content and reposting it, refreshing it with some updates to it. And saying, hey, you know, since I wrote this five years ago, I've learned some new things about it, or I'm updating the links in here. We do that on our blog. You may notice that on the Lulu blog. We will periodically update posts that we've already published and we just kind of go through, weāre not doing massive updates on them, but we're just kind of going through and making sure is all the information that's in here still relevant?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Is it still accurate? All the links that we link to in here, are they ā do they still work? Is there any new information that we can add in here? It's not major changes, but we will ā
Matt: The key is consistency.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: So if you look at all the creators out there right now that have reached some level of success, however you define that. If you think about the ones that have become household names or gone on to do other things, if you think about all the creators out there right now that are making a decent living off of that, whether it's YouTube or writing books, it doesn't matter. Consistency is a big thing. And many of the experts out there will say the same thing. One of the most important things you could do is just be consistent. Not every post has to be a winner. Not every video has to get one million views. Not every podcast has to get 6,000 downloads in the first 24 hours. Consistency. Just show up, be consistent.
If your thing is that you're going to be online on your YouTube channel or your podcast or whatever, your social, it doesn't matter what it is. But if you say, hey, I'm going to be Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're going to find me here talking about something thatābe there Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and just keep doing that. Consistency is key for a lot of things, even for a lot of these search engines and large language models and other pieces of tech that are looking at information and content. They are looking at consistency. How mature is this source of information? How long have they been around? That's a big thing. So consistency is extremely important here, in what you just talked about.
[32:20]
Lauren: Yes. Beyond that though, is also not necessarily consistency, but presence beyond your own platforms.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: As well.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So that's another thing, you know, like we said about how they're looking for trusted authorities, trusted sources. They're looking for a presence on other websites, other places, things like that. This is a great opportunity for you to lean into some earned promo opportunities if you can.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So guest blog posts, guest podcast appearances, book club appearances, interviews. Even something like when Sarah was on here for the earned promo episode, she talked about Qwoted and those other sources, including the one that is defunct that I can't remember the name of where you can just ā
Matt: HARO. Help A Reporter Out.
Lauren: Yes. That one. That people are just out there looking for, I'm looking for somebody that I can quote in an article about this. Get your name out there. Get your presence out there. But not just earned media opportunities. You can also create those opportunities yourself. You don't have to earn them entirely. If you are posting on your own blog on a regular basis, cross post that content on Medium or Substack.
Matt: Yeah, I would argue, though, be careful how many channels you decide you want to cross pollinate or branch out into.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: Remember, we also don't want to get into that age old trap of like, trying to be everywhere all the time and be all the things.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Like, you're just going to burn yourself out. You really do want to focus on whatever channels you think you can show up for regularly and authentically. But I do think it's extremely important to go back to what you were saying just a second ago, getting out onto channels that aren't yours. This is a great opportunity. We've talked about this before too, where this is why it's important to establish relationships with other peers in your industry or what you do. You know, other authors if you're a writer, other creators of video content if you're a YouTuber, or whatever that might be. Because it's a great opportunity to exchange. So when you start building that list of PR opportunities that we talk about in an earlier episode that we'll link to, it's always easier to first go to people that you have relationships with that have their own channels. So you might have made friends with somebody at a conference six months ago that has their own YouTube channel. Reach out to them. Hey, I just launched this new book or I'm doing this thing, or you know, I'd love to get a little bit of extra exposure here. Can we trade out? Maybe I give you a guest spot on my blog and you give me some airtime on your, your YouTube channel, or your podcast, or whatever that might be. So this is where those relationships that hopefully you're forming with others through in-person events and other things, I think this is one of the areas where they're most helpful and impactful is activities like this. So you don't have to start from scratch all the time and go out there and try to find these outlets that will have you on their podcast or whatever that might be.
Lauren: Yeah. And don't underestimate the possibilities of adjacentā¦
Matt: Sure, yeah.
Lauren: Appearances as well. It doesn't always have to be you ā
Matt: You mean like, genre adjacent or topic adjacent?
Lauren: Yes. Yeah yeah yeah. It doesn't always have to be within your own niche
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Or within your own specific genre. I think about this all the time. One of my favorite podcasts, which is a theme park related podcast, they have guests on fairly often and a couple of years ago, literally two years ago, and I still think about this episode, sorry, they had a young adult author who had a new book coming out on the episode. I think all three of those hosts like, regularly joke about the fact that they read one book a year. Like none of them, none of them are big readers. They're not YA-based. Like, it's not relevant, but that author is a fan of their podcast. And when he was doing promo for the new book that he had coming out.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: He took a shot and reached out to this podcast and was like, I'd love to, I'd love to talk to you guys. I'm also like a big theme park nerd. I've got a new book coming out. It's tangentially related. It was around the Halloween season and it was a YA horror novel, I think. And he was like, shoot my shot. Why not? And not only was it such a great episode that they invited him back a year later for another episode, but I went out and bought his book after listening to that episode because he was such a fun guest on there. I don't think I'm ever going to read it. It's not my genre and it's not like something that I have a whole lot of interest in. But I liked his presence on that episode enough that I went out and bought the book.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: You know? Don't discount that possibility.
Matt: Yes. I think your advice is highly or hyper relevant. Yes.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And then it is giving like, you know, it's, it's giving, when he has, when somebody is searching for his name, or somebody is searching for content related to him, this is another resource that's going to come up. And, you know, this is a podcast that isānow it's eight years old, at the time it was six years oldāthat is consistently putting out one to two episodes a week, all year round, they have a very establishedā¦part of a podcast network kind of thing. Like, that is a reliable known source. That is another place that is going to cite this author as content.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So why not? Like, why not take those opportunities or go after those opportunities if you can, they're going to add value to your marketing efforts in more than one way.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Kind of similar, make sure that you're remembering that community validation part of what Generative AI is looking for. We talk about this all the time as well. Like I said, none of this is new information. This is all stuff that we've been saying you should be doing probably since the second episode that we've recorded of this podcast. But this is an opportunity for you to...
Matt: Wait, why the second episode? Why not the first?
Lauren: Well, the first one we just talked about ourselves.
Matt: Oh. That sounds terrible.
Lauren: The first one was an intro episode.
Matt: We should probably redo it.
Lauren: We should redo the intro episode.
Matt: Or just delete it.
Lauren: No, I would ruin my metrics forever.
Matt: Just start with episode two.
Lauren: Terrible idea. Actually, no, that was technically episode zero.
Matt: Ah, okay.
Lauren: We got it, don't worry. But take the time to participate in community spaces when you have the opportunity to. In reader spaces, as long as you're doing it authentically. Again, make sure that you're not in there crossing lines that you shouldn't, but if you have opportunities to ā I'm not going to get into it.
Matt: Yeah. I'm not going to ask what that means, but you know, use your best judgment. I guess.
Lauren: We did a whole episode on it actually.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But this is an opportunity for you to do things like host AMAs on Reddit. I see authors all the time that are doing AMAs on Reddit and it takes an hour of their time to establish some community-based attention. I saw multiple reference points that pointed to Reddit as being a known source that generative AI pulls from. So that's a great opportunity for you. I mean, personally, you wouldn't catch me on Reddit if it was the end of the world. But if you're somebody who thinks that it makes sense for you to authentically have a presence on there, then do it.
Matt: I think there are people who have been able to establish authentic subreddits, groups, whatever on Reddit. I think in general, Reddit's doing a good job of trying to shed their old image, so. Yeah. Regardless of how Lauren and I might feel about Reddit, the results are definitely starting to creep more and more into search and things like that. So if that is a space you're already comfortable with, great, double down on it. Make sure you're really representing yourself well in there, and hopefully that has already been helping or will help. But yeah, I just wanted to throw that in there before we have the Reddit army coming after us.
Lauren: To be totally fair, my disdain.
Matt: To be fair.
Lauren: My disdain for Reddit has very little to do with the content or population of people on Reddit and everything to do with the fact that I find it to be the least user friendly website on the entire internet.
Matt: You donāt like them because as a collective they've probably talked more trash about Taylor Swift than any other outlet on the internet.
Lauren: There's an entire subreddit of people that are ex-Kanye fans that became Taylor Swift fans.
Matt: Well that makes total sense.
Lauren: So I disagree with that. No, I just find it really, really difficult to navigate. Like I don't find it to be a user friendly experience in any way, shape or form. And I have no, I just, I just can't do it, but it's fine. It's neither here nor there.
[40:05]
Lauren: Last thing that you want to keep in mind is again, your metadata. If Iāve said it three times in this episode, then I still haven't said it enough. Your metadata is really important. Your book metadata, your website metadata, even things like your social media profiles and stuff like that. That information is really important for your discoverability. So make sure you know what's going on there. Take some time, do anā Wait, I was just about to say that and I had a sudden flash of you saying that you hated the word audit.
Matt: We are recording this, as a matter of fact, on the day before taxes are due.
Lauren: Oh, that's true. That's true.
Matt: This will air afterwards.
Lauren: Yes, it will.
Matt: So a lot of people probably won't like the word audit right now.
Lauren: That's, that's understandable. And Iām sorry for bringing it ā
Matt: And in the coming weeks. Although.
Lauren: I'm sorry for bringing it into this episode.
Matt: To be fair.
Lauren: To be fair.
Matt: I don't think they're gonna be doing much audit this year.
Lauren: That's true. That's true. What's the other word we decided we were gonna use instead?
Matt: Review?
Lauren: Review, sure. Review your own discoverability. Take the opportunity, whether you're going to use like, an incognito browser window maybe, or a public computer at a library, go to the Apple Store and use their computer, whatever. Doesn't matter. But get an opportunity to see how your book and how your website and how your content is delivered to you on search. From not your own source, because obviously your algorithms are going to be biased towards websites that you've already...
Matt: Your browser already has all that stuff stored in it.
Lauren: Yes, exactly. So figure out how to, how to make the most use of that and go from there. There was that tool, remember also. The Rich Result Test, the Google search thing.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. I'm also gonna kind of highlight again, even though we've, we've made this point a couple of times already, everything that we talked about here, while it is hopefully going to help maximize your discoverability with generative AI and search results in the year 2025. These are all also things that are actually going to help you build your audience of actual people.
Matt: Of actual people and not robots. It's important to make that distinction.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Because that's how Lauren has it in her outline.
Lauren: I actually have the titles for these two sections are optimizing your AI discoverability and maximizing your AP discoverability. I did want to see if I could trip Matt up with AP because I was trying to think of what elseā¦
Matt: With your fake terminology.
Lauren: The only thing that I could think of was annual pass.
Matt: That would be a good guess.
Lauren: That would have been a good guess.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But no, you figured it out.
Matt: By actual people, you mean doing things like relationship based marketing versus algorithm marketing.
Lauren: Yes. Yes, exactly. That's exactly what I mean, which we've made that point already recently. We will make it again, I'm sure, your focus on relationship marketing should be your primary focus these days. If you're trying to grow your audience, if you're trying to grow your brand. If that is something that you're looking for long-term success and not, I want to sell a thousand copies of this one book and then I'm going to disappear off the face of the internet and never publish another thing ever again and I don't care what my legacy behind me is after that. Sure, whatever. Maximize your algorithmic marketing at that point. I think I've said the word maximize like, eighty times in this episode.
Matt: Maximize, optimize. You've hit them all. You've hit all the marketing and business buzzwords.
Lauren: I hate it.
Matt: That's all right.
Lauren: I hate that I've become this person.
Matt: Well, you almost can't do this episode without it.
Lauren: That's true.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's true. This is a good opportunity for you to stop using those marketing buzzwords and business buzzwords and build more authentic, genuine relationships with your audiences. Creating content that humanizes you to your audiences, long form video, even short form video, social media that you're actually getting in front of a camera on. We see people on TikTok all the time that are as authentic as they could possibly be. Or certainly seem that way.
Matt: Maybe sometimes too authentic.
Lauren: Right. People that I'm like, did you, you can delete takes, right? Like, you know, you don't have to film everything in one take.
Matt: Some people, that's how they live their life now.
Lauren: It's incredible.
Matt: Can't even go to the grocery store without seeing people filming TikToks in the produce section.
Lauren: Don't get me started on it.
Matt: It's ridiculous.
Lauren: Don't get me started on it. There's a time and place. But there was a quote, actually, Chelsea said in the episode that we did with her recently that like, really stuck out to me. I actually used it for the social promo for that episode, where she said that more and more with the world that we live in with AI and automation, I think people are really hungry for authenticity. And I think she's really right about that. And that really kind of like, lived in my brain for the entire week that I was editing that episode. And I think that couldn't be more accurate. While this whole episode is talking about how to better prepare yourself for generative AI search results, the whole point of it is to build your relationships and your authentic human connections with your readers, with your audience, with your fans so that you have that in place instead.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: You're not relying exclusively on algorithmic search results.
Matt: Yeah.
[45:02]
Lauren: I don't know. What else is there?
Matt: That's it.
Lauren: That's it? Thatās all there is?
Matt: It's crazy because we got about three quarters of the way through this and I just started feeling like this is all stuff that we've already said a thousand times. But it's weird because it's all relevant to discoverability and search, especially with AI.
Lauren: You know ā
Matt: It's just like, I don't know. Iāyou know, if it's this, I don't know, it just seems like, like, these are the things that you should be doing, you know? And regardless of how, what situation we're talking about, whether that's building an email list or becoming more discoverable in online searches, or how to show up at in-person events in a successful way, like I don't know. Like, it's the same things right now. If you just do these things and you do them consistently, I think that you're going to find whatever your version of success is. Cause no matter how much you research it, no matter who's telling you, like it's still always kind of boils down to some of the same core tenants of like, you're trying to market yourself. You're trying to market your book, your service, your brand, whatever it is you're doing. And then, yeah. I just think there's a lot of similarities every time we talk about one of these things. So I hope that people are getting that and putting those into practice, because the last thing we need is a bunch more crappy marketers on the planet.
Lauren: Yes, there's plenty of those out there.
Matt: Oh my gosh.
Lauren: No, I think you're right, honestly. And that was something thatāactually this is kind of right around the point in this outline where I felt like I was just repeating myself over and over again, too. And I kind of had that same realization of likeānot that we just keep saying the same things over and over again, but that all roads lead here. No matter what angle we're taking, no matter what the subject that we're talking about is, no matter what we're talking about in terms of this is how you maximize your book's discoverability.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: This is how you turn your audience of casual fans into true fans, this is how you convince your readers to buy directly from you instead of buying from third party retailers, whatever it is, all of these roads lead to these efforts and these things that we've talked about. And so I think really, kind of the point here is if we haven't already convinced you of the value of doing these things, here is yet another reason why you should be doing them.
Matt: Yeah, I agree.
Lauren: Maybe that's, maybe that's where we're at. Maybe that's where we leave it.
Matt: Yes. Human impressions over digital impressions. Always.
Lauren: Always. We could have just summed this whole episode up in two sentences.
Matt: That's going to be my next t-shirt.
Lauren: I like it.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Time for CEX?
Matt: Probably have it just in time for CEX.
Lauren: That could be like that could be a fun shirt for CEX though.
Matt: I think that was ā
Lauren: I bet people will like them.
Matt: ā the tagline or slogan I wanted to, for CEX, but I don't remember if I actually submitted the trademark for it. But yeah.
Lauren: No time like the present.
Matt: That was gonna be the, the slogan for CEX, was human impressions over digital impressions.
Lauren: I like that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Well, still that time
Matt: That's true.
Lauren: That's true.
Matt: Yeah, we'll see
Lauren: And we'll talk more about, if you don't know what CEX is, we'll talk more about that soon. But you should definitely look into it. I'll link it in the show notes, too.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: There's a bunch of resources in the show notes for this episode, so I would encourage you to check those out if you have any questions about anything. I also changed which three episodes I had linked in here like six times, including actively during the episode, because there are so many different ones that tie into this. So if you want to go listen to some other episodes that you think are relevant to this one or that we think are relevant to this one, I can recommend several. So definitely go do that. You'll find some blog posts, YouTube videos, and articles and resources from other places as well, including some of the ones that we cited throughout this episode. So.
Matt: Cool.
Lauren: Go check that out. And while you're there, you can always like and subscribe. We'd appreciate that. Leave us a review. Email us at podcast@lulu.com or comment on Instagram or YouTube or something and tell us what you want to hear more about. I'm not going to say what you want to hear less about, because I already know the answer is going to be Disney and we're not going to stop talking about Disney, so.
Matt: We didn't talk about it hardly at all in this episode.
Lauren: No, not really.
Matt: So.
Lauren: But we could do a whole episode about Disney if that would balance it out.
Matt: We could do multiple episodes about Disney.
Lauren: I would loveācan we do one? Can we just pick one, one day when we're both really not in the mood to record something real, can we do a Disney episode?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If you have any questions about Disney that you think that you would like to see Matt and I off the cuff answer, now is your opportunity.
Matt: Ah, thatās scary.
Lauren: A room-by-room breakdown of the differences between the Haunted Mansion in California and the Haunted Mansion in Orlando.
Matt: Well, now you could also throw in Paris because you were there.
Lauren: I could. I could talk about the ā
Matt: What do they call it? The Phantom Mansion?
Lauren: Phantom Manor.
Matt: Phantom Manor.
Lauren: And it was very cool. It was really cool.
Matt: What was your favorite? What's your favorite of the three now that you've been to three?
Lauren: Oh, that's a really hard question. It's going to have to be the Orlando one.
Matt: See, I think I agree too. I haven't seen the one in Paris, but just between Orlando and Anaheim, I still like the Orlando one a little bit better. And I don't know if it's nostalgia or yeah, I don't know. Because internally, you know, they're, they're almost identical for the most part. Externally, they're quite different though, but yeah, I don't know. All right.
Lauren: That's just, we're going to have to dive into that in another episode.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Oh well. In the meantime, you can always find us on social, email. Check out some of our other episodes on YouTube. They're great. They'reāhighly recommend, just saying.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And email us if you have any questions or episode topic ideas, we'd love to hear from you. And until then, we will be back next week with another new episode.
Matt: Later.