Google Is Your First Impression, Not Your Website with Jason Barnard

Karin Conroy (00:01.402)
Most law firms think their first impression happens on their website. It doesn’t. You don’t have a website problem. You have a Google problem. And today we’re going to fix it.

Most law firms still think their website is their homepage, but in 2026, your actual first impression is what shows up when someone Googles or searches on their favorite LLM. That’s your brand SERP, and we’re gonna figure out what SERP means in a minute too. But if that page is outdated or inconsistent or messy, your marketing funnel is broken before it even begins. So my…

Guest today is Jason Barnard, known as the brand SERP guy. He’s one of the first leading voices on how Google understands you and your firm and how to take back control of that critical first impression. By the end of this episode, you’ll learn how to clean up what Google and ChatGPT say about your firm and turn it into a trust building asset to help better convert clients. So thank you for being here, Jason. I’m excited to talk to you again.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (01:06.88)
Absolutely brilliant. I’m delighted to be here. And yes, this is more and more important for everybody. And that idea of what Google, chat GPT, perplexity, Microsoft co-pilot, Apple, Siri, Meta, what these algorithms say about you is fundamentally important to business.

Karin Conroy (01:24.059)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (01:31.034)
Yeah, and that first impression. think everybody thinks they have control over that first impression because they think it’s that homepage and you know, the hours and days and weeks we’ve spent working with them to fine tune those words and pick the right picture. like, you know, not that, and this is not to say that your website’s not important. It’s just not the first place people are going to land. They’ve already started the work and the search before they’ve got to your website. So.

First, let’s talk about what’s a SERP because that’s kind in your title and the description of who you are. So what’s a SERP? An S-E-R-P.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:09.464)
Search engine results page.

Karin Conroy (02:11.802)
Okay, so that could be Google or on your chat GPT or perplexity. It could be the results wherever you’re searching, right? Okay.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:20.96)
Exactly. And yeah, it used to be just Google and that was the absolute focus. And that’s what we talked about last time. And now it’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and increasingly the different interfaces where we interact with AI like Meta and Siri. Apple are coming in strong. Amazon have just launched their system. And I had an Italian friend of mine who said he’s got his Ray-Ban glasses.

Karin Conroy (02:24.101)
Right.

Karin Conroy (02:38.043)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (02:50.94)
yeah, yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:51.828)
with Meta and he said to the glasses, who’s Jason Barnard? And it just scrolled down. He’s the most wonderful, bestest digital marketing expert on Google, Chachi, BD, Publixity. And I managed to get my authority, my credibility into Ray-Ban glasses through Meta. And the Ray-Ban glasses were advocating for Jason Barnard. That’s brilliant.

Karin Conroy (03:13.794)
Amazing.

Karin Conroy (03:19.388)
Wow, that is amazing. Okay, so I do want to reference that we have another episode and it was, I was looking back because it felt like it had been a little bit since we talked, but it was 2023. And I want to talk a little bit about how much things have changed because in 2023, we were talking a lot about these knowledge panels. And I will say, we started talking about this before recording these knowledge panels are still a bit of a mystery to a lot of the people I’m talking about.

So let’s talk about what that is. But I also feel like they are sort of, whether they are the path forward or not, that is sort of a, kind of an indicator to me of how Google is seeing you, your name, your brand. And it’s sort of sending that information back. So can you talk a little bit about, first of all, what a knowledge panel is and then how it works and how it kind of ties into this broader conversation about that first impression?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (04:19.168)
Right, well the first thing is that I can say the knowledge panel is the information box that you get on Google search when you search somebody’s name, a media star, a musician, you will see this information.

Karin Conroy (04:32.888)
My name, your name, we both have knowledge panels, but it’s not that, that business profile that you get over on the right column. It’s in now it takes up a good half of the page. so it used to be just kind of a little chunk at the top of your Gert Google search results page. Now it’s huge, which, when I first talked to you about coming back for the second episode, I was under the assumption that because it keeps getting bigger and bigger,

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (04:41.698)
No.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (04:45.815)
It does.

Karin Conroy (05:01.306)
that it’s becoming more and more important. But tell me where you think it’s going and how it’s been changing since we talked two years ago.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (05:10.446)
Well, what’s fun is that we only talked two years ago and now I can say in traditional search, the knowledge panel is hugely important. As you say, it takes up the entire top of the screen. I actually have a screenshot of my knowledge panel covering the entire real estate of that top of screen.

Karin Conroy (05:17.308)
Right.

Karin Conroy (05:29.594)
Yeah, same. And it changes all the time. like I just checked before we started. Mine has recent tweets and it’s usually a lot of times it’s heavily driven by brands that have some good authority and they’re cross tweeting and tagging my name in there. you know, from week to week, it’s different information in there.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (05:44.184)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (05:53.166)
It’s more and more dynamic and that’s changed quite a lot and that’s AI coming into play AI is much more flexible than the old search algorithms and the I think the important thing to remember about the knowledge panel, which is the Information box about a person or a company or a product even is that it’s the who’s who? It’s your who’s who entry? So

Karin Conroy (05:58.277)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (06:16.068)
Yes. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (06:20.91)
If you have a knowledge panel, you’re in the who’s who of Google. If you don’t have a knowledge panel, i.e. the information box when somebody searches your name, you’re not in the who’s who of Google. And if you’re not in the who’s who of Google, Google is not going to be advocating for you. It’s not going to be recommending you when somebody asks, who do you recommend? Or do you recommend Jason Barnard or… Sorry.

Karin Conroy (06:24.282)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (06:43.962)
Yeah, you’re less likely to show up on those Ray-Ban glasses.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (06:48.338)
Exactly, yes. And that extends now to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Meta, as you just said, the Ray-Ban glasses, and Apple Siri is they all have a who’s who. If you’re in the who’s who of all of these machines, they will all recommend you and they will end up advocating for you. If you’re not in the who’s who, you are nowhere.

Karin Conroy (06:56.42)
Right. Sure.

Karin Conroy (07:01.21)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (07:08.923)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (07:12.474)
Yeah, right. Okay, so where do you see these knowledge panels changing going forward? And how is that going to, because I assume you were saying earlier that it’s changing a lot just because of the AI influence. How is that going to be changing long-term? And is a knowledge panel still going to be a thing in one, three, five years from now?

Or is that going to be slowly integrated into like a greater ecosystem? what’s your kind of view of the future of knowledge panels?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (07:50.456)
Well, knowledge panels are a Google and Bing thing. So Microsoft and Google create these knowledge panels for search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and even Copilot and AI mode in Google don’t have knowledge panels. So there were these kind of functional things that humans built for humans. But we’ve moved into an AI world where the AI is now building things. So knowledge panels are a great KPI.

Karin Conroy (07:53.455)
Karin Conroy (07:56.955)
Okay.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (08:20.27)
they’re signal or a sign that you’re in the who’s who. So focus on them today, but in a year’s time or two years time, they won’t be as important in Google and Bing, and they never existed in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Meta, Siri. So the concept of being in the who’s who is fundamentally important. The representation of your presence in the who’s who

Karin Conroy (08:23.024)
Yep. Yep.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (08:48.97)
is the knowledge panel today, but over time that’s going to disappear because search is going to disappear.

Karin Conroy (08:55.228)
So is that going to be replaced? Do you think it’ll be replaced for something or it’s just replaced with AI’s answers, you know, whatever that may be.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (09:03.466)
well, right now you look at ChatGPT and it’s giving you text, sometimes it gives you some photos. It’s going to get really, I think the word is jiggy, if we’re American, but I’m English.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (09:18.67)
The thing about AI is that human beings give it the goal and they say, this is what I want. I want the best representation of an individual person that’s honest and factual and keeps the recommendations for the people and the companies and the products that deserve it. And then they let the AI get on with it. So how the AI

Karin Conroy (09:20.732)
you

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (09:46.978)
then represents the person, the company or the product is a whole different question. So for me, if you ask ChatGPT, who is Jason Barnhart? It will give you an 800 word text, it will give you photos, it might give you videos. If you ask about somebody else who hasn’t made the effort to make sure that ChatGPT understands them and represents them well and recommends them, it will be…

30 words with, I’m not really sure who you’re talking about and I’m not really convinced about the credibility or authority of this person.

Karin Conroy (10:24.602)
Right, okay, sorry.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (10:27.286)
And so what’s now going to happen is the AI is going to start building a representation that it considers to be a helpful representation of the person. So in the legal field, it’s, is this person going to win your case? Yes or no? And Chachy P.T. makes that decision. And Chachy P.T. will say, I recommend this lawyer because Chachy P.T. feels that lawyer is going to be more likely to win the case.

Karin Conroy (10:44.494)
Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (10:56.876)
And I’ll give you a quick example. If somebody asks ChatGPD, do you recommend Jason Barnard for managing my personal brand digital presence in Google ChatGPD perplexity? It will answer, yes! Line break, line break, big long explanation about why it thinks I’m the best. That’s what you want.

Karin Conroy (11:20.71)
Okay, all right, so how do we do that? So, you know, I think two years ago, we talked a lot about how to influence the Google results to lean towards either if you don’t have a knowledge panel yet, getting one, or if you have a knowledge panel enhancing and making that kind of work for you. But now as that’s kind of either going away or losing its influence, or we’re also looking at other avenues that don’t have these knowledge panels,

how do we make that better? And what kind of mistakes are you seeing people make? Because you were describing a minute ago, if you asked Chachi PT about a certain law firm and they give you like a 30 word answer, that’s kind of an indicator that you’re not doing it right. Like it should be the answer that you were describing that if I asked Chachi PT about Jason Barnard and also said,

Do you recommend that I work with him on this specific thing? Not like, you know, did you recommend that he changes the oil in my car? But do you recommend that, you know, I work with him in relation to my brand’s first impression and being found on search and, all that? It’s going to say yes, and it’s going to give you reasons why. So how how did you get to that point? And how do we do it in the best way that gives us that kind of result?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (12:48.458)
Right, I think that was about five questions in one.

Karin Conroy (12:52.214)
usually how I roll. I’m just gonna queue you up and let you go in whichever path you would like. There’s a lot there, you pick it.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (13:01.688)
Well, what’s lovely is, I’ve remembered the beginning of that now, is what I was saying two years ago about getting a knowledge panel still holds true today for the entire AI ecosystem. So the knowledge panel, am I lucky or am I smart? But building a knowledge panel was all about educating Google about who you are, what you do, who you serve, and why you’re credible.

Karin Conroy (13:28.666)
Yep. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (13:31.606)
And AI is exactly the same. So we’re in a situation where the advice I gave two years ago, and if anybody wants to go back and listen to that episode, you can apply that information. You can stop this episode now. Do what I told you.

Karin Conroy (13:45.478)
Well, first listen to the whole thing. Give me the full download. Listen to the whole thing. And then we’ll link to the other one and you can go back.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (13:49.922)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (13:53.848)
Thank you. Yes. I’m sorry. That was a terrible media mistake, terrible rookie mistake. What I love about it is that what I was saying two years ago is just as powerful, if not more so today, because you need the AI to understand who you are, what you do, who you serve, why you’re the best. And it’s up to you to make the point. So I have a lot of clients.

Karin Conroy (13:59.044)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (14:15.225)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (14:23.502)
And the clients ask me how, sorry, the clients say to me, we’re the best. And I say, okay, prove it. And they say, well, our clients say so. say, okay, show me online where it says that. And often they can’t, or it’s very limited. And they say, but we’ve got 50,000 emails coming in and we’ve got all of these people who are so happy. And you say, well, the point is that

Karin Conroy (14:35.099)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (14:52.722)
You know it, your clients one on one know it. Your clients as a group don’t know it and the AI certainly doesn’t know it. Your job is to take all of that credibility, all of that, we are the best and our clients prove it and make it available to the machines. And until you do that, you’re always going to be losing the game. And I think,

you’re always going to be underestimated. And think that’s the key here. And what we’re realizing more and more at CaliCube is less that we need to help people build that credibility, and more that we need to help them emphasize and elaborate on the credibility they already have. And so now we say to people, actually, we used to say to them, come in, we’re going to tell you what to do to build this credibility. And we’re going to amplify it through Google AI, chat, GPD, perplexity. Now we say,

Karin Conroy (15:33.796)
Yes.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (15:47.864)
Come along and we’re going to make sure that the machines appreciate you to your true value. You don’t need to do anything. It’s already there. We just need to leverage it because the machines haven’t seen it, haven’t understood it or haven’t digested it. And once they do, they become your recommendation engine and your advocate. And what I find…

Karin Conroy (15:54.937)
Yes!

Karin Conroy (16:04.849)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (16:14.584)
frustrating is so many people and companies and law firms in this case are being underestimated by the machines.

Karin Conroy (16:22.97)
Right. Yeah, well, they feel like you should just know how smart and great and wonderful I am. And I go back to this quote all the time from an early episode that we had with Pete Everett, and he was talking about SEO, and he started real early in the episode, and he was more talking about just search engine optimization, and he said, let’s start with this falsehood that a lot of people have.

It is not your God given right to put up a website and assume that the traffic will just come to you. You have to work for it. And I feel like it seemed so obvious at the time, but it’s still, it needs to be said. And I think there is an assumption that I’m out here. Here’s my name. I’m saying that I do these things. Why aren’t people finding it? And it’s like, well, it’s so much more complicated now.

than it was back in the beginning of the internet when there was like five websites. But you have to assume that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done between these people are, we’re doing great work and people are saying good things about us. And then people are finding us and the AI search bots are finding us. So, okay, so let’s go into the actual application and how to do these things and the

that are missing between this and that. And so what do you typically, what’s the process where you have these clients and people are saying great things about them and let’s just say maybe they are the best, but Google and chat GPT don’t necessarily see or recognize that. Where do you start and what are some of the first kind of key things that you do to fix that?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (18:15.39)
Well, yeah, I mean, I think you’ll like this as a lawyer. The foundation is claim frame proof.

Karin Conroy (18:24.262)
Okay.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (18:24.558)
So, when somebody says, I’m the best, you’re going, OK, that’s your claim. I’m the best, therefore you should work with me. Great. Praying. Prove. Who else says it?

Karin Conroy (18:29.307)
Right.

Karin Conroy (18:35.494)
frame. Yeah.

Okay.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (18:42.616)
So your claiming and your framing is all on your own website. So you take your website and you say, OK, I’m the best in personal injury law.

framing, therefore, and I will win your case, therefore you should work with me. Claim and frame. Then the proof is all in second and third party websites. you can actually, honestly, can prove on LinkedIn, you can prove on Crunchbase, you can prove on different sites that use semi-control.

Karin Conroy (19:05.325)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (19:14.384)
Twitter. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (19:16.904)
And so what you need to do is build the claiming and the framing on your own website, get the proof elsewhere, but the machines won’t be able to bring all that information together if you don’t indicate clearly where that proof is. So you make the claims and the frames, and then you link out to the proof.

Karin Conroy (19:38.5)
Right. Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (19:39.724)
And if you can do that, then you’re saying, OK, I say I’m the best. I say that I’m the best. Therefore, you should work with me. And here’s the proof. And the machines are incredibly sorry.

Karin Conroy (19:48.654)
And so do these guys. And so do these guys. These guys are also saying I’m the best and they’re supporting this idea. And this is kind of this external link coming back and validating that idea. Yeah, right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (20:01.666)
Yeah, exactly. And so the proof is fundamentally important. And in fact, one of the really interesting things about the proof is that it’s actually quite simple to get the proof to frame and claim the way you are. And that makes it even more powerful. So all of that outreach and all the PR you do, you need to make sure that you’re making the claiming and the framing on the proof site. If you do that, it’s doubly powerful.

Karin Conroy (20:14.5)
Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (20:22.266)
Yep. And it all ties back to each other. And you’re kind of repeating that same idea and the same message and the same claim with the frame back to the proof. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (20:35.096)
Yeah, exactly. And that’s it. It’s that consistency. And I love saying this is consistency over space, i.e. within the entire digital ecosystem of the internet, your digital footprint, and over time. Because you can’t imagine that if you just claim frame prove today, and you make no effort to maintain that claim frame prove over a year, that the machines will believe it. They won’t. They’re going to say, OK, that’s

That was a moment in time when they were great, they’re no longer great, so we forget about it.

Karin Conroy (21:09.711)
And so maybe we even question that moment because, you know, that was just sort of a flash in the pan. Excuse me. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (21:14.445)
Yes.

And the machines are very, very, very logical. So that claiming and framing, if you can make it very logical and you can maintain it over time, you end up with a very, very well ingrained belief in your prowess. And the machines then become your advocates. Because when somebody says, have a problem with personal injury in New York and I’m looking for a lawyer, they will say, well, this is the lawyer for you.

Or if they say, I just had an accident in the car, the machine, the chat GPT, the Google may well say, well, you should get a lawyer and here’s one I recommend. And you’ve won the game.

Karin Conroy (21:55.322)
Right. Yes, right. Right. Yeah. And it’s not just that it becomes knowledge that you are this expert. It’s that you’re teaching those search engines, the Google and the AI about who you are. And so that it gets embedded in there. to this, at today’s point,

You can, can still see this on my knowledge panel. As long as these knowledge panels are there, I’m going to keep referencing them because it’s a visual to me. It’s this visual example of what’s happening behind the curtain at ChetGPT or whatever. But when you see it on Google, it’s showing you, this is what we know about you. And this is where our true validated links that we care most about are coming from. So.

for like I referenced them a few minutes ago today when I go in there, there’s my name and picture and kind of a brief little summary. And then there’s some social media links. And right now there’s a link from Lawyerist, which is a well-known solo small firm podcast that I’ve had some appearances on and they have great authority, but because they are speaking about me,

It gives more validation to me and supports me as the things I’m saying. So it’s not just me, like, you know, shouting into an echo chamber. It’s lawyer is saying, yes, she knows this and we’re saying she knows this stuff too. And so that’s one of the top links. And so it’s kind of a good research experiment to go see if you have a knowledge panel, what’s showing up today as opposed to last week and next week and whatever, and what’s changing and then.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (23:20.771)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (23:47.758)
that shows you kind of what Google cares about and they’re all going to be similar. That’s what chat GPT is also going to care about, but you’re not going to see it as much.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (23:56.398)
Yeah, no, you’ve made multiple great points there. And I’m to go through them. if I can remember them. Number one is the knowledge panel is a great KPI that’s going to disappear. Make the most of it now because it gives you that insight behind the curtain, the Wizard of Oz thing where you’re looking behind the curtain. It’s going to go away. Make the most of it. Make hay while the sun shines, as we say.

Karin Conroy (23:58.652)
Thank you. Yes.

Karin Conroy (24:13.304)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (24:22.222)
That’s point number one. Point number two is that third party corroboration is essential. And as you said, you probably already have it. The knowledge panel lets you see where it is, but we have technology. We’ve got 25 billion data points. We’ve got technology. Literally this weekend, I’ve just finished building a system where I can tell you which web pages have most influence on Google Chat, GPD, Perplexity, Meta.

Karin Conroy (24:32.761)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (24:51.04)
and Siri and Co-pilot. So you can go through and say, well, actually, this particular page where somebody else has said something very positive about me, a client or a podcast or an article, is very powerful and will bring me more credibility, more authority, more understanding, more kudos within the algorithms than anything else. So you need to, number one,

understand that a lot of this credibility authority from third parties exists already. All you need to do is centralize it on your own website and leverage it, understanding which ones are the most important, which is what the data and the technology that we’ve built will do for you, to make sure that the machines see you as the most valuable, authoritative, credible, useful…

valuable resource for their users. And remember, these people are their users, and you’re looking for them to recommend you to the subset of their users who are your audience. So you’re always…

Karin Conroy (25:53.872)
Right.

Karin Conroy (25:59.6)
Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (26:03.148)
I was going to say dependent on them, but you’re not. It’s an opportunity. It’s that they have billions of users. Everybody in New York is using one of these big tech platforms to research. That’s your opportunity. And that’s the last point I wanted to make on what you said. They all work the same. They all have the same technology. They have the same audience, which is people who are looking for solutions to their problems.

Karin Conroy (26:17.158)
right.

Karin Conroy (26:23.173)
Right?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (26:30.382)
And they all work on the same, I won’t go into the geeky details, the same data. And that’s the web, that’s your digital footprint. It’s up to you, it’s your responsibility to build your digital footprint so that it claims, frames, and proves you to be the best in market for the subset of their users who are truly your audience. And they will become your recommendation and advocates.

Karin Conroy (26:33.094)
Data, yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (26:56.316)
So I wanted to spend a minute on content because, and especially like, you know, the typical traditional blog content, because you said a few minutes ago that you really find it important to focus more on this kind of, these weren’t the words you used, but something like quantity over quality, sorry, quality over quantity. And I think that was maybe the direction you were kind of going, but let’s talk broadly about

the lifespan of blog content and where that fits into this whole conversation. Because I will say when I pull up my knowledge panel, just to keep kind of dripping that into the conversation, there’s no blog posts in there. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (27:40.472)
No. No, right, okay. Blog posts are an interesting kind of concept. So if you look at it, there are two types. One is news and the other is articles. News is something that’s time sensitive. Articles is something that isn’t. It’s evergreen. So you need to immediately split everything into two and your expectations of two different types of content are very different. The second point is…

Karin Conroy (27:57.861)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (28:07.894)
The fact that it doesn’t appear in your knowledge panel and probably doesn’t even appear in Google search doesn’t mean it’s not feeding the algorithms. So you need to also divide your content into which content is going to be for human consumption and which is going to be for algorithmic consumption. Obviously, every piece of content needs to be good for both because humans can see the stuff you’re building for machines and machines can will see the stuff you’re building for humans.

Karin Conroy (28:15.919)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (28:33.668)
right and it can kind of erode your brand if it feels that you remember those old blog posts that were just all full of keywords and you could almost not read them because it was just garbage like nobody wants that all over their blog like it also needs to it needs to balance

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (28:42.922)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah, if you’re doing that, it’s a huge mistake and stop immediately. That’s a simple piece of advice. But if you think about it from this perspective, let’s say I create 10 blog posts and nobody ever visits nine of them. Your immediate reaction, what the SEO community will tell you, is prune those nine, focus on the one. That’s a bad piece of advice.

Karin Conroy (28:52.816)
Yeah, please.

Karin Conroy (29:04.518)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (29:16.194)
because these machines are built to summarize. So if they take the nine and they summarize it and they give it to the user, the effect is the same. So if you remove those nine, you’re not giving the information to the machine, the machine will then not be in a position to perform its duty. Because if you think about it, if I’m saying, I need people to visit all of the 10 pages, the people who doing that, and as a user, you’ll understand this, very boring.

Karin Conroy (29:25.402)
Yeah. Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (29:44.364)
very time consuming, I’ve hopped between 10 pages to collect the information myself. I’d much rather a machine just summarize it for me and gave it to me. And that’s what we’re now all doing with AI. So those nine pages might be useless. I don’t know. Obviously, we don’t know on a specific case. But once again, we’ve built the algorithms that will tell you these pages are actually being used. They’re not being shown to the user, and the user is not necessarily visiting them.

Karin Conroy (30:00.806)
how good your content is, yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (30:12.696)
but they are being used by the machines for the summary that the machines then present to the user.

Karin Conroy (30:18.396)
but does that end up coming back to you? Or is it just content that’s being fed to the algorithm?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (30:24.878)
Brilliant question.

Yes, it does come back to you. There are a couple of things going on. Well, what the machines are doing, I was talking to Fabrice Canel, who’s the principal program manager at Bing, who’s a friend of mine. We had a chat, and he told me, I’ll introduce you. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll certainly introduce you. He’s a lovely, lovely guy. He’s French. He speaks perfect English with an immensely strong French accent.

Karin Conroy (30:29.54)
And how? Okay.

Karin Conroy (30:36.848)
Yeah. Ooh, we should get him on the show.

Karin Conroy (30:44.668)
That’s how to be great.

Karin Conroy (30:55.534)
Nice.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (30:56.8)
And it’s lovely chatting with him. He’s such a delightful guy. But he immediately explained to me when CoPilot came out, which was driven by ChatGPT two and a half years ago, almost three years ago now, that they’re building the funnel, the acquisition funnel in the machine. So what happens is instead of somebody going to a search result on Google or Bing, let’s talk about Microsoft Bing because we’re talking about Fabri’s, they go to… Thank you. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (31:15.385)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (31:21.818)
Yeah, yeah, just give him a little nod.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (31:26.968)
They go to the search result, they click on a link, they read the page, they come back, they click on another link, they read the page, they do another search, they click on a link, they’re on the page. That takes two or three hours. The aim of the machine is to synthesize that information, give it to the user, suggest the follow-up, so the user then never goes to the website where they keep asking questions, but the machine is bringing them down the funnel from awareness to consideration to decision.

Karin Conroy (31:51.515)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (31:56.654)
And you get what we call the perfect click. So the moment they’ve decided, say, OK, I’ll give you, they say, when push comes to shove, who do you recommend? And it says, I recommend KaliCube. Click on the link, come to the website, they’re ready to buy. And I’ll give you a really good example. mean, it’s nothing to do with law or my job of marketing, but it’s a very pragmatic example. I’m a double-base player.

Karin Conroy (32:00.549)
Nice.

Karin Conroy (32:13.915)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (32:23.968)
I’m a musician. That was my career before all of this. I play the double bass. I’ve got huge bass amp.

But I wanted to play guitar. I’ve got a guitar and I thought, okay, I want to play the guitar, but I don’t want to buy a new guitar amp because it costs money, it takes space up in my flat. So I asked ChatGPT, can I play my guitar through the bass amplifier?

Karin Conroy (32:46.748)
Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (32:48.416)
It said, yes, you can, but it will sound terrible. I said, OK, will I break it? It said, no, you won’t break it. Great. How do I make it sound better? It said, you need a compressor, an equalizer, and a reverb. Different effects for it. brilliant. OK. What do I do with them? And explain to me what I needed to do with them. I said, OK, brilliant. What can I buy?

to do that for me. And it said, okay, you can get them. Bloody, bloody gave me the answer. That’ll cost you $245. I said, okay, I’m not a professional musician. I don’t really care that the sounds perfect. Can you do it for cheaper? Brilliant. It said, yep, okay, $150. We can get you sorted out. know, brilliant. Okay, what are the names? What are the products? What are the brands? Which one do I need? It gave me the list.

Karin Conroy (33:30.694)
Give me the cheap version. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (33:47.118)
And then I said, where can I buy it? It said, if you’re in the US, you buy it from Sweetwater. If you’re in Europe, you buy it from Toman. I said, I’m in Europe. Give me the Toman link. Clicked on the link, bought the three pedals, $150 in Toman’s pocket.

Karin Conroy (34:01.648)
and you probably did not click around on the website, you didn’t spend much time.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (34:04.43)
I didn’t visit a single website and it took me 15 minutes from having an idea of saying I want to play guitar through a bass amp to buying this stuff. And for me as a user, it saved me hours of research. It saved me any doubt. I trusted ChatGPT 100 % and Toman made $150 sale in 15 minutes.

Karin Conroy (34:08.612)
Right.

Karin Conroy (34:19.931)
Right.

Karin Conroy (34:29.924)
And historically, you would have looked like a bad website visitor because you would have just gone to one page, you would have spent less than a minute and it would have got thrown in the cart and you were done and out of there. Whereas the old path would have been that you were doing all that research and maybe you came back a couple of times and then you clicked over to some other websites and that would have been the green flag in the past. Like, he’s…

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (34:35.746)
Yes.

Brilliant.

Karin Conroy (34:59.58)
a warm lead because he’s come to the website more than once. He spent multiple minutes on different pages. now, and in the past, the people who came to the website and only spent like less than a minute, that was bad. That was potentially spam or whatever, but probably not a good hot buyer. Whereas now it’s flipped upside down. Now all that time is being spent over on ChatGPT.

but then when you land on the site, you’re ready to go. And so those leads, yeah, from ChatTPT are really hot. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (35:31.042)
Yeah, 100%. But, excuse me, yeah, people coming from Google AI mode or perplexity are much closer to purchasing or engaging with you than somebody coming from a traditional Google search. Number two is the 95-5 rule about people being ready to buy at the moment they talk to you, especially in B2B. So you meet somebody who is your perfect client.

Karin Conroy (35:48.081)
right.

Karin Conroy (35:51.696)
What’s that?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (36:01.358)
95 % of the time they won’t be at the moment they’re ready to buy. So what do we do in marketing? We spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money in trying to be in front of them at the moment in the future that we have no idea when it’s going to be when they are ready to buy. So we have remarketing ads. We have social media campaigns.

Karin Conroy (36:05.968)
Right.

Karin Conroy (36:18.267)
Right.

Karin Conroy (36:22.136)
nurture campaigns. We’re just trying to stay top of mind. All of these marketing phrases we’ve heard a million times.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (36:29.198)
But the solution is to stay top of algorithmic mind. Because every single one of these people will research their problem at the moment they’re ready to buy using Google Chat GPT, Publix D, Copilot, Meta, Siri, or Amazon. And at that point, the algorithm is your friend and is advocating for you and recommending you,

You don’t need to be in front of them through that entire period of time that you can’t predict for the 95 % of people who weren’t ready to buy when you first met. The machine will mention your name. The person will think, oh, I met Jason. I heard about CaliQube at the time I was thinking about, oh, what do you think about them? Do you recommend them? Yes, I definitely do. Off you go. You’re off to the race. You’ve made a sale. So that 95-5 breakdown is sold.

by being top of algorithmic mind. That’s super powerful.

Karin Conroy (37:24.89)
Yes, that’s everything right now. And there’s this balance between being top of algorithmic mind, but also maintaining your brand, maintaining the humanity behind it and maintaining that experience so that you do get the good reviews. You do kind of have this good reputation out there. So where do you think people are getting, where do think the number one mistake is that people are making with this? Cause I heard that the, and correct me if this is wrong, but

What you’re saying in terms of the number one thing to do in order to influence those results is to kind of have those external validation sources, the external links and all of that kind of supporting you and the things that you’re saying that framework you mentioned before. But where are people getting it the most wrong and the biggest mistakes that they’re making?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (38:18.37)
The single biggest mistake is to imagine that the machines get this, that it’s easy for them to understand. The web is a complete mess. They’re all using the web as this source of data, and it’s a huge mess. So what I see with people, companies, and their products is they think, it’s obvious to me, therefore it’s obvious to the algorithms. The algorithms are sorting through an incredible amount of mess. So the biggest mistake is to sit back and say,

Karin Conroy (38:29.286)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (38:41.742)
Yes.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (38:48.302)
I’ll expect it to work out.

Karin Conroy (38:51.42)
Right. It’s all right. It’s got it.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (38:55.094)
And well, and that’s the thing is everybody else is doing that. So if you move forward proactively and you make that effort, even a small effort is going to make a difference. And I had a conversation with somebody a few weeks ago and she was saying to me, Jason, you always do everything absolutely perfectly. And I understand that. I respect that. That’s brilliant. That’s part of who you are. If you did 60 % of what you’re capable of, that would already be

Karin Conroy (38:58.501)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (39:24.366)
10 times better than everybody else. And I would apply that to your listeners, is if nobody else is doing anything, if you’re doing a little bit, you’re already going to win the game. And 95 % of the time, they’re not doing anything. And if you do a lot, you get so far ahead of them that they can’t catch up.

Karin Conroy (39:29.968)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (39:37.148)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (39:47.984)
Yeah, it’s still young. mean, even though we’ve been talking about AI now for a couple years, it’s still, mean, imagine if you knew now the whole kind of process, the kind of lifespan of the internet and you could go back 20 years and be in those first couple years of the internet, knowing what you know now. I mean, that would be amazing. First of all, let’s buy some stock. There’s some places where we want to invest, but you know,

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (40:10.935)
Hahaha

Karin Conroy (40:15.63)
we’re in the first couple years of it. And so if we’re digging in and getting our feet wet and trying things and making sure that we’re trying to work through this and influence it, like you said, you’re already ahead.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (40:30.476)
Yeah. And that’s the thing. think as you were talking, I was listening to you, but I was also thinking at the same time. The one word I would say is organize. because you were talking about AI and we’re talking about AI assistance today, mean, Google AI mode, chat GPT perplexity, they are AI assistance.

Karin Conroy (40:38.522)
Multitasking.

Karin Conroy (40:44.527)
Yes.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (40:57.174)
If we think about AI agents that actually act on your behalf, what then happens in the future, it’s not here today, it’s going to be in three, four, five years time, whatever it might be, is agents are going to act on your behalf to make the purchases, to make the decisions, to get you to the point where, for example, the Toemann example I gave before, I wouldn’t even be in that chat. I would just set it off and then it would say, here’s the page, potentially would actually make the purchase for me and I would get the pedals and I would go to the effect.

and I’ll be wondering what to do with them. But in the world of agents, the company or the people or the businesses who are the most organized and able to give that information to the agents so that they can act on behalf of their users to your advantage in your favor are going to win. So if you don’t organize today,

Karin Conroy (41:29.615)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (41:57.314)
The day the agents come along, you’re going to be so far behind, you’re never going to catch up. So if you organize today for the assistance, you’re ready to be organized for the agents.

Karin Conroy (42:07.792)
Yeah, yeah, it’s like taking your vitamin. Like if you take it now, it’ll build all those muscles and you’ll be ready to fight this robot army.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (42:17.838)
And that old kind of thing that we say in sales is tell people it’s an investment and they’re not buying and it doesn’t cost and there’s not a price. It’s an investment. For once, it’s actually true is you’re saying, okay, it’s an investment because if you don’t make it today, you’re going to completely be lost when agents come along. But the nice thing about it is that it’s an investment today that pays today.

Karin Conroy (42:23.619)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (42:27.684)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (42:39.13)
Yeah. Right.

Karin Conroy (42:45.765)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (42:46.21)
because nobody else is making this investment and because search engines still exist and because AI assistive engines all work on the same technology for the same users using the same data source. So I’ve always been a bit kind of reticent about saying when you work with CaliCube, you’re investing. Now I’m not. And it feels good to be able to honestly say it is an investment. It’s an investment that will pay

Karin Conroy (42:57.457)
Right.

Karin Conroy (43:06.224)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (43:10.448)
This is, it’s real.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (43:13.814)
in next three months, it will really pay in a year and it’s really going to pay in 10 years time.

Karin Conroy (43:19.686)
Right, okay, so it is time for the book review section. Yeah, I know, we almost forgot about this part, but I know you have a really good one, and it’s very timely. So Jason, what’s the one book that you wanna add to the library that you think everyone should think about when they are thinking about their first impressions?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (43:23.67)
Alright.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (43:39.822)
It’s a very fat book. Lots and lots of super helpful information. It’s a friend of mine called David Bain, who works with a company called Majestic, who does SEO in 2023, SEO in 2024, SEO in 2025, and guess what? Now SEO in 2026, that literally came out today on Amazon, and I contributed one chapter, and there are 117.

Karin Conroy (43:41.498)
good. Lots of data.

Karin Conroy (44:01.756)
You

Karin Conroy (44:07.166)
nice.

Karin Conroy (44:10.492)
chapters.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (44:10.95)
SEO experts, one chapter each. You read that, you don’t need to read anything else.

Karin Conroy (44:14.448)
Wow.

Karin Conroy (44:19.676)
That sounds, that sounds okay. So, and in there, you’re talking about sort of predictions and expectations for where we are now or where it’s going to be or okay. what to do. So actual actionable checklists and things.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (44:28.545)
know what to do.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (44:35.182)
Yeah, I mean, the aim of the book is what do I need to do in the next year to make a difference for my company and in my case for the personal brand? And it’s not a prediction of what’s going to happen. It’s a prediction. It’s sorry. It’s a statement of what needs to be done today. And as you can imagine, 117 experts, 117 chapters, there’s a lot to do.

Karin Conroy (44:43.665)
Sure.

Karin Conroy (44:53.808)
Okay.

Karin Conroy (44:59.12)
There’s a lot to do. You’re going to be really busy with this stuff, but there’s also. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (45:01.486)
Ha

Well, and I think that that’s key, sorry to interrupt, but if I give you a book of 700 pages, I don’t know how many pages there are, might be written on Amazon, yeah. And if you want to read all of that and try and figure out which bits are the priority for you, because it’s not a question of do you need to do it? It’s if you do this part, is that part also going to improve?

Karin Conroy (45:15.04)
A lot. Yeah. 117 times. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (45:31.686)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (45:32.79)
which of the pieces is most important for my industry, for my business, and for my current state is the key. So DIY is great, enjoy it, knock yourselves out, and the book will allow you to. Our guides on caliqube.com, k-a-l-i-c-u-b-e.com, slash guides, we’ve got our guides. But I think the value

Karin Conroy (45:40.132)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (45:59.365)
Nice.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (46:03.218)
of an investment in a great digital agency is that they will tell you, do that, do that, do that, do that, do that. And we know. Yes.

Karin Conroy (46:13.254)
but also don’t do these things because these really are not, and don’t waste your time and money with these things because that’s where DIY goes wrong is they have, you have to learn those lessons that we’ve already learned year after, over all the years that we’ve already been doing this, but the lessons don’t apply universally to every single client. So to know the lessons, but know who and where they apply so that we can look as the agency and say, okay,

I know that you’re talking about a TikTok campaign, but why are you thinking about that? Or maybe I really see that your audience is there and that makes sense for you, but not just we’re gonna try it just because for no particular reason, we’re gonna align this with some strategy and know that there’s some like real reasons for that. But I also wanted to mention that there’s a coordinating podcast with the book too, right? And do each of the…

People who wrote a chapter they have episodes on that podcast. perfect. Yeah

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (47:13.358)
Yes. So you can also actually drop the podcast series into Notebook LM on Google, get it to summarize it, ask it what it’ll play. If you describe your business within a prompt in Notebook LM, you feed the entire series to it, it will tell you that’s the cheap way out. But I think within the legal industry, one of the things that lawyers say is you’re not paying me $1,000 an hour for the time.

Karin Conroy (47:20.138)
Karin Conroy (47:25.339)
Yep.

Karin Conroy (47:32.121)
Right.

Karin Conroy (47:42.032)
right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (47:42.114)
You’re paying me for my experience and my ability to understand what the result is likely to be given any particular approach to the case. And it would be, in my opinion, foolish for a lawyer to turn around to me and say, I’m paying you for your time. You’re not. You’re paying me for my data, for my processes, for my systems, my technology.

Karin Conroy (47:52.411)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (48:00.976)
Right.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (48:09.698)
my experience and my ability to say if we put ABC into these machines, we will get XYZ out of them.

Karin Conroy (48:17.882)
Right, with confidence, not just guessing. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (48:20.078)
Yes. And that’s why you pay a lawyer $1,000 an hour and why you would pay me $1,000 an hour. I can’t believe I just said that.

Karin Conroy (48:27.332)
Yeah, exactly.

Karin Conroy (48:34.758)
This was so great. I feel kind of energized and ready for 2026. And one of the things that my brain keeps coming back to that I feel like I’ve said over and over and over, even before AI was a thing, but even more since is that we are still looking at core marketing foundations, foundational concepts and ideas that

even though our episode two years ago was very different and there’s some technical things. We don’t know if knowledge panels are going to stick around, but the core ideas behind them are and the things that are driving that, the data points that are driving that and the information that you can get from that to drive your future plans and focus in on what you can see that Google cares about still matters. And that’s still going to matter going forward. And that’s still also being driven by

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (49:09.858)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (49:30.448)
these key main marketing ideas that I learned in grad school a bunch of years ago. So these are not things that are changing, which for me brings a certain sense of comfort. Like we are not in this whole totally different world speaking different language. We’re just kind of adding this AI overlay to the things we already know. Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (49:52.898)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really brilliant way to end the episode. I was going to add something, but I don’t think I can improve on that.

Karin Conroy (49:56.54)
Thank you.

Karin Conroy (50:02.086)
Well, if you do, you can always record it and we can like cut that in later. But Jason Barnard is the CEO at CaliCube and also a world authority on digital brand intelligence. And we will link to the, look at that cool QR code he’s holding up. We will link to that in case you’re listening to the audio version, but we’ll put all the links and show notes and all the good stuff that you need to know to connect to him, connect to all the resources.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (50:06.286)
Brilliant.

Karin Conroy (50:32.08)
but thank you so much for being here. That was a great episode.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (50:35.31)
Thank you, that was absolutely delightful, I loved that.

Karin Conroy (50:38.256)
Thank you.