Can Small Businesses Win at Search in 2026? Moz's Tom Capper Explains How

Tom Capper (00:00)

So, it used to be just okay, you manage your presence on Google My business and you'd manage your own website. And if you're doing those things and you had a good brand, then you're probably doing pretty well. Now there's a lot more surface area that's involved because what these tools are doing, what they are doing is they're looking at other people's websites, third-party website, and they're aggregate that they find in Google results and they're aggregating that information about your brand. So, suddenly, how you appear on Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, your competitors' websites, local news, review sites, you name it, all of these things that appear alongside your brand normally are relevant, and you care about how you're hearing them a lot more than you used to.

Announcer (00:51)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast. Your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (01:04)

Hey everybody, it's Gene Marks. And welcome back to another episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. I'm so glad that you are joining us. You know, very recently, I went to a conference in New York held by a company called Moz. Moz provides SEO software and data and educational resources that helps businesses improve their search rankings and website visibility and online traffic. I've been a huge fan of the company for a number of years, actually went to their conference in Seattle a few years ago as well. So, I'm really excited to have on this, on this episode, Tom Capper. Tom is the Director of Search Product Strategy at Moz. So first of all, Tom, thank you very much for joining me. I saw you speak at the conference in New York, and you were fantastic. So thank you for taking the time.

Tom Capper (01:48)

Thank you for the kind words, and yeah, thanks for having me on.

Gene Marks (01:51)

Sure. So, and Tom, the, our audience here, which I forgot to tell you before we even started recording, is, you know, mostly small, mid-sized business owners, you know, HR managers, people that work in small businesses as well. So, you know, I know, you know, Moz as a company has as their customer base a lot of SMBs, but then also, you know, corporate brands as well. So, we'll try and not get too deep in the weeds on certain things. But every one of my clients, every one of our listeners, people watching this conversation, they're all struggling with the same issue, which is the struggle of search. When I went to your conference a few years ago, again, this was like 2018. I think everybody was like, Google, Google, Google. Trying to figure out what Google's going to do next. Nobody had the answers, but they're trying to make their best guesses. This year, not as much. A lot more talk about AI. So, I'll start it off with the overall question. You know, Tom, since the last time I went to this conference, we're talking 2018 now, so, you know, we're here now in 2026. What, what has changed? Like, where is search now and is it still all about Google? What are you telling your customers?

Tom Capper (03:06)

This, I could speak for hours on this topic. I think that there's like a, there's a simple answer to this question and then there's a more nuanced one. The simple answer, like the really blunt answer, is that actually surprisingly little has changed and that's a little bit controversial right now. Obviously, there's a lot of hype and a lot of consumer use around some of these new interfaces right now. Think AI overviews, think Gemini, think ChatGPT. But the reason I say that maybe not that much has changed is that all of these platforms are still grounded, figuratively and literally, if you want to get into the technical jargon, but they're all built on top of Google search in some sense, as in what a lot of these tools are doing in the background is conducting Google searches. Now, does that mean that tactically we do everything exactly the same as we did it in 2018? No, there is nuance here. So the more nuanced answer, which is the one that I personally try to go by, is that the picture has gotten more complicated. And what I like to say is like the surface area of search as a marketing activity has gotten a lot larger. So, it used to be just okay, you'd manage your presence on Google My Business and you'd manage your own website. And if you're doing those things and you had a good brand, then you're probably doing pretty well. Now, there's a lot more surface area that's involved because what these tools are doing... First, a lot of people are still just using Google exactly how they used to, and you have to do that stuff as well. So we've not gotten to stop doing anything. We have to carry on doing everything we were doing before. But then on top of that, we also have some of these new response types. What they are doing is they're looking at other people's websites, third-party websites, and they're aggregate that they find in Google results and they're aggregating that information about your brand. So, suddenly, how you appear on Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, your competitors, websites, local news, review sites, you name it, all of these things that appear alongside your brand normally are relevant, and you care about how you appear in them a lot more than you used to. You probably did care a little bit how you've been before. Right. Like you, you don't want people going out there forgetting your brand exists or saying bad things about it. But now it has a much more direct effect on what, you know, if people are asking ChatGPT or asking their AI overview or whatever it might be for a local business recommendation, it's going to directly draw on those sources and it's going to have a much more instant impact. Whereas previously it was more of a sort of second-order effect. Right.

Gene Marks (05:55)

Okay. You had mentioned you, you keep bringing up the term surface area. Can you expand what you mean by that?

Tom Capper (06:02)

Yeah, so that's something that I'm prone to say. I don't know that it really is, it's not actually an industry term or something like this, but it's how I like to think about it. Because it used to be, so, when I was saying before that previously in search, rightly or wrongly, we'd primarily focus on our own website, and if we're a local business with a brick and mortar premises, also I'll write our Google, My Business profile, as it was called. Right. And that was the surface area. You just had to worry about those two things. Those were the areas that you had to optimize for, in effect. Now you have this much larger area that you're responsible for if you're working in search for a site. So, responsible for might be an exaggeration, but you definitely want to influence how you appear in this much larger range of spaces. Does that make sense?

Gene Marks (06:53)

Got it, Got it. All right, no that makes complete sense. When you spoke in New York, you spent a lot of time on, because I thought this is actually where you were going when you first brought up surface area, of the actual visual area of a search result for when your company's getting that. And you put up some really great, you know, comparisons of how, you know, the amount of real estate that, you know, your company can, you know, can have changes depending on certain factors. And Tom, like I don't mind if you go back to what you talked about because it was, it was really relevant. So you might want to give us maybe a snippet of that. Talk to me about pixels. Talk to me about the, you know, the sort of real estate of the screen when you're trying to get noticed on Google.

Tom Capper (07:40)

Yeah. So, one of the metrics that we track for a lot of our clients is something we call pixel depth, which is literally how much, when you Google something and you see some results, literally how much of the screen is your result getting to occupy, and also how far down is the user having to scroll to find your results? So it's kind of a different way to think about the visibility of your result or your results in search. Now, what's interesting and what ties back to the previous sort of story I was telling about how search has changed over time is that your sort of traditional organic appearance has probably gotten smaller and moved further down over time, because AI overviews, these new Google AI summaries, they're huge, right? And they're always at the top. And also Google Ads are getting bigger over time. Google has their own problems to solve in terms of how search is changing. And the way they're dealing with it is by wringing more money out of Google Ads, which means that Google Ads are getting bigger over time. So all of this serves to sort of slightly obscure organic visibility. And a lot of people have lost enthusiasm for search as a channel because of that. However, what I would say is the market size is still the same, right? People are still making the same purchase decisions with the same budget. They're still deciding by going to Google to do these things, or perhaps by going to ChatGPT or something like that. But either way, you still got the same amount of money coming in. They're still going to make the purchase. So whether you're now further down or it surfaces a bit differently, or it's via an AI summary, what's gotten a lot harder to track is the attribution tail. Figuring out why someone made the decision that they did is a lot harder now because there's fewer clicks going on. And the clicks was how we always used to track this stuff as search marketers. So that's where it's gotten really messy. But essentially it's gotten more like traditional marketing. And this is the story I was trying to tell at the conference, where traditional marketers have had this problem for years where they just have to worry about visibility, and they're not asked to tell quite such compelling stories about the exact trail of events that led to a purchase. And that's kind of where I think we're going in search.

Gene Marks (10:04)

So, it's visibility is a big, is a big part of this. And now it's, you're trying to compete, though, for space on a search result you had mentioned about, you know, you've got paid ads that are there, you've got obviously the AI overviews as well. It just seems like the importance of organic search is just, it's declining. So, what do you tell your customers to do now that the page is changing and search results by your customers are getting more and more squeezed out, unless they want to buy ads. Right. Or get caught in an AI search, which we'll talk about in a minute. What are you telling your customers to do to fight against that, or can they fight against it?

Tom Capper (10:47)

I think you can fight against it, but I also think that actually the importance of organic search might be going up. That's the sort of, the weird contradiction here is that you're getting fewer clicks from organic than you used to, but as a channel, it's still essentially generating the same revenue that it used to, just in harder to track ways. And the way, the way that works is, so it used to be, say 10 years ago, and this picture has been forming for a long time, even before AI, this picture was eroding. But 10 years ago, what I would have done is, okay, I'm interested in, maybe interested in buying some walking boots. I'm not sure yet. I need to do some research. I'm going to search them informational terms. I'm going to learn about walking boots. And when I do that, I'm going to click through to websites that have informational pages about how to pick a pair of walking boots and what they're good for and what they're made of and all this kind of thing. Right. And those same websites, probably also in some cases, either sell walking boots or they sell leads to people who sell walking boots. And then later on I will go and actually purchase a pair of walking boots, and I'll go directly to a provider or a retailer and make the purchase. What happens now is a lot of that first part of the process happens without clicking on the site. It happens completely in the search results or in ChatGPT or in whatever it might be. Right. But it's still built on the same informational pages as before. It's still the same information, it's still drawing on the same sources. And then later, someone still makes a purchase. So the challenge is, okay, you're getting fewer clicks. And so a lot of people think organic is getting less important. Right, because they're getting fewer clicks. And that is true. But you're still going to make the purchase. You might still make the purchase. You're as likely to make the purchase buy organic as you ever were. But the challenge is now, okay, how can you influence that first part of the process? And that first part of the process is still built on organic. It's just in a much more nebulous way. Right. The AI is reading the pages that you were going to read yourself before and giving you a summary of them. So you still have an opportunity to influence. If you're a walking boot manufacturer, you might want to influence how you appear there. If you're a retailer, you might hope to be cited or you might try and influence, you might say, okay, top of funnel, I'm going to do something else. But then bottom funnel, I know I'm still, I still need to make the conversion through organic. So what I'm saying is I think the importance of organic in this process is exactly the same as it was before. But the metrics have all changed and the benchmarking has gotten difficult because you're looking at your clicks having sort of disastrously declined over time, but then the revenue is staying the same, or hopefully, or maybe even going up.

Gene Marks (13:33)

And this kind of dovetails into the message that you were trying to explain to the audience about brand authority versus domain authority. Right. And you said that your brand authority is actually up. Can you elaborate on that?

Tom Capper (13:46)

So we have a couple of metrics at Moz that we've been tracking for a while. So domain authority is a very well known metric within the SEO industry, which is used to measure the sort of the potential of a site based on the links that it has basically. So historically, if we went 25 years ago, the way that you won an SEO was only by building links. Pretty much. That's an oversimplification, but that was hugely important to Google's initial model was links. Now that's still important now, but they're part of a much bigger...

Gene Marks (14:23)

So if I can interrupt you. So like, like a company with a great domain authority, I guess you're saying is like Forbes.com right? People like, like a lot of links into Forbes. Is that, is that a fair example?

Tom Capper (14:34)

Forbes is a good example. A lot of other sites link to Forbes. The sites with the strongest domain authority are like the BBC and this kind of thing. Moz.com also has a great domain authority because we've been around for a while, we're reference material, a lot of people link to us. A lot of authoritative, other authoritative sites link to us. And this is how you used to win on Google. It's still important now. But it's only part of the picture now. What we have seen, not just recently but over the last 10 years, is the reason that Google was looking at links in the first place was because they wanted to understand which sites were trustworthy and they used links sort of as a proxy for that. What Google has the ability to do now, and you saw this coming up in the Department of Justice case over the last couple of years, Google now has a lot of direct data on what brands users actually prefer and find trustworthy, and this kind of thing. They don't need links as, they still use links in other ways, they don't need links in that sense anymore. So, we introduced brand authority a few years ago as a proxy for sort of Google's understanding of the branded strength of your site. And it turns out that what's happened in the last few years is that although links are still about as good a predictor as they were say 10 years ago, brand is a way stronger predictor than it was 10 years ago. And you've seen the flip side of this story about where a lot of small brands or non-brands are complaining that search is a much harder game than it used to be. And for them, it's true. It is. It is much harder to rank if you are not a brand, certainly for national terms, than it used to be, but it's much easier to rank than it used to be if you are a brand. And so again, this goes back to my point about surface area, right, where there's so much more that you have to worry about if you want to succeed in search now, because it used to be that you could succeed without really having a brand at all, whereas now you have to have a brand. Building a brand is a lot harder than building a website, right?

Gene Marks (16:38)

It is a lot harder. And you know, I mean there are, you know, we mentioned some of the BBC, Forbes, you know, some of the global recognized brands, but from a small, mid-sized business, I mean there are, there are a number of brands within an industry that has very high reputation and are followed, you know, that way as well as just brands themselves as smaller companies locally that you know, people know about, you know what I mean? And so I guess that's what you're talking about, like businesses instead of them trying to link into other domains that might give them credibility, it's almost like the best thing they could do for search is to basically, you know, improve their own brand through all the ways that we've been told to improve our brand, you know, that translates into probably getting found better in 2026. Is that, is that a fair statement?

Tom Capper (17:26)

The unfortunate part and the tough news here is that it's everything. You need the, you need the technical work in place and you need the traditional search work in place in order to capitalize on that brand that you've built in search. But at the same time, if you do the technical work and you do the on-site work and you do the traditional search and you don't have a brand that puts a really hard, even in your local area, whatever it might be, that puts a really hard cap on how successful you can be because Google will notice that. Google will say, oh look, there's this site that people seem really reluctant to click on, based on what we'd expect, therefore we'll demote it. We know from the DOJ and from the leaks in the last few years that that's exactly what they will do. So, you have to do all the above, and that's what's making search a harder channel to play in than it used to be. However, the plus side of that story is that your competitors are in the same boat, right? This isn't just bad news for your business. This got more complicated for everyone. So the people that are willing to play the game are going to succeed because a lot of people won't play.

Gene Marks (18:39)

Got it, Got it. Okay, that's good. I know, you know, I've limited time, and I have so many questions I want to ask you. I've always wanted to ask you, Tom, about the AI platforms selling ads, you know, I mean, and getting found. I mean, you know, some are resisting ad revenues. Some like OpenAI are selling ads on their platform. And you know, so, you know, one guy asked me recently, he's like, you know, if I go to ChatGPT and I say, hey, what's the best brand of toothpaste for, you know, teeth whitening? You know, how do I know if you know if Colgate isn't one of their biggest advertisers? So their AI, you know, model is just giving me an answer that says, oh, you should buy Colgate products, you know. What are your thoughts on paid ads now going through some of these AI platforms and their effect on search?

Tom Capper (19:35)

We've had the same concerns. I could say concerns, I could say conspiracy theories. That's probably both are valid. We've had the same thoughts, I guess about traditional search for a long time. Right. A lot of people have accused Google, rightly or wrongly, of promoting big advertisers in regular Google search. Right. And regular Google search for a long time, for decades has been a sign of legitimacy. Right. You trust a site that you see ranking first in Google, that it's not going to be a scam or whatever. So you know, I think you can have the same concerns there. And then the distinction you would have if you're comparing something like ChatGPT is like, which company do you think has more integrity? OpenAI or Google? I know what my answer to that question would be, but your listeners may disagree with each other or with me about that.

Gene Marks (20:32)

Right.

Tom Capper (20:32)

And so I think the model is difficult, but personally what I would say about ads as a concept, the biggest, the biggest issue here for me is Google has such a head start on this. I think a company like Anthropic they're in a bit of a different situation because they've gotten into this like enterprise-focused sector. They have a subscription-based model. I think they don't need to go up against Google directly to win. And I think the key to surviving in this industry is not to take Google head-on. ChatGPT is taking Google head-on. We already see them gradually losing. They got a head start, right. They caught Google by surprise. We already see them, even with Microsoft's help, gradually losing share to Gemini. And to AI overviews, which are basically at this point a ChatGPT competitor. AI mode I think is the ChatGPT competitor that should have existed from, from day one. The, Google has such a head start in monetizing this stuff, which means that A, they can afford to continue investing in it, and B, as an ad platform they're going to be so much more effective and to my earlier point, more trusted than OpenAI, I think. Plus, ChatGPT's model is not driving, is about not driving clicks, and then they're selling pay-per-click ads. That's really challenging.

Gene Marks (22:03)

Correct.

Tom Capper (22:04)

It's really difficult. So yeah, there's, I think I'm not surprised that ChatGPT has adopted ads. I think they had to do that, but I think it's a really, I think they're going up against a massive headwind there to try and effectively beat Google at exactly Google's own game when Google has such a good integration, arguably a monopolistic and anti-competitive integration, of its ad and search platforms.

Gene Marks (22:34)

Got it. All right, final question, and I'll let you go, you know, has to do with agents, you know, again at the Moz conference. And by the way, I just wrote a piece on this last week for Forbes because I was really impressed by Mike King, was one of the presenters who's in the industry, and the woman from Wix, Crystal Carter, also presented afterward. And I know you're familiar and know them both, and they talked about, you know, agents and, you know, Mike King's story was, you know, we are already there where you can, you know, your refrigerator detects that you're running low on mayonnaise and it goes out and it orders mayonnaise for you after finding the best price. And those websites that are ready to accept agents, you know, crawling over them, able to navigate them, access their data, you know, you move around them and then make payment as well, all those agents, your website has to be ready for that because, you know, the common, you know, the common website visitor is going to be a bot, you know, if not, you know, quickly becoming that. And that when I walked away saying like, okay, so everybody has a website basically has to redesign their website or at least upgrade it to make sure they're capable of accepting these agents. So, I know we only have a couple minutes left and it's a massive topic, but curiously, what advice you're giving your customers about that? Are you telling them like, hey, to be found online over the next few years, even sooner, you got some changes you got to make to your site? Is that what you're telling them?

Tom Capper (24:08)

It doesn't have to be drastic. Right? So again, a lot of this is built on foundations that probably were already there. And I'm not one of these guys that is saying, you know, we talked about this at the start a little bit. I'm not one of these guys that is saying that tactically nothing has changed, and you should do what you, you should only do what you always did, what you always did. You should do the things you did before. But there are things that are different, but they're not worlds away and you will have done some of the groundwork already without knowing about it. So, these agents, they're going to rely on regular Google search. They're going to rely on being able to crawl your site, which is something that you hopefully already facilitated for the reason for the purposes of regular Google search, they're going to need to be able to access your pages quickly and without JavaScript. Again, you probably, these are things that you might have done for regular search reasons for a long time. There are some sort of, there are some gotchas here, as in there are things you can, there are things you can adopt to make your site easier to understand or better integrated. And there are some things that you need to be careful you're not doing. So, for example, in your robots.txt or in your CDN, there might be certain bots, including some AI bots, that you think there is nothing in it for you to permit. And you might be right. But there will also be agentic or grounding bots that you probably do want to, in 99% of cases, you probably do want to permit because otherwise they're not going to be able to complete their purchase or whatever it might be. So, there's some small changes here, but it's mostly conceptual. It's mostly about how you're prioritizing your different efforts and how you're thinking about how your channels work together, rather than it being, oh wow, you need to, hopefully, if you need to build your whole website from the ground up to adopt this, then there was probably already something wrong.

Gene Marks (25:59)

Got it. Got it. Alright, that is fair enough. Tom, great speaking with you. Thank you so much for your insights, you know, and your time for coming on and hopefully we'll have you back as things change within the world of, you know, SEO and agentic web. I think you've got a lot of great advice and information to share with our listeners and viewers. So thank you.

Tom Capper (26:23)

Thank you very much. Yeah, it's going to be an exciting few years.

Gene Marks (26:27)

It will be. Everybody, I've been speaking with Tom Capper. He's the Director of Search Product Strategy at Moz, a SEO software, data, and educational resources firm. My name is Gene Marks and you have been watching or listening to the Paychex Thrive Podcast. If you need any help or advice in running your business, get our Thrive newsletter. Go to paychex.com/Thrive. Please subscribe to our podcast on your podcast platform or on YouTube, and also if you need any help with your HR or your payroll needs, consider Paychex. Go to paychex.com/MeetPaychex. Again, thanks so much for joining us this week. We'll be back to you soon with another episode of THRIVE. Take care. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is not looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub Paychex.com/WORX. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

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