Alan Smith

Discipleship Pastor at Calvary Baptist in Columbus, Ga. CEO of TracSoft Enterprises

[NFL Memes @NFLMemes]

BREAKING: New Spurs logo released after blowing 30-point lead in the NBA Finals

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔Microsoft canceled its internal Claude Code licenses this week after token-based billing made the cost untenable, even for a company with effectively infinite cloud resources. Uber's CTO sent an internal memo warning the company burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in just four months. American AI software prices have jumped 20% to 37%, and GitHub (owned by Microsoft) is dropping flat-rate plans for usage-based billing across its products.

My Take
The AI subsidy era is ending in real time. The same company that put $13 billion into OpenAI and built the Azure infrastructure powering most of Anthropic's compute just looked at the bill from a competitor's coding tool and decided it was not worth paying. That is not a productivity failure on Anthropic's end. Token-based pricing is forcing every enterprise customer to confront the actual cost of running these models at scale, and the number turns out to be far higher than the flat-rate experiments suggested.

This ties directly to my Gemini Flash post yesterday. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all raised effective prices in the last six months. Enterprises that built workflows assuming AI costs would keep falling are now watching annual budgets evaporate in months. Two outcomes look likely from here. Either enterprises scale back AI usage to fit budgets, which slows the revenue ramp the labs need to justify their valuations ahead of IPOs, or the labs cut prices and absorb the losses, which makes the unit economics worse at exactly the wrong moment. Both paths land in the same place, the numbers stop working, and somebody has to take the writedown.

Hedgie🤗

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

AI thrives in a world of knowledge work.

Humans thrive in a world of wisdom.

[The SEO Guy @theseoguy_]

i have been testing google AI mode, chatgpt, perplexity, and claude every single week for the last 6 months to see how they rank local businesses

google AI mode is pulling almost exclusively from google business profiles when someone searches for a local service

i ran tests for dentists, roofers, plumbers, HVAC companies, and personal injury lawyers in 5 different cities

the top 5 results in google AI mode were google business profiles 9 times out of 10

the website rankings barely came into play

what this means for you as a local business owner is that your google business profile is no longer just important. it is the entire game

perplexity pulls heavily from yelp. apple maps pulls from yelp. chatgpt pulls from a mix of sources but yelp shows up a lot

if you are a local business that has been ignoring yelp for the last 5 years because "nobody uses it anymore", you have a problem

the LLMs use it. the AI search engines use it. you have to be there

google AI mode reads your reviews and pulls language directly from them when answering questions

if a customer searches "best plumber for water heater installation in dallas" and your reviews mention water heater installation 14 times, you have a much better shot of showing up than the plumber with 200 reviews that all say "great service"

your customers are writing your SEO copy for you and most business owners have no idea this is happening

this is why review acquisition needs to be systemized and why you should consider asking customers to mention the specific service they had done in their review

next factor is unlinked brand mentions

if your business shows up in a "best HVAC companies in plano" listicle on a blog or news site, the LLMs see that

it does not need to link back to your site

it just needs to mention your business name in a list of the best in your area

this is why getting featured in your local newspaper, the chamber of commerce blog, a local magazine, or even a niche industry blog matters more than people realize

i know i have said in the past that blog posts do not move the needle for local businesses

that is still true for traditional google rankings

but the LLMs are crawling your website and using the content to determine what you do and who you serve

if your website has 3 pages and zero detail about your services, the LLMs have nothing to work with

your service pages need to actually describe what you do, who you do it for, what cities you serve, and what makes you different from the other 47 plumbers in your city

last factor is consistency across the web

your name, address, and phone number need to be identical on every platform you are listed on

google business profile. yelp. BBB. angi. facebook. apple maps. bing places. your website. your social profiles

if your address says "Suite 200" on google and "Ste 200" on yelp, the LLMs see this as 2 different businesses

if you are a local business owner and you are not paying attention to AI search, you have about 12 to 18 months before this becomes a real problem for you

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

@rhanley The capabilities of the models are practically equal in abilities. The differences are negligible.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

AI compute cost is going to have a greater impact on AI adoption than what has been expected.

The latest “experiment” by Anthropic suggests to me that the economics of AI and the promise of AI are not aligned.

What do you think?

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

“Should I build an AI business?”
No. Build a business that uses AI.
AI models are commoditizing fast. Whatever you can build with today’s frontier model, someone else will build with next year’s free one. The moat is never the AI itself.
The moat is the thing AI can’t replace.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

@Cloudflare But if your a local small business, what your wanting to know is if AI models are actually recommending them. That is what https://t.co/doMkoV5A1f does

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

Vibe coding by most users is not production ready. Be careful.

When a software engineer vibe codes with AI, they utilize their expertise to ensure that code is structured properly, built in security, infrastructure layers, and more.

Be careful vibe coding.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

When you combine your knowledge and expertise and Claude’s AI capabilities, you end up with a powerful resource for your business

Create Skills based on your experience and expertise that you can share with your team. Multiply your knowledge to your team.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

He is risen!

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

@theseoguy_ He is risen indeed!

[Noah Igler @noahiglerSEO]

There's a massive difference between what a $500/month SEO agency does and what a $3,000/month one does.

Most business owners don't know what they're actually paying for at either level so here's a transparent breakdown.

At $500/month, you're usually getting one person managing 40-60 accounts. The math just doesn't work for anything hands-on at that price point.

What that typically looks like:

They'll submit your business to some directories. Probably automated through a tool. They might write a blog post or two per month, usually un-edited AI content that could apply to any business in any city. They'll "optimize" your GBP once during onboarding and then barely touch it again. Reporting is usually a templated PDF showing keyword rankings that may or may not drive actual calls.

There's no custom strategy. There's no real link building. There's no conversion rate work on your website. There's no ongoing GBP management. Very rarely do they REALLY understand how to rank a GBP. There's no call tracking or lead attribution. It's a system built to service a high volume of clients at a low cost, and the results reflect that.

It has it's place. I think for new businesses that can't run this themself (~1 hours per week max), it's not the worst investment.

At $3,000/month, the scope changes completely. You're usually getting a dedicated strategist (or a small team) who actually knows your market, your competitors, and your numbers.

Here's what that typically includes:

Full GBP management:
> Categories audited and optimized
> Services filled out
> Photos uploaded consistently
> Posts published weekly
> Review responses handled with keywords and locations worked in naturally
> Good CTR (low volume)
> Pending edits monitored so nobody messes with your listing.

Website work:
> Service pages built out for every major keyword
> Location pages for every suburb in your service area with unique content, not copy and paste with city names swapped
> CRO improvements so the traffic you're getting actually converts into calls
> Page speed optimization for mobile
> Site structure work
> Elite internal linking so Google ACTUALLY wants to rank your pages

Real link building:
> 30-70 real citations indexed
> Local backlinks from suppliers, trade partners, chambers of commerce, and industry directories
> Press release distribution to get you on news sites
> Listicle placements for AI search visibility. Not automated directory spam

Content strategy:
> Blog posts that target real search queries your customers are typing into Google
> FAQ content that feeds into AI search and Google's "Know Before You Go" features
> Content that builds topical authority over time
> Intentional internal linking to your $$ pages

Tracking and attribution:
> Unique call tracking numbers for GBP and website so you know exactly where every lead comes from
> Monthly reporting that shows actual leads generated, not just rankings
> CRM integration when possible so you can tie a dollar amount to every call

Ongoing strategy:
> Monthly audits of what's working and what's not
> Competitor monitoring
> Adjusting based on algorithm changes, new Google features, and shifts in your market

The $500 agency isn't necessarily scamming you. They're just giving you $500 worth of work. And for most home service businesses trying to grow in a competitive market, that's not enough to move the needle.

The question isn't really "which is cheaper." It's "which one actually generates a higher return." If $500/month produces 2 extra leads and $3,000/month produces 30, the more expensive option is the better deal by a wide margin.

Not every business needs the $3,000 package on day one. But if you're doing $1-5M in revenue and trying to grow, the difference in what you get at each level is the difference between SEO "not working" and SEO being your best lead source.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

Local business owners: check your AI visibility before your competitors do. https://t.co/OUHSpbINiB shows how visible your business is in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, then gives you a score and report with what to improve so you can rank better in AI search and win!

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

Check how visible your business in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. This tool will give you a snapshot of how these models view your business. https://t.co/bpqpiMl7Dd

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

@Chuck_3559 Absolutely. SEO primes the pump, but AI has other indicators.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

Small Business owner, your data was not used to train LLM models, which means models must do a search to put your business in AI results. Which means optimization matters. On site, local factors, and AI citations. They all matter for local SMB

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

AI search is gaining market share over Google. More and more of your competitors are searching with ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini. If your business is not optimized for the AI search, they your business is invisible.

Visit https://t.co/doMkoV5A1f and get your business graded.

[Alan Smith @thealansmith]

@theseoguy_ Great idea! Yes!

[David Roberts @recap_david]

SERVICE-AS-A-SOFTWARE. That is the real opportunity for 90% of us.

I keep watching smart people pour months into building beautiful UI applications that Anthropic and OpenAI are going to absorb in a single product update.

It will feel ARCHAIC in two years that we used to click through user interfaces to navigate databases and complete tasks. Agents just do it. One prompt. Done.

90% of the entire application layer is going to get eaten over the next decade. The dashboards. The forms. The CRUD. All of it.

Where does that leave you?

Exactly where the money is.

Service-as-a-software.

E.g. An ad agency that bakes its winning playbooks into AI systems and serves 1,000 clients with the quality they used to give 10.

An IP law firm that encodes decades of expertise into AI skill files and sells legal services at infinite scale with near-zero marginal cost.

A consulting firm. An accounting practice. A creative studio. Pick your vertical.

The backend is AI. The frontend is your expertise packaged as a service. The moat is that YOU actually know what good looks like in your domain.

You're not competing with OpenAI. You're competing with other service providers who are still doing everything manually.

That's not a hard fight to win.

Encode your knowledge. Automate your delivery. Sell the service. Scale infinitely.

The technology gets commoditized. The person who knows how to USE it doesn't.