I. Online Reviews Are a Very Big Deal Again! (The Reason Why Is What Is So Interesting and Important)
Remember around 2010 when online reviews suddenly became essential for business? They helped us and many agents I know get a lot more business.
Then everyone started to cultivate reviews, and they became less important. Well, that’s changed…
Reviews are huge once again because the AI platforms correlate heavily to them.
So, when someone asks Claude, ChatGPT, or Perplexity who the best mortgage lender or real estate agent is, the first thing those AI engines will do is look for recent (that is key) reviews.
Equally important, though, is having reviews on multiple platforms, rather than just on Google, as those AI engines are not Google-affiliated and they look across multiple platforms.
The platforms should include Google, but also Yelp, Zillow, and Trustpilot (and yeah, I’ve never heard of Trustpilot either, but ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude have – and that is what matters).
Final point. It is easier to get reviews nowadays too because people use AI to write them. Comically though, one of our recent reviews included AI’s comments to the reviewer – along with the review.
The review is copied at the bottom of the blog, if you want a good laugh.
II. AI Is Not Killing Jobs; It’s Adding Them
So far, AI is not only not killing jobs, it is adding them.
The All-In podcast discussed this at length on Friday.
Peter St. Onge also hit this hard in this post from early June.
I share this because we were promised a job apocalypse (to quote St. Onge) just like when computers surfaced en masse and when the internet turned into a thing.
It’s also just plain interesting.
The All-In guys speculated that the job apocalypse was overblown by politicians, so we’d all be willing to succumb to more regulation by those same politicians.
Those regulations would of course quickly render America’s AI a pale comparison to China’s. And … we’d get crushed.
See Europe compared to the U.S. for example. Their regulations rendered Europe a technological backwater, with very few major companies and a much lower standard of living.
III. Recession Signs Loom – Lower Rates Coming?
Perennial doomer, Jeff Snider, has been predicting doom again. In this recent post, he makes a strong case though focusing on a recent very weak jobs report and falling oil prices.
They are falling so fast that it is likely from demand destruction, rather than just increased supply. That implies recession.
I share this because it is another reminder that there are numerous opposing opinions based on waterfalls of data – making it extremely difficult to predict anything.
If a recession does set in, rates will fall (a lot).
In contrast to Snider, though, analyst Chris Whalen was just saying how strong the economy is on Julia La Roche’s podcast on Saturday.
