Chris Dreyer:
We work with about 230 firms. Most of them are PI firms. So, we get to see firsthand what is driving cases. What channels actually work? And there's been a big shift.
There are non-negotiables for showing up in search. On today's show, we get into the fundamentals that will decide who gets that visibility and who gets left behind. For those of you who are new here, I'm Chris Dreyer. I'm the founder of Rankings.io and the host of Personal Injury Mastermind. The Personal Injury Mastermind conference, AKA PIMCon, is the annual conference for personal injury firms that take growth and execution seriously. This talk premiered at PIMCon 2025. To be the first to get essential legal marketing and intake strategies, meet me at PIMCon 2026. Tickets are live now at pimcon.org. That's P-I-M-C-O-N.org. All right. Let's get into it.
Where AI-driven platforms source information that determines law firm search visibility
Chris Dreyer:
If you're an SEO agency, let me just tell you this, you have a lot of motivation to understand AI discovery. 1.7 billion people already using AI for queries. So, there's a shift in the behavior. They're using ChatGPT to get information. They're using Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. Now I want you to think about this number, 1.7 billion. Okay? That's right now across all of them. But if Google turns on AI mode as a default just on the search engine, we're talking four billion in monthly users, a billion a week. And let's take that a step further. If you guys don't think that Google is in the game of winning the LLM race and they don't have motivation and how they monetize their Google Ads platform, I want you to look at some of these symbols. Waymo, do you think they're collecting your data? The answer is yes. Android, Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube. We're talking about 15 billion monthly touchpoints or more.
If I got to have the Google, the Chris Dryer crystal ball here, PMAx is how they're going to advertise on all these. That's it. That's their ecosystem. That's how they do native ads. You think they're just going to turn away from their main monetization method? It's going to be PMax. You guys may have tested in the past and said PMax sucks, but from an ads distribution perspective, that's where it's at. But I just want you to think about, yeah, ChatGPT is winning the race. But once Google activates their ecosystem, Gemini, Android, Google, YouTube, we'll talk about Reddit and how they're involved with that. It's a ton of distribution. I'm going to ask you all to do something. If you don't have ChatGPT downloaded, please download it, start using it. Let's just do this just for a moment. I want you to open up ChatGPT and type in who's the best personal injury lawyer in Scottsdale.
I'm going to give you a moment. Scan the results. What do you see? I'm going to cherry-pick some of these because this might be a little different. I did this from Southern Illinois, so we might be a little biased being in Scottsdale. I want to point out some things. 30 years, high profile verdicts, 23 million. Those case results pages on your websites might be important to update. Plaintiff only. You guys know you niche in the PI. Maybe you say plaintiff only. Rated 10 out of 10 on Justia. Listed among the top. Lamber Goodnow, they got that Wikipedia citation, which is extremely difficult to get. When you click to the bottom of ChatGPT, there's a button that says citations. It's going to tell you where it gets that information. And I've done this in numerous locations and it's very common to see this. Justia.
Why Google, Reddit, and Wikipedia increasingly shape search visibility for personal injury lawyers
Chris Dreyer:
Probably a site you guys don't use a ton. We're going to talk about why it's important. Super Lawyers. I'm going to talk about what to invest in with fine law. It's very common to see Justia, Super Lawyers, Yelp. I want to take this a step further. When you do the same query or variation of it, best car accident lawyer in Scottsdale, this is Google search. In the organic results, there is not a firm, at least when I did this, in the top five. Super Lawyers, Yelp, Attorney at Law Mag. The times are changing. So, where does AI get its fact? Where do they get its information? Number one, Reddit. Google in 2024 did a licensing deal with Reddit for $60 million. I don't know what the amount was for 2025. I don't know if that was exclusive. This is across all LLMs. This is not just Gemini.
Reddit is big daddy. Number two, Wikipedia. Wikipedia, you have to do everything right and more to get that Wikipedia listing. You got YouTube, Google, Yelp, and the list goes on. So, I want you to focus on those. I do want to give you one other little nugget that I didn't put in my slide, but David Craig, when he was talking the other day, this made me think of this. Amazon is one of the top five or 10 most visited websites. You can't advertise there unless you have a book. So, write one book, utilize your keywords like Gersten talked about, and you get a whole different channel that your competitors can't even advertise on unless they write a book. There's a barrier to entry. There's a reason why markets like North Carolina with their ... And you guys would know the terminology, if you're 1% at fault, why you don't have as many competitors.
Which legal directories most influence search visibility—and which no longer matter
Chris Dreyer:
These barrier entries, these things that are difficult. And then for legal specifically, it's Justia and Super Lawyers. Those are the two big ones. 11 million monthly users for Justia, and it is like a rocket ship up and to the right. Super Lawyers, you guys probably all know your fine law reps have probably been at your office, probably bought you breakfast a few times. Avvo, Best Lawyers. The ones at the bottom, they are not as important. I do want to point out, if I could emphasize Best Lawyers a little bit more, that's a good one to have. It's referenced quite frequently in the LLMs. It has that superlative in the domain name. It's important. But really Justia and Super Lawyers is where it's at. So, we're going to get tactical on each of these. I'm going to try to give you some nuggets. The thing that I'll tell you is Reddit's at the top of the list.
And the way to utilize Reddit is to be a person of value. They work on a Karma system. You get points or Karma when you're helpful. You get down votes that actually count against you when you're not helpful. You get trolled when you brag about yourself. Be helpful. Answer questions. Your posts will not stick if you don't have good Karma. That's why aged profiles are better. So, if you talk to all your employees, you got a Redditor in the office. Congratulations. You're one step ahead. But you need to find the queries that are evergreen that you can participate in and be a person of value. If you promote yourself, you almost certainly get kicked off. There's also an anonymous component. I do not advise your username to be ... It's intentionally made to be anonymous. So, don't name your username, your firm profile. Go and participate in some of the other forums and get your Karma points up and be a person of value.
These all index. We all see it. We just did the result. In the top five was Reddit. I promise you, if you type other practice areas, it's going to be in the top. Here's another big one. Once you have an account that is 30 days old and you've accrued enough Karma points, you can start your own subreddit, your own moderated forum. There's many ways that you could do this. Maybe you have a community and that's where you congregate. The two methods that I've seen for PI attorneys specifically is one, you could do it for your geography. Answer questions, be helpful for your region. Or if you want to niche down into trucking, into dog bites, whatever case type, that is a very good tactic or reason to create your own subreddit. You can control what's in there. You can moderate it. You can set criteria for the Karma points of what shows up.
Why reviews, content, and backlinks still control search visibility across platforms
Chris Dreyer:
Those are the main methods. But I would say start with just trying to be a person of value and just answer questions. Google's up next. We got content links and reviews. The content on your site, the content used externally, the topically relevant sites, the directories you're in, and then reviews. Those are the big three. You have to have all three merging to increase your chances to be discovered. On content, it's answering questions. It's talking about your geography. It's grouping and organizing your content in a comprehensive manner. So, one thing I see wrong is a lot of times PI attorneys will have a trucking practice page. And then on the sidebar, it's talking about torts. It's talking about things that are not relevant. You think your consumer cares about a dog bite when they're on the trucking page? They don't. And it also confuses Google. Google's job is to organize the web to make things easy to discover.
So, your content strategy needs to be relevant, specific, use geography. Talk about entities. So, what do I mean by an entity? I'm going to use St. Louis as an example because I'm better at it than here. But if you can talk about the arch naturally. Hey, my office is X amount of miles from the arch. You can talk about the St. Louis Cardinals. These are entities that are known and referenced on Wikipedia on other main sites that are used for discovery. If you can incorporate that into your content naturally, that's very helpful. The hospitals, that's another great one. Talk about the hospitals nearby. And then the big one is your case results. I know certain jurisdictions, there are restrictions on what you can do for your case results, so you got to be careful, but you want to add your case results to your website frequently.
It's very important. When you're thinking about getting links, we're all trying to win this election where if you're trying to win an election, you want to get as many votes as possible. If you're trying to be discovered and you want to rank in Google search, you want to get as many links as possible. Quality, relevant, thematic links. Chamber of commerce, sites like Super Lawyers, sites like Justia, local sponsorships. By the way, a lot of these sites, when you do the local directories, the local sponsorships, they also have more intent. If you have a directory listing on Super Lawyers, the individuals that are congregating on that site are more likely to hire an attorney. So, yeah, it's not going to be when you're looking at your CAC. Did I get a $2,000 case from Super Lawyers? Probably not, but it contributes to this whole ecosystem. And then reviews.
I'm going to be real with you. I think about this a lot. What are the things that you can do that lead gen can't? LSA, Google Maps. On those channels, you compete against lawyers. When you start talking about Facebook ads, Google Ads, and you talk about economies of scale and buying power, you're against all of them. Now you still should do those channels, but you definitely need to own your home base, which is LSA and local maps. 4.8 rating. I'm super competitive. I put 4.8 as table stakes. And if it's worse than that, there is a problem in the experience. Retrospectives, try to determine when and why you're getting these. Is it because you turned down a case and you weren't empathetic? There are a lot of scenarios. You want to counter buyer's remorse, set up a good onboarding experience. You need to coach your team.
The LLMs love superlatives. I know you can't use it in your advertising, but just like Ross Cellino said the other day where he had his client say that, "Hey, I was looking for the best so I hired Cellino Law." You want to tell your clients, coach them up and have them use the words best. I hired them because they were the best ex lawyer on reviews. Minimum, three moments that you need to be focused on. The intake, the onboarding and the closeout. Those are touch points that you ask for reviews. You can do a net promoter score, see if you get a nine or 10, you got an advocate and you can kind of gate those a little bit, but you need to do those. And there's a little secret here. Anytime someone uses the word thank you, maybe an opportunity to get a review.
The other thing too, the big firms, you got the big firms in the house. I think Sweet James is here. We got a few other big firms. One of the issues that you have is if you're going to create an incentive program, well, who the hell got the review? How do you determine that? That becomes a problem at scale. So, you have them leave a review for an individual. So, you go to the person, you're like, "Hey, make sure you say that Mike was helpful." Well, boom, they get a bonus. It's attributable, simple. Got to get a ton of reviews. And it also can't be batched. I'm going to stay on the reviews. One more thing. You can't look at your competitor and say, "I've got 80 reviews. They have a hundred. Let me go get 40. I'm good." This has to be ongoing. A consistent cadence of reviews.
Okay. YouTube. A couple main things on YouTube. I'm super tackled here guys. I'm just going to plow through this. You need to upload your own transcriptions, not the native Google ones, not the native YouTube ones. There's a lot of tools that do this. It will break the content up. It makes it easier to read. You also need to use playlists that utilize keywords. Answer questions. Use your geography. You do see created content. It doesn't have to be professionally polished when you're answering questions. Consumers don't want the professionally polished video if you're answering the question what to do after a car accident. That's fine on TV and other mediums, but FAQs, they can be very basic. Okay, Yelp. Microsoft has a huge investment with OpenAI. Microsoft owns Bing. What is being used for reviews? Yelp. What does Apple Maps on your phone use for reviews? Yelp.
The issue is getting the review to stick because it's against their guidelines. It's to send a review link out to them. It's against it. It will bury. If you send a review by email, it will not stick. There are two ways to do this. Number one, implement a check-in policy at your office when your customers come in, incentivize the behavior for them to check in. Give them a Starbucks gift card for 10 bucks for checking in the Yelp because it geotags the location just like a restaurant. And when they leave, it automatically prompts them to ask about their experience. That review will stick. Number two, this is the gray area one. I'm just going to put that caveat, but I'm going to tell you it anyways. If you create a Yelp account, you can sync your Facebook to your profile and it will show of your friends who are Yelpers.
Okay? So, just like Google Guides, just like Reddit Karma points, if you have a friend that's a Yelper and they leave you a review, that review will more frequently stick. It's more trusted. Those are the two methods. I'm going to tell you another reason why this is important. When we showed you that Google search result, who's the best car accident lawyer in Scottsdale, one of the top results, I think two of them were Yelp. And it said the best car accident lawyers in Scottsdale. In order to get listed on that page, you need 20 to 50 in most markets, Yelp reviews. You will not even rank on the listicle unless you have those reviews. I never thought in a million years I would be pushing for a Yelp sponsorship. But look, where the incentives are, create the behavior. Yelp trains the LLMs. It's ranking. You need to be there now.
Maybe a year ago you didn't, but now you do. Justia. Okay. This one's simple, but everyone needs to claim their profile, every lawyer at the office, and you need a 10 out of 10 rating. It is so simple to get a 10 out of 10 rating. It takes a profile that's filled out and one peer endorsement. One. Somebody sitting next to you, do a little hookup after this, do a Justia review, 10 out of 10. That would be good. So, they also instituted a new feature on their listing. Number one guy that has the premium sponsorship, you see how he doesn't have the top-rated? This is a new thing by Justia, by the way. Now, when you're a 10 out of 10, it says it right on the profile. Super Lawyers. I don't know if any Super Lawyer reps are in the house, but you're going to get your Super Lawyers offering and they're going to send you all these things on their media kit.
Almost all of it is complete trash. The $14,000 feature, white paper, trash. Submit you out to all the magazines, 60,000 distribution for a gajillion dollars, trash. Nobody's going to read it. The thing that matters are the profile memberships. That listicle that we showed, who's the best lawyers and Super Lawyers shows up? That is from the Super Lawyers award. That's the one that matters. Your attorney's at the office. It's worth it. You can also negotiate. I do this a lot. Give us the bulk discount. They'll do it. You need to get nominations, play their game. Talk to that local rep, have them buy you breakfast and lunch again. Get those nominations in. Well, look what Super Lawyers did. We saw Justia added that top-rated. Well, what did they do? Here we go. Right under your profile, top-rated. You think it's a coincidence that they're now number one and two in search or because they're using these phrases?
Incredibly, incredibly important. You can ask. I wouldn't do the rising stars and all that. Sure, you want your attorneys to go through that process, your younger associates. I would focus on the Super Lawyers distinction. Facebook, getting old school. Facebook doesn't have a rating system. Here's the thing that you want. When you go in to leave a review, they give you two options. Do you recommend this firm or not? That's it. You want to get as many recommendations as you can, and here's why. Facebook acts as an aggregator. They submit their information to a lot of sites. So, while Facebook itself may not be incredibly important, the aggregation of the reviews is important. I'll give you two examples. They aggregate to Expertise.com and Expertise has a top 10 list. They also aggregate to Trustpilot. If I had to guess, I would say hundreds of sites are aggregated from Facebook. In fact, I believe Bing also references Facebook reviews.
I want to point out one thing because I absolutely cannot stand Trustpilot. Do not go to Trustpilot direct. Trustpilot, when you create a new account, they start with seven averaged in 3.5 reviews. You're better off letting the aggregation work as opposed to getting direct reviews on Trustpilot. You have to get 50 reviews on Trustpilot to get to a 4.8. You have to get over 100 to get a 4.9 because of them averaging in those seven. Instagram, I'm not going to stick here very long, but you've seen it in the index. Make sure you reference geography. Make sure you have very thorough descriptions. That's what it's pulling in. LinkedIn. One of my personal favorite platforms, there's a ton of use cases for this. When you type in your name, a lot of times one of the top results will be LinkedIn. It's a great site.
If you got some negative PR, you did something you shouldn't have done. Maybe optimize that LinkedIn profile because it ranks really well. You want to make sure your profile's very thorough, very descriptive. Talk about your awards, talk about your experience. Use some of the words that they're looking for, the plaintiff only, the case results. The other thing that you want to do is contribute content. So, think of LinkedIn. A lot of times it's like an afterthought. People will think of Facebook. They'll think of Instagram. Maybe they think of X or TikTok. But LinkedIn posts index. So, put your case results there if you can. Again, I know certain states you have issues you can and can't. Also, I'll just point out another thing. I see consistent cadence two to four per month. That makes me want to puke my guts out. Just like one post a week on social media makes me want to puke my guts out.
You should have a post every single day. Every day. One. Wikipedia. I put the giant unicorn here because it's near impossible to go to Wikipedia. But it's number two on what these LLMs use for a citation. A lot of times you can get listed on Wikipedia, but it doesn't stick. There's also Wikidata. It's very important. That's a good resource to use if you don't use Wikipedia, but this is what I've seen. Associations with celebrities. This is what it is. This is what I see. Associations with celebrities, giant cases that are newsworthy. The thing about these cases are they have very strict criteria on which they call a credible site. I'm not going to get in the right left stuff. But for example, Fox News is not a credible site and they will not use it even if you had a media ... They talked about your case on that. They will not use it on Wikipedia.
What I've also seen for Wikipedia that works really well is if you've had involvement in cases that are listed on Wikipedia, you can then go edit those posts and do a citation for yourself. Maybe you're the attorney on the case if you can do this, but they're looking for a lot of media mentions. Books help, but your book's going to have to win an award. It just is what it is. The Kindle Direct Publishing method. Congratulations, you have a book. That's not going to cut it. From a distribution perspective and to get these awards, you need to go with a traditional publisher. You don't want to go auto publish a KDP yourself. Penguin House, sites like that. I'll give you another tip on the books. From a awards perspective, you want to win a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times bestseller.
You have to get enough sells. And if your book is too narrow, I'll give you an example. My book, Niching Up, it's too narrow because it only talks to business owners. That's why David Goggins pump you up like everybody wants to be pumped up. These books that appeal to everyone, that's why you see all the motivational stuff do really well, win all these awards. You have a very niche book, it's not going to win awards. It's not going to let you use it for Wikipedia. The other thing I'll say, you need to make sure, even if you do get the Wikipedia ... I'm going to stick here for a little bit. I'm trying to give you guys the tips. If you do get it's not celebration mode. It's like, how could I cement this? What's another case? What's another piece of tech? We saw Lamber Goodnow on the screen as an example.
They utilize a new piece of tech. You have a new trial technique. You have to get creative here. You have to be a person that's notable. Associations with celebrities. It is what it is. Photographs with them. I used to be a gamer in the day and video games at the top of the top. For whatever reason, it's not A, it's S tier. It's the most important. Reddit. Let's be real. Google controls Reddit. $60 million licensing deal. Number two, Google. You got to rank in Google search. You got to do the traditional SEO things to be discovered. It is what it is. Wikipedia. I wish that was italicized because it's so challenging to get. Next down, you got YouTube. Yelp. Then you got your legal, specifically Super Lawyers, Justia. Then I've got your social platforms. There's a reason why they're down there too. It's money. They're all competing for this capital market.
Like you think Zuck is going to be S tier against Google? No. They're going to bury them. There's a reason. You guys see that they dropped the 100 parameters. Why do you think they did that? Because a lot of the non-Google results are on the second page. They're past that. They're hedging their bet. Down at the bottom of that D tier. In my opinion, really the only one that should be there is Best Lawyers. I'll tell you why. You can't say I'm the best lawyer, but in some markets, I know I've seen this.. Rated best lawyer, rated top lawyer. You can say that in some states if you have that accreditation from a third party. That's a reason to do it. Then you can put it in your content, then it can be cited.
Avvo, ever since that acquisition from Internet Brands, I don't know if anybody's seen the chart. Not looking good. And then Martindale, solid link. Also part of Internet Brands, I believe. It's a decent backlink for SEO, but really guys, I would really think about strategies. If you got to protect the base, you got to do the SEO. This is what it is. There's too much distribution. Everybody converts on Google. Even if you do your traditionally do your radio, type in the website, they're going to Google. Get creative about Reddit. The first thing I would do, I would not mail the checks for settlements out. I get it. That's the easy route. We're not in the easy game. We're in the winning game. Make them come to the office. Give them those Lee Rudin T-shirts. Activate them on your wearables. Talk about the experience, learn what you could have done better.
What PI law firms must do now to protect search visibility as AI overviews expand
Chris Dreyer:
That's how you gate the reviews. That's how you know if they had a good experience. That's where you can do the client testimonial videos. That's where you can ask the younger, "Hey, this is an odd question. Do you Reddit? " Right? You got that in the checklist? Yeah, that's weird. Why? Okay. Well, can you answer a couple of these questions for me? I'd really appreciate it. We'll give you a nice hoodie. So, have some fun with it. Guys, the bottom line, the firms that dominate AI visibility in the next six months. This is the time. This is the time where everyone else is doing this and that. You need to be thinking about this now. Again, my Chris Dreyer crystal ball, it is PMax from an ads perspective. They already tested the AI overviews, the local. They did this about two weeks ago. They implemented the local maps results in the AI overviews. Do you know where you advertise for those? PMax. That's it, guys. That's the talk. If you have questions for me, happy to answer any and all. And I appreciate you. Thank you so much.
Conference for personal injury firms that take growth and execution seriously. This talk premiered at PIMCon 2025. To be the first to get essential legal marketing and intake strategies, meet me at PIMCon 2026.
