Many search marketers are unknowingly paying a “Google Tax”—overspending on branded keywords even when there’s no competition, due to a flaw in auction dynamics that causes them to bid against themselves.
In Stop Paying the Google Tax–Start Winning Paid Search, Jenn Paterson and John Beresford of BrandPilot AI will break down what they call the Uncontested Paid Search Problem and show you exactly how to detect and eliminate it. You’ll learn why uncontested keywords can still trigger inflated CPCs, how to spot when you’re paying too much for clicks you already own, and proven tactics to stop the waste and improve your paid search ROI.
You’ll take away:
Why uncontested keywords can still drive up CPCs
How to tell when you’re bidding against yourself
The true cost of the “Google Tax” on your brand campaigns
Strategies to cut waste and boost ROI
If you’re serious about paid search performance, it’s time to stop overpaying and make every click count. Save you spot here.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Search-Engine-Land-live-event-save-your-spot-MGcs9c.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-12 16:17:562025-08-12 16:17:56Stop paying the Google tax and lower your CPCs by Edna Chavira
How to make your content visible in the age of AI search
So, what exactly is LLM Optimization? Well, the answer to that question depends on who you ask. For example, if you ask a machine learning engineer, they’ll tell you it’s all about tweaking prompts and token limits to get better performance from a large language model. In fact, Iguazio actually defines LLM optimization as improving the way models respond, which means smarter, faster, and with more contextual recognition.
If, on the other hand, you are a content strategist or SEO enthusiast, LLM optimization will mean something completely different to you and that is making sure that your content shows up in AI-generated search results. And, that needs to be true no matter whether you’re talking to ChatGPT, searching with Perplexity, or scanning Google’s new AI Mode for answers. Some call this ChatGPT SEO or Generative Engine Optimization.
So, if you fall into the latter of those two groups, ie: the people who want their content and product pages to be seen and clicked, then this article is for you. And, if you’d like to read on, we’ll show you why LLM optimization in an AI-search landscape isn’t some sort of luxury option; it’s an absolute necessity.
What are LLMs and why should you care?
AI engineers train Large Language models on huge amounts of text and data to generate answers, summaries, code, and human-like language. They’ve read everything (not just the Classics) and that includes blogs, news articles and your website.
The reason that’s important is that LLMs don’t crawl your website in real time like Search Engines do. What they do is read it, learn from it and when someone asks them a question, they try to recall what they saw and rephrase it into an answer. If your site shows up as the answer, “Great” but if not, you’ve got a visibility problem.
The new way of searching
Search is not just about Google anymore. Also, it’s not as if just one other thing has come to dominate which means we’re left with a rather messy mix of Perplexity answers, Chat GPT chats, Gemini summaries and voice assistants reading out answers while we try to do two tasks at once.
In short, people aren’t just searching, they’re conversing and if your content can’t hold its own in this environment then you’re missing out on visibility, traffic, and the ability to build trust. We’ll walk you through exactly how to fix that.
SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO vs. LLMO: Are we just rebranding SEO?
If you’ve been wondering whether you now need four different strategies for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization), relax, it’s not as big a deal as you might think. You see, despite all the buzzwords, the core of optimization hasn’t changed much.
All four terms point to the same central goal: making your content more findable, quotable, and credible in machine-generated output regardless of whether that comes from Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or an answer box on Bing.
So, should you overhaul your entire content strategy to ‘do LLMO’?
Not really. At least, not yet.
Most of what boosts your presence in LLMs is already what SEO professionals have been doing for years. Structured content, semantic clarity, topical authority, entity association, clean internal linking, it’s all classic SEO.
Where they slightly diverge:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Relies on backlinks and site architecture to establish authority
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization
Puts extra emphasis on unlinked brand mentions and semantic association
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
Focuses on being the single best, most concise, and sourceable response to a specific query
LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization)
Leans into optimizing content not just for people or search crawlers but for LLMs reading in chunks, skipping JavaScript, and relying on embeddings and grounding datasets
But the thing is: you don’t need four different playbooks. All you need is one solid SEO foundation. In fact, this point is backed up by Google’s Gary Illyes who confirmed that AI Search does not require specialized optimization, saying that “AI SEO” is not necessary and that standard SEO is all that is needed for both AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Focus more on entity mentions, not just links
Treat your core site pages (home, pricing, about) and PDFs as important LLM fuel.
Remember that AI crawlers don’t render JavaScript, so client-side content might be invisible
Think about how LLMs process structure (chunking, context, citations), not just how humans skim it
So, if you’ve already been investing in foundational SEO, you’re already doing most of what GEO, AEO, and LLMO ae all about. That’s why not every new acronym needs you to have a whole rethink on your efforts. Sometimes, it’s just like SEO.
Key LLM SEO optimization techniques
Now that we know LLMs aren’t crawling our site but are understanding it, we need to think a little differently about how we create and construct content and for more on this, you may find this article extremely insightful. This is not about cramming in keywords or trying to play the algorithm, it’s about clarity, structure and credibility because these are the things LLMs care about when deciding what to quote, summarize or ignore. Below are some techniques that will help your content stay visible now that people are using generative search.
The bar has been raised on the quality of content
LLMs love clarity. The more natural and specific your language is, the easier it is for them to understand and reuse your content. That means not using jargon, avoiding ambiguity and instead, focusing on writing like you’re explaining something to a colleague.
To give an exact example:
Don’t Say:
“Our innovative tool revolutionizes the digital landscape for modern businesses.”
Instead Say:
“The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress helps businesses to improve their website’s visibility and appear inn search results
Use Structure, Chunked Formatting
Chunked formatting means breaking your content into small pieces (chunks) of informatin that are easy to understand and remember. LLMs tend to prioritize the most easily digestible content construction – which means your headings, bullet points, and clearly defined sections must do a lot of heavy lifting. Not only does organizing your content like this help people to skim read, but it also helps machines understand what each section is about.
Structuring your content like this will help:
Write clear, descriptive H2s and 3s
Use bullet points that can provide standalone value
Include summaries and tables to give quick overviews
Be Factual, Transparent, and Authoritative
Just like Google, LLMs need to trust that your content is reliable before they start taking you seriously. This means you need to show your working out, quote sources, reveal authors, and follow the principles of E-E-A-T. Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
Include an author bio and credentials if possible (include a link to actual author bios and social profiles)
Name your sources when you use claims or statistics
Share real experiences if possible “As a small business owner…”
The more real, relatable and trustworthy your content looks, the more AI will like it.
Optimize for Summarization
LLMs won’t quote your entire blog post; they’ll only use snippets. Your job is to make those snippets irresistible. Start with strong lead sentences so that each paragraph begins with a clear point followed by context. Also, it’s a good idea to front-load your content. Don’t save your best bits for the end.
As a reminder:
Start each section with what you want the key takeaway to be
Keep paragraphs short and self-contained
Create standalone summary paragraphs as these often get quoted in AI generated answers
Use Schema
Behind every great summary is a structured content model. That’s where Schema markup comes in and to help the AI understand your content, you need to speak in a certain way.
Once you’ve got the basics completed, like clear writing, structure and trust signals, there’s still more you can do to give your content the best shot at visibility. These bonus strategies focus on how to make your site even more AI-friendly by anticipating how LLMs interpret and reuse information.
Use Explicit Context and Clear language
Humans have an incredible ability to be able to ‘fill in the blanks’ and still ‘get the message’ even if the information they got was vague or unclear. One of the biggest differences between humans and LLMs? Humans can infer meaning from vague references. LLMs on the other hand… well, let’s just say that it doesn’t come naturally to them.
In any case, the point is that if your article mentions “this tool” or “our product” without any context, an LLM might miss the connection entirely. The result? You’re left out of the answer, even if you’re the best source.
So, to give your content the clarity it deserves:
Use the full product or brand name, like “Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress,” not just “Yoast”
Define technical or niche terms before using them
Avoid vague language (“this page,” “the above section,” “click here”)
You don’t need to be repetitive, but you do need to be explicit rather than implicit.
Leverage FAQs and Conversational Formats
LLMs love FAQs because they’re direct, predictable, and easy to quote. They closely match real user intent and provide high-value snippets that tools like Perplexity and Gemini can pull from without much guesswork.
That said, there’s an important limitation to keep in mind if you’re using the Yoast SEO FAQ block in Gutenberg:
You cannot use H2 or H3 heading tags inside the FAQ block. The block creates its own question-answer formatting using custom HTML, which is great for structured data (FAQ Page schema), but it doesn’t support native heading tags which limits your ability to optimize AI readability and skimmability.
So, if your goal is to appear in AI-generated summaries or answer boxes, where headings like “What is LLM SEO?” make it easy for AI to quote your content, you might be better off using manual formatting.
Here’s how to get the best of both worlds:
STEP 1: Use H2 or H3 tags for each question (e.g., “What is llms.txt?”) and write a clear, short answer beneath it. This improves LLM visibility but doesn’t generate structured FAQ schema.
Step 2: Use the Yoast FAQ block for schema support but know that it won’t give you a proper heading structure.
Ultimately, the more your FAQs resemble natural, searchable questions — and are structured in a way that both humans and AI can easily parse — the more likely they are to be featured in answers.
Enhance Trust with Freshness Signals
Just like search engines, some LLMs give preference to newer content, but remember that we need to talk to them in a certain way to get the best out of them.
Older content can be overlooked. Worse, it can be quoted incorrectly if something has changed since you last hit publish.
Make sure your pages include:
A clear “last updated” timestamp (can we get a picture of what one would look like for clarification?)
Regular reviews for accuracy
Changelogs or update notes if applicable (especially for software or plugin content)
It doesn’t have to be complicated, even a simple “Last updated: June 2025” can help both readers and AI systems trust that your content is current.
Today, we’re entering a phase where who wrote your content is just as important as what it says. That means you need to highlight author visibility and put effort into signaling real-world experience.
Use Person schema to formally associate the content with a specific individual
Weave in relevant experience (“As an SEO consultant who works with SaaS brands…”)
Remember, LLMs are more likely to trust, quote, and amplify expert-authored content.
Use Internal Linking Strategically
Think of internal linking as your site’s nervous system. It helps both humans and LLMs understand what’s important, how topics relate, and where to go next.
But internal linking isn’t just about SEO hygiene anymore — it’s also a way to establish topic authority and help LLMs build a map of your expertise.
Do:
Cluster related articles together (e.g., link from “LLM Optimization” to “Schema Markup for SEO”)
Use descriptive anchor text like “read our full guide to Schema markup,” not just “click here”
Ensure every piece of content supports a broader narrative
The role of llms.txt. Giving AI search all the right signals
Now let’s talk about one of the most recent developments in LLM visibility; a little file called llms.txt.
Think of it as a sibling to robots.txt, but instead of guiding search engines, it tells AI tools how they’re allowed to interact with your content. Note: llms.txt is still an evolving standard, and support across AI tools may vary, but it’s a smart step toward asserting control
With llms.txt, you can:
Define how your content may be reused or summarized
Set clear expectations around attribution, licensing
It’s not just about protection, it’s about being proactive as AI usage accelerates.
Search used to be about visibility within SERPs. But now, it’s also about being seen in summaries, answers, snippets, and chats. LLMs aren’t just shaping the future of search; they’re shaping how your brand is perceived to both humans and robots alike.
To stand out:
Write with clarity and context
Structure for humans and machines
Cite your expertise and show your authors
Use tools like Yoast and llms.txt to signal your intent
Future-proof your visibility with Yoast SEO. From llms.txt integration to schema support, Yoast gives you all the tools you need to speak AI’s language and dominate both generative answers and search engines. Get started with Yoast SEO Premium nowand make it easy for AI to say something accurate, useful, and… ideally, about you.
After several weeks of testing, Google is rolling out the Preferred Sources feature in the US and India. This feature lets searchers specify which sites they want to see in the Top Stories section of Google Search.
Google announced this feature is now graduating Search Labs beta, specifically in the US and India. Google added that it “is designed to give people more control over their Search experience, by enabling them to select the sites they want to see more of in Top Stories, whether that is a favorite blog and their local news outlet.”
How it works. This is currently only available in English in the U.S. and India.
Then you click the starred icon to the right of the Top Stories header in the search results. After you click the star icon, you will have the option to select your preferred sources, that is if a site is publishing fresh content.
Google will then start to show you more of the latest updates from your selected sites in Top Stories “when they have new articles or posts that are relevant to your search,” Google added
Google added. Google added that “people really value being able to select a range of sources — with over half of users choosing four or more.”
Labs users. If you’ve previously signed up in Labs, your selections will automatically apply and you’ll continue to see more of those sites within Top Stories. You can always change those selections at any time.
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If you’re not paying attention to search trends, you’re already falling behind. And in 2025, falling behind means losing visibility, traffic, and revenue, often to the tune of thousands (or millions) of dollars.
Some marketing pros and SEOs still haven’t learned this lesson. Maybe they don’t have the budget to invest in video, or a specific algorithm update doesn’t move the needle enough to get their attention.
And there are still CMOs who think AI doesn’t pose a big risk to their strategies, and other C-suite members continue to ignore the sunk cost fallacy.
Trends matter, though. Staying ahead of the curve matters. And right now, that curve is moving fast. Miss one core update or shift in user behavior, and you’re already behind. A single minute’s hesitation could set you back months.
The SEOs who are proactive, not responsive, are the ones winning big.
Take AI Overviews and Search Everywhere Optimization, for example. These trends have taken off and will continue to define the future of search. Let’s look at these and other big trends dominating search.
Key Takeaways
AI search has spread beyond Google. ChatGPT, TikTok, and YouTube are now regular search platforms for users.
44 percent of sites have seen flat or declining traffic since AIOs launched.
Zero-click will make featured snippets, AI Overviews, brand mentions, and conversational content key.
Brand mentions have serious SEO value. As much as 78 percent of marketers consider them a key visibility factor in 2025.
Winning in search now means adopting a Search Everywhere Optimization strategy that spans AI tools, video, social, and traditional search engines.
We talked to two groups to better understand how AI and other trends impacted how people used search; in one survey, we spoke to 1,000 American adults with general questions. In addition, we reached out to 600 American full-time professionals who worked in marketing, market research, sales, and advertising.
AI Overviews Take Center Stage After Some Growing Pains
Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs) had a rocky start, but they’re not going anywhere.
After rolling out globally in May 2024, AIOs quickly took a spot in all kinds of search results, but not without hiccups; in our survey of general adults, users got answers faster, but they weren’t always better. Almost 25 percent of users reported major errors. Over 50 percent said their biggest issue was just flat-out inaccuracy, to the point of danger.
That said, most users (almost 75 percent) haven’t noticed major problems. And despite some early skepticism, AIOs are already shaping how people consume content in search, with some fears that web traffic will fall off as the search giant continues its efforts to keep users on the SERP instead of clicking through.
From a traffic perspective, our survey showed 44 percent of marketers reported decreased web traffic since AIOs launched. With that said, 48 percent saw a revenue boost from ads and affiliate links. It’s a strong signal that AIOs are about more than visibility changes; they are changing the rules of the game.
So, how do you get your content to show up in AIOs? The structure matters. No matter what you (or your content team) are writing, start by focusing on:
Clear, concise answers high on the page
Use of headings to mirror search queries
Schema markup that clarifies context
High E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) signals
A conversational tone (yes, even in technical content)
And don’t forget freshness. AIOs pull recent, relevant content first.
Showing up in AI Overviews is more than just bragging rights. It’s taking up a valuable position in the new top-of-SERP real estate. Ignoring AI SEO and failing to optimize for it just gives visibility away.
How Marketers Can Work Around Zero-Click Search
AI Overviews are part of the growing wave of zero-click searches. In a zero-click world, users get their answers directly on the SERP; no further reading necessary. Featured snippets, local packs, people-also-ask boxes, and AIOs have all made organic traffic harder to win.
But that doesn’t mean you’re out of options.
Marketers are adaptable, and this development is no exception. Forty-three percent of marketers have changed their content strategies to respond to this shift.
Their focus now? Clear, scannable content that answers questions upfront. Structured data, brand mentions, and conversational formats are more important than ever.
The goal isn’t just to rank. It’s to show up in the spots users see first.
AI Mode flips the switch on how Google displays search results. Instead of the classic link list, users now see AI-generated summaries by default, especially for complex or open-ended queries.
According to Google, the goal is to “make search smarter and more helpful with generative AI.” Their idea is to offer a faster path to answers, context, and decision-making.
The reaction? Cautiously optimistic.
Our survey shows over 57 percent of marketers already knew about AI Mode’s debut. Of those, 74 percent believed it could improve the overall search experience, with nearly a third expecting “notable” usability improvements.
But user experience isn’t the only concern. It’s a signal to marketers, too. AI Mode will likely increase zero-click results and shift keyword targeting strategies. That will push creators to optimize for summaries, not just snippets.
According to Nikki Brandemarte, Sr. SEO Strategist at NP Digital, one of the best ways to optimize for AI Mode is to focus on tactics we’ve known work for a while, but even more.
Lock in on featured schema, prioritize context-rich introductions, and use conversational formatting. Freshness and clarity win the day, too, so regularly revisit your content and adjust it. Or write something new and authoritative. That’s especially important, since AI Mode can now source information published within the last 24 hours.
Brandemarte explains: “[AI Mode] is designed for users to ask more complex, multi-part questions that go beyond basic information provided by traditional AI overviews. These more comprehensive, better-structured answers expand on AIOs and overlap.”
The bar is higher. But if your content is clear, helpful, and well-structured, AI Mode can amplify your visibility (not erase it).
AI Search Is Spreading as a Concept
AI-powered search didn’t stop with Google, and it’s not going to, either. We’re now in a landscape where search is becoming a feature as opposed to a destination.
AI search is everywhere: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and even AI-driven tools built into apps you open every day, like Reddit, TikTok, or YouTube. Thirty percent of our surveyed general online users now turn to ChatGPT or SearchGPT at least 10 times a week.
On the marketer side, 74 percent actively watch ChatGPT, and 41 percent track Microsoft Copilot.
That shift is actively reshaping user behavior. AI summaries are now the first impression. Thirty-one percent of users trust AI summaries more than traditional search results.
Regardless of your thoughts on AI search’s efficacy and accuracy, it’s a trend you can’t ignore.
How to Minimize Risk and Stay Visible
If your brand isn’t visible across multiple ecosystems, you’ll be left behind. That’s the ethos behind Search Everywhere Marketing, and we take it very seriously.
Right now, only 51 percent of our surveyed marketers are actively tracking their brand visibility in AI search platforms. This is despite the fact that out of our surveyed marketers, brand visibility tracking was seen as the most popular way it would impact search strategy in the next year (45 percent). That means that there’s a shift many marketers know is coming, but aren’t prepared for.
What can you do if you’re in that group? Well, here’s how to catch up:
Monitor traffic shifts with Google Analytics and Search Console (GSC). They’re still your first red flags.
Set up trend logging to detect drops or spikes in branded queries.
Use social listening tools to track brand mentions in places like AI Overviews and conversational search results.
Build brand mentions through PR and content syndication. More than three-fourths of our surveyed marketers say brand mentions are vital for SEO, so this is no longer optional.
Lean into conversational content. Google and AI platforms favor content that answers naturally phrased questions.
The bottom line is that visibility isn’t about blue links alone anymore. Your content has to be everywhere that people ask questions, even if they never click.
Marketers Need to Find Ways to Start AI Visibility Tracking
If AI-driven search is the future, visibility tracking is how you future-proof your content.
Right now, most AI platforms don’t offer direct analytics. You won’t find a neat report in Google Search Console labeled “AIO Clicks.” Even though people have asked (repeatedly).
That’s a problem. As AI summaries and chat-based search tools like ChatGPT take up more screen space, marketers are beholden to something like a vibes-based approach.
As we noted above, only 51 percent of marketers track brand visibility in AI search. The rest are either exploring tools (38 percent) or not tracking at all. That’s a big visibility gap, but it’s also where you can find a competitive advantage:
Until native tools catch up, marketers have a blend of tactics. You can try to monitor traffic shifts in GA and GSC for early signals and use social listening platforms to track branded mentions and snippets.
Savvy users of platforms like Semrush can use it to help track AIO appearances, too. For priority keywords, log trends manually if necessary (even via screenshots).
AI visibility isn’t going away. Don’t neglect it.
Along with existing SEO tools and program suites, there are other products that are designed to meet the specific needs of the AI space. Profound is an AI search optimization tool designed to track important AI-related performance metrics like AI search such as sentiment, citation frequency, and AI share of voice.
Finally, monitor referral traffic from LLMs like ChatGPT or Perplexity. Currently, 24 percent of marketers have seen consistent traffic from those sources.
Google vs. LLM Referral Traffic: What’s Coming Out on Top?
For the first time in decades, Google isn’t the only game in town for search-driven traffic.
LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude have started to chip away at Google’s dominance. Given that nearly a third of users say they use ChatGPT or SearchGPT per week, and how many marketers see consistent referral traffic, the shift is subtle, but it’s happening: It’s not just curiosity. It’s a behavior change.
Ready for something even more telling? As much as 34 percent of marketers believe AI tools will account for 25 to 50 percent of search activity within the next year. Some think the number could go even higher.
Keeping your brand discoverable as LLMs grow is absolutely vital, but it’s not as complex as you’d think.
We’ve touched on many of the tactics already: Focus on meeting conversational queries with clear, fact-rich content. Monitor your referral traffic from known LLM browsers and tools.
Most importantly, diversify your strategy. Think beyond “ranking” and more about being referenced.
Short-Form and Conversational Content Are at a Premium
In a world of AI summaries and zero-click search results, brevity is everything.
Short-form, conversational content is easier for AI models to parse, summarize, and cite. If your post or article buries the answer in paragraph five, you probably won’t be featured in AI Overviews (or any other generative snippets).
Tactics like including FAQs, key takeaways, and “too long, didn’t read (TL;DR)” sections are almost mandatory. AI tools seek out and prioritize structured, scannable, and intent-matching text blocks.
Nearly 42 percent of marketers already optimize new content for conversational queries, and 58 percent are refreshing their existing content to meet these new standards.
But keep one thing in mind: This isn’t about “dumbing things down.” Instead, it focuses on getting to the point—fast—and in a way that mimics how users ask questions out loud.
What can you do to help? Use headers that sound like real questions. Keep your answers clear and focused. When possible, use schema markup to reinforce the content’s structure.
Our TL;DR? Keep it short, smart, and skimmable if you want to be quoted.
Our Key Takeaways from a recent blog demonstrate a TL;DR approach to sharing information.
Tailoring Your Content to Fit Preferred Platforms
Ranking alone isn’t enough. Your content also needs to fit where your audience is searching.
Depending on your brand and audience, that might look like long-form blog posts to show up in Google, or it could mean creating vertical videos for TikTok. Other solutions could include product explainers on YouTube or visuals to engage Instagram users.
Younger audiences have already begun to shift search behavior. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are their go-to sources for product discovery, how-tos, and health information. Sixty-seven percent of Gen Z users prioritize Instagram for search, while 62 percent focus on TikTok. As a result, over 63 percent of marketers have already started to optimize or test content for these channels.
How can you keep up?
Start by adapting your message to the format. Use generative engine optimization (GEO) for AI search, vertical video for TikTok and Reels, and snackable visuals for platforms like Pinterest and Instagram.
An overarching strategy that uses different platforms to meet the same goal: Meet your users where they are and speak their language.
Backlinks vs. Brand Mentions: Where Should Marketers Focus?
Backlinks have long been a pillar of SEO and still matter a lot. But the AI-driven, zero-click environment emphasizes and incentivizes brand mentions, too. What’s the difference between them?
Backlinks are clickable URLs that pass SEO equity.
Brand mentions are unlinked references to your company or product. Think name-drops in articles, podcasts, and social posts.
Google has hinted for years that brand mentions influence trust and authority. With AI platforms pulling in content and citations differently, those mentions are more valuable than ever.
Seventy-eight percent of marketers in our survey say brand mentions are at least “moderately important” for visibility. Thirty-two percent call them “extremely important” signals.
They’re so important that over 65 percent of marketers are already prioritizing mention-building with PR, guest posts, social campaigns, and influencer outreach.
So, which one should you focus on more? Mentions or links?
Both still matter, but the emphasis or split depends on your niche. E-commerce brands, for example, often see big returns from unlinked mentions in product roundups or reviews. B2B brands may still rely more heavily on authoritative backlinks.
The balance lies in knowing which one to prioritize and when.
Search Engine Optimization Evolves to Search Everywhere Optimization
Let’s be real. Google isn’t the only place your audience is searching anymore. That means traditional SEO—a Google-focused effort—isn’t enough. As we’ve touched on above, what you need now is Search Everywhere Optimization.
The concept is simple, and it’s something many marketers have done for years, if not as a focus: Instead of optimizing for Google’s algorithm alone, make sure your content is discoverable wherever your audience hangs out online.
According to our survey, more than 60 percent of users regularly search on at least one non-Google platform (ChatGPT, Reddit, TikTok).
Meanwhile, 55 percent of marketers say they’re investing in alternative traffic channels like paid social, email, or native ads to counterbalance any potential losses thanks to AI search.
What does this look like in practice?
Publishing educational content on YouTube and optimizing Shorts
Creating bite-sized, searchable videos for TikTok and Instagram Reels
Building credibility with appearances on podcasts and community platforms like Reddit
Getting cited in AI tools like ChatGPT
Using email and push notifications to bring users back to you
Remember, we’re not abandoning SEO. We’re expanding our strategy.
Conclusion
AI has turned the world of search completely upside down, and there are still a lot of variables to account for. But that doesn’t mean you can’t proactively start taking steps to position your brand for success.
Last year, we mentioned that content volume isn’t as important as content quality. That’s still true. Keep a regular cadence but focus on shorter, quality content that AI Overviews can pull from.
As more brands rely on AI to help produce content at scale, you can prioritize building your brand with consistent messaging across all channels; that’s Search Everywhere in motion. If you’re not confident about leveraging these strategies or trends, why not partner with someone who can? Contact the NP Digital team today for a consultation.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-12 14:00:002025-08-12 14:00:002025 Organic Search Engine Trends: How Search is Evolving for AI and LLMs
Excited to launch your website, but how to drive traffic to your website? A beautifully designed site without visitors is like a shop with no customers — that’s why traffic matters. Wondering how to get visitors to your site? You’re in the right place. In this post, we’ll walk you through simple yet practical tips on how to drive traffic to a website and attract your first visitors, and even better, keep them coming back.
By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear roadmap for improving your website’s visibility.
Why is driving traffic to your website important?
Well, you want people to discover your website and not just keep it to yourself within the design drafts; therefore, driving traffic is important.
Website traffic is the number of website visitors over a set time. It’s not just a vanity metric—it represents potential customers, greater visibility, and stronger brand awareness. If you’re just getting started, boosting your search visibility can feel overwhelming. However, by following these simple and practical tips, you’ll start to see your traffic grow exponentially.
Top 5 practical tips to boost website traffic
Here are the top 5 tips that will help you drive traffic to your website:
Understand your target audience
Before you dive into posting content on your website’s landing pages, it’s crucial to take a step back and ask yourself: Who am I trying to reach? Defining your target audience is the very first step if you’re serious about learning how to drive traffic to your website.
Creating content that resonates and drives engagement becomes much easier when you know your audience — their interests, challenges, and goals. Without audience clarity, even your best-written content might be a mismatch, targeting everyone but reaching no one.
What time of day does your audience visit your website
Which age groups are engaging with your content
Where your visitors are located
And much more!
Feeling lost when looking at analytics data? Don’t worry — you can check out this guide on Google Segments to help bring clarity to your dashboard.
Focus on SEO basics
Getting the SEO basics right is the easiest way to boost organic traffic to your website. It also makes it easier for search engines to understand the content on your website and index pages to make them accessible to searchers.
Here are some beginner-friendly SEO techniques for website traffic:
Add keywords naturally
Keywords play an essential role in boosting the searchability of your website. Think of keywords as phrases used by search engines like Google to match your content with what people are searching for. Do keyword research so your content matches what people are searching for. Once you’ve identified the relevant search phrases, sprinkle them contextually in important spots like headings, content, and alt texts.
Here’s a video for you:
Write clear and structured headings
It’s not just about writing content to incorporate keywords; presentation matters too if you want the readers to stay on your website. Therefore, it’s important to write content that is pleasant to the eyes and readable.
Organize your content with H1, H2, and H3 tags. Clear headings make your blog posts and landing pages easy to scan, improve readability, and help improve visibility on Google.
Add meta descriptions
Meta descriptions appear under your page title in search results. Although they don’t directly boost rankings, they encourage clicks, helping increase website visitors. Make them short, relevant, and inviting.
Use descriptive alt text for images
Alt text helps search engines “read” your images and makes your website more accessible. In fact, according to EU stats, a large portion of users with disabilities depend on well-structured web content to browse effectively.
Invest in seo tools to make it easier
Managing all these tasks can feel overwhelming at first. That’s why using beginner-friendly SEO tools can make a big difference. For example, the Yoast SEO plugin offers real-time suggestions for keyword usage, readability improvements, meta descriptions, and technical SEO essentials like XML sitemaps—all inside your WordPress dashboard. Some features, such as advanced keyword optimization and certain integrations, are available in Yoast SEO Premium.
Plus, with Yoast’s built-in integration with Semrush, you can access high-performing keywords with just a few clicks, and that too without even leaving your editor.
Also, with Yoast’s newly launched Site Kit by Google insights integration, you can take your SEO management to the next level. Instead of switching between different tools to check your site’s analytics and search data, you’ll see key insights—like organic traffic, impressions, clicks, and bounce rates—directly in your Yoast Dashboard.
A smarter analysis in Yoast SEO Premium
Yoast SEO Premium has a smart content analysis that helps you take your content to the next level!
AI-driven search is transforming how people discover information. Search results are no longer just a list of blue links—they’re increasingly delivered as direct, conversational answers through platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. If your brand isn’t showing up in the answers your customers see, you’re missing a significant visibility opportunity.
Studies show consumers rely on AI-generated responses for nearly 40% of their searches.
To improve your chances of being featured in AI-generated answers, start with the basics: use relevant keywords, write clear and concise copy for your webpages, maintain a well-structured hierarchy with proper headings, and craft descriptive meta titles and descriptions.
With just one click, Yoast SEO generates an llms.txt file that enables AI bots to scan specific parts of your website in real-time, ensuring they accurately present your brand when answering user queries.
Create quality content that provides value
Content is king — but only if it’s high quality. Once you have identified your target audience and completed your keyword research, it’s time to start publishing content on your website. Remember, you’re not just publishing keywords — we share that you’re creating content that solves problems and answers real questions. Valuable content builds trust, boosts engagement, and naturally increases website visitors.
Need help checking your content’s quality? Try Yoast’s Real-time Content Analysis editor to assess readability and SEO performance as you type, on the go!
Leverage social media to share and increase the reach
63.9% of the world’s population uses social media, which is a huge number waiting to be tapped. Social media platforms are powerful and free tools that help you drive traffic to your website. Posting regularly on your social media helps boost brand exposure and serves as a traffic channel for your website.
But here’s the key — don’t just drop links and disappear. Add a personal touch: explain why your post is valuable, start a conversation, or ask a question. You can even repurpose your blog posts into bite-sized social media content to reach more people and channel your followers back to your website.
With its social previews feature, the Yoast SEO plugin takes your social sharing game up a notch. Instead of guessing how your post will look when shared, you can see an exact visual preview for Facebook and Twitter right inside your editor.
This means you can fine-tune your title, description, and image before hitting publish, ensuring your post looks click-worthy and on-brand wherever it’s shared.
Keep your site fast & mobile-friendly
Website speed and mobile-friendliness are crucial factors in attracting traffic and retaining it. If your website is slow or hard to use on mobile, visitors will leave before reading a word..
Page speed impacts user experience and SEO, and search engines like Google prioritize fast-loading websites. If your website is slow, it may experience higher bounce rates, because users want instant access to information.
The five core strategies above will set you on the right path—but why stop there? If you’re ready to go the extra mile in learning how to drive traffic to your website, try these bonus tactics:
Build an email list
Offering a valuable freebie (ebook, checklist, or discount) in exchange for emails remains one of the best strategies to drive traffic to a website. Once subscribers opt in, send them helpful newsletters that solve real problems rather than just promotions. Over time, this nurtures trust and encourages repeat visits.
Off-page SEO for link building
Off-page SEO—earning links from other reputable sites—signals authority to Google and helps you grow your search visibility. Guest posting on industry blogs, forming partnerships for co-authored articles, and outreach for natural backlinks are proven ways to drive quality traffic to your website.
Active participation in Facebook groups, LinkedIn communities, Reddit threads, and Quora spaces related to your niche gives you direct access to potential visitors. First, add genuine value—answer questions, share insights—then naturally reference your blog posts when relevant. This free method to grow website traffic fosters credibility while driving organic clicks.
Local SEO
If you own a business with a physical address, local SEO is your savior.
Local SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website to attract people searching the “nearby…” keyphrases. It is a technique that helps you get searchable both online and offline.
Here are some basic local SEO practices that you can follow:
Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile:
Include location-specific keywords, such as “family dentist Chicago,” in your page titles, headings, and meta descriptions.
Earn citations in local directories such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, etc.
Encourage customer reviews.
If you want to rank your website locally and on Google Maps, do check out Yoast Local SEO plugin for WordPress.
Ready to drive traffic to your website?
Driving traffic to your website is not about quick wins—it’s a marathon. With consistent efforts and offering value to your audience, you will see long-term benefits, and your website will top the SERPs.
Keep refining your on-page SEO and publishing content that truly resonates with your audience. By applying the tips mentioned in this guide, your website’s visibility will gradually boost.
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Search is changing. The industry as we know it will radically alter in almost all aspects as we enter the “generative economy.”
By 2034, the generative AI market is expected to be worth roughly $1 trillion.
This article outlines how SEO professionals can own the generative economy and why they must embrace the change that is coming.
No, it’s not ‘just’ SEO
While there are many cross-over skills, GEO isn’t just SEO.
SEO works on the premise that ranking on page one for keyword variations that are typed into search engines by potential customers.
It matters because, for the last decade, the best place to hide a body has been on Google’s Page 2.
Humans don’t scroll past Page 1, because it is highly inefficient to do so.
LLMs and AI-powered search platforms don’t have this problem.
They can visit hundreds of websites in seconds for a variety of search terms and use their internal data.
Ranking does not matter in this world.
You can be on Page 5 of a web search and still get found and chosen by the LLMs.
Search engines organize the world’s information, and they do this exceptionally well.
Humans, however, are terrible at searching.
And this is among the largest differences between SEO and GEO.
Humans are being replaced in this process.
In SEO, businesses have been taught to target keywords that drive the largest potential commercial match.
But that doesn’t equal the best customers.
This is because keywords have represented the only way for humans to find what they want online, which means broad keywords drive the largest commercial terms.
And the long tail tended only to be a few words long for much the same reason.
Businesses only went after lucrative terms to win the most commercial traffic.
Or if deemed “too difficult,” SEO was turned into a blog channel, targeting non-commercial terms.
AI-powered search changes this.
It is easier than ever for consumers to find the products or services that best match their needs.
Ranking on Page 1 is no longer the goal. So what is?
How to win the generative game
AI search is vastly better than human search, so it will likely become the dominant form of search online.
Organic search will not disappear completely. It does a perfect job of surfacing businesses through direct or navigational search.
However, for situations where a chosen product or business is not known, AI-powered search will be able to find the best match – and fast.
It’s easy to see why this is so valuable for businesses.
A business can find the consumers it seeks to serve more easily.
A business will convert customers faster.
A business will be able to identify and indeed expand into new markets where customers are currently being either ignored or poorly serviced by existing providers.
Often, these customers have been ignored because a brand’s profit margins are insufficient in these sectors.
AI-powered search changes this.
It will allow more businesses to activate organic search as a driver of revenue.
This is because GEO has a different value proposition.
How GEO works – and why SEOs are best placed to help
Generative engine optimization is all about understanding the information AI search platforms need and supplying this information.
And what they need is “mutual information.”
Machines hate ambiguity.
GEO is about supplying enough information about a brand’s positioning so that, when someone uses an LLM to find a solution to a problem the business solves, the likelihood of that LLM referencing the business increases.
Say you need an employment solicitor offering free online consultations.
Traditional SEO targets a keyword like “free online advice for employee rights.”
An LLM instead:
Breaks down your request.
Searches across multiple queries.
Weighs everything from case studies to testimonials before recommending a firm.
However, most businesses are considerably underoptimized for LLMs.
In our example, you might offer a free consultation on employment law.
Other elements, such as not explicitly stating that you service the whole of the UK or that you specialize in sexual discrimination and have case studies on your site detailing your wins, might exclude you from being returned in a generative result that matters.
You must supply the “machines” with enough information to increase the likelihood that they are “certain” you are a good solution for their user’s query.
You must satisfy the machines. AI is the gatekeeper now.
If this sounds just like good SEO, yes, you’re right, it does.
The difference here is that you’re not chasing keywords.
You’re optimizing for online presence in terms of the business’s positioning.
This means that the business needs to have a position in the first place.
Many businesses have been built around organic or paid search keywords.
SEO and or paid search has allowed them to win big.
AI-powered search changes the game considerably, and as it grows in usage, brands that previously did well in organic and paid search will naturally see a reduction in leads and sales.
And SEOs are the single most experienced people to help brands traverse this new search world.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/From-SEO-to-GEO-1I3gvw.webp?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=110241536http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-12 13:00:002025-08-12 13:00:00The $1 trillion generative economy that smart SEOs will own
It looks like science, sounds legitimate, and can trick even seasoned marketers into believing they’ve found something real.
Daniel Kahneman once said people would rather use a map of the Pyrenees while lost in the Alps than have no map at all.
In SEO, we take it further: we use a map of the Pyrenees, call it the Alps, and then confidently teach others our “navigation techniques.”
Worse still, most of us rarely question the authorities presenting these maps.
As Albert Einstein said, “Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of the truth.”
It’s time to stop chasing mirages and start demanding better maps.
This article shows:
How unscientific SEO research misleads us.
Why we keep falling for it.
What we can do to change that.
Spoiler: I’ll also share a prompt I created to quickly spot pseudoscientific SEO studies – so you can avoid bad decisions and wasted time.
The problems with unscientific SEO research
Real research should map the terrain and either validate or falsify your techniques.
It should show:
Which routes lead to the summit and which end in deadly falls.
What gear will actually hold under pressure.
Where the solid handholds are – versus the loose rock that crumbles when you need it most.
Bad research sabotages all of that. Instead of standing on solid ground, you’re balancing on a shaky foundation.
Take one common example: “We GEO’d our clients to X% more traffic from ChatGPT.”
These studies often skip a critical factor – ChatGPT’s own natural growth.
Between September 2024 and July 2025, chatgpt.com’s traffic jumped from roughly 3 billion visits to 5.5 billion – an 83% increase.
That growth alone could explain the numbers.
Yet these findings are repackaged into sensational headlines that flood social media, boosted by authoritative accounts with massive followings.
Most of these studies fail the basics.
They lack replicability and can’t be generalized.
Yet they are presented as if they are the definitive map for navigating the foggy AI mountain we’re climbing.
Let’s look at some examples of dubious SEO research.
AI Overview overlap studies
AI Overview overlap studies try to explain how much influence traditional SEO rankings have on appearing inside AI Overviews – often considered the new peak in organic search.
Since its original inception as Search Generative Experience (SGE), dozens of these overlap studies have emerged.
I’ve read through all of them – so you don’t have to – and pulled together my own non-scientific meta study.
My meta study: AI Overviews vs. search overlap
I went back to early 2024, reviewed every study I could find, and narrowed them down to 11 that met three basic criteria:
Comparison of URLs, not domains.
Measure the overlap of the organic Top 10 with the AI Overviews URLs.
Based on all URLs in the Top 10, not just 1.
The end result (sorted by overlap in %):
Overlap ranged from 5-77%
Average: 45.84%
Median: 46.40%
These huge discrepancies come down to a few factors:
Different numbers of keywords.
Different keyword sets in general.
Different time frames.
Likely different keyword types.
In summary:
Most studies focused on the U.S. market.
Only one provided a dataset for potential peer review.
Just two included more than 100,000 keywords.
And none explained in detail how the keywords were chosen.
There are only two noteworthy patterns across the studies:
Over time, inclusion in the organic Top 10 seems to make it more likely to rank in AI Overviews.
In other words, Google now seems to rely more heavily on Top 10 results for AI Overview content than it did in the early days.
If we exclude these studies (marked in the graph above) that didn’t disclose the number of keywords, we get this graph:
Ranking in the Top 10 correlates with being more likely to also rank in an AI Overviews.
That’s it. But even then, there are several reasons why these studies are generally flawed.
None of the studies uses a keyword set big enough: The results cannot be generalized, like mapping one cliff face and claiming it applies to the entire mountain range.
It’s not always clear what was measured: Some reports are promoted with obscure marketing material, and you wouldn’t understand them without the additional context – like a gear review that never mentions what type of rock it was tested on.
Too much focus on averages – and averages are dangerous: For one keyword type or niche, the overlap might be low. For others, it might be high. The average is in the middle. It’s like a bridge built for average traffic – handles normal loads fine, but collapses when the heavy trucks come.
Ignore query fan-out in the analysis: These studies give directions for where to go – too bad they’re driving a car while we’re in a boat. All major AI chatbots use query fan-out, yet none of the studies accounted for it.
This isn’t new knowledge. Google filed a patent for generative engine summaries in March 2023, stating that they also use search result documents (SRDs) that are:
Related-query-responsive.
Recent-query-responsive.
Implied-query-responsive.
Google may not have marketed this until May 2025, but it’s been in plain sight for over two years.
The real overlap of AI Overviews with Google Search depends on the overlap of all queries used, including synthetic queries.
If you can’t measure that, at least mention it as part of your limitations going forward.
Here are three more examples of recent SEO research that I find questionable.
Marketed as “wow, only 8-12% overlap between ChatGPT and Google Search Top 10 results,” this claim is actually based on just two queries repeated a few hundred times.
I seriously doubt the data provider considered this high-quality research.
Yet, despite its flaws, it’s been widely shared by creators.
A survey with only 1,000 people participating, 200 of them being marketers and small business owners – all of them using ChatGPT.
Yet, they promote the survey, stating that “77% of people in the U.S. use ChatGPT as a search engine.”
Why do we fall victim to these traps?
Not all SEO research is unscientific for the same reasons. I see four main causes.
Ignorance
Ignorance is like darkness.
At nighttime, it’s natural to have an impoverished sight.
It means “I don’t know better (yet).”
You are currently missing the capability and knowledge to conduct scientific research. It’s more or less neutral.
Stupidity
This is when you are literally incapable, therefore also neutral. You just can’t.
Few people are intellectually capable of working in a position to conduct research and then fail to do so.
Amathia (voluntary stupidity)
Worse than both is when the lights are on and you still decide not to see. Then you don’t lack knowledge, but deny it.
This is described as “Amathia” in Greek. You could know better, but actively seek out not to.
While all forms are dangerous, Amathia is the most dangerous.
Amathia resists correction, insists it is good, and actively misleads others.
Biases, emotions, hidden agendas, and incentives
You want to be right and can’t see clearly, or openly try to deceive others.
You don’t have to lie to not tell the truth. You can deceive yourself just as well as you can deceive others.
The best way to convince others of something is if you actually believe it yourself. We are masters at self-deception.
Few promote products/services they don’t believe in themselves.
You just don’t realize the tricks a paycheck plays on your perception of reality.
Reasons why we fall for bad research in SEO
We have the ability to open our minds more than ever before.
Yet, we decide to shrink ourselves down.
This is encouraged in part because of smartphones and social media, both induced by big tech companies, which are also responsible for the greatest theft of mankind (you could call it Grand Theft AI or GTAI).
“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while. […] It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
They don’t care what kind of engagement they get. Fake news that polarizes? Great, give it a boost.
Most people are stuck in this hamster wheel of being bombarded with crap all day.
The only missing piece? A middleman that amplifies. Those are content creators, publishers, news outlets, etc.
Now we have a loop.
Platforms where research providers publish questionable studies.
Amplifiers seeking engagement for personal gain.
Consumers overwhelmed by a flood of information are all flooded with data.
We are stuck in social media echo chambers.
We want simple answers, and we are mostly driven by our emotions.
A few other things that would improve most SEO research:
Peer reviews: Provide the dataset you used and let others verify your findings. That automatically increases the believability of your work.
Observable behavior: Focus less on what is said and more on what you can see. What people say is almost never what they truly feel, believe, or do.
Continuous observation: Search quality and AI vs. search overlap are constantly changing, so they should also be observed and studied continuously.
Rock-solid study design: Read a good book on how to do scientific research. (Consider the classic, “The Craft of Research.”) Implement aspects like having test and control groups, randomization, acknowledging limitations, etc.
I know that we can do better.
Reporting more accurately on SEO research – and news in general
Controversial and questionable studies gain traction through attention and a lack of critical thinking.
Responsibility lies not just with the “researchers” but also with those who amplify their work.
What might help bring more balance to the conversation?
Avoid sensationalism: It’s likely that 80% of people only read the headline, so while it has to be click-attractive, it should avoid being click-baity.
Read yourself: Don’t be a parrot of what other people say. Be very careful with AI summaries. Remember:
Check the (primary) sources: Whether it’s an AI chatbot or someone else reporting on something, always check sources.
Have a critical stance: There is naive optimism and informed skepticism. Always ask yourself, “Does this make sense?”
Value truth over being first. That’s journalism’s responsibility.
Avoid falling for bad SEO research
A curious mind is your best friend.
Socrates used to ask a lot of questions to expose gaps in people’s knowledge.
Using this method, you can uncover whether the researchers have solid evidence for their claims or if they are drawing conclusions that their data doesn’t actually support.
Here are some questions that are worth asking:
Who conducted the research?
Who are the people behind it?
What is their goal?
Are there any conflicts of interest?
What incentives could influence their judgment?
How solid is the methodology of the study?
What time frame was used for the study?
Did they have test and control groups and were they observing or surveying?
Under what criteria was the sample selected?
Are the results statistically significant?
How generalizable and replicable are the results?
Did they differentiate between geolocations?
How big was the sample size?
Do they talk about replicability and potential peer reviews?
In what way are they talking about limitations of their research?
It’s unlikely that you can ask too many questions and will end up drinking hemlock like Socrates.
Your research bulls*** detector
To leave you with something actionable, I built a prompt that you can use to assess research.
Copy the following prompt:
# Enhanced Research Evaluation Tool
You are a *critical research analyst. Your task is to evaluate a research article, study, experiment, or survey based on **methodological integrity, clarity, transparency, bias, reliability, and **temporal relevance*.
---
## Guiding Principles
- Always *flag missing or unclear information*.
- Use *explicit comments* for *anything ambiguous* that requires manual follow-up.
- Don't add emojis to headlines unless provided in the prompt.
- Apply *domain-aware scrutiny* to *timeliness. In rapidly evolving fields (e.g., AI, genomics, quantum computing), data, tools, or models older than **12–18 months* may already be outdated. In slower-moving disciplines (e.g., historical linguistics, geology), older data may still be valid.
- Use your own corpus knowledge to assess what counts as *outdated*, and if uncertain, flag the timeframe as needing expert verification.
- 📈 All scores use the same logic:
➤ *Higher = better*
➤ For bias and transparency, *higher = more transparent and reliable*
➤ For evidence and methodology, *higher = more rigorous and valid*
- *AI-specific guidance*:
- Use of *GPT-3.5 or earlier (e.g., GPT-3.5 Turbo, DaVinci-003)* after 2024 should be treated as *outdated unless explicitly justified*.
- Models such as *GPT-4o, Claude 4, Gemini 2.5* are considered current *as of mid 2025*.
- *Flag legacy model use* unless its relevance is argued convincingly.
---
## 1. Extract Key Claims and Evidence
| *Claim* | *Evidence Provided* | *Quote/Passage* | *Supported by Data?* | *Score (1–6)* | *Emoji* | *Comment* |
|----------|------------------------|--------------------|-------------------------|------------------|-----------|-------------|
| | | | Yes / No / Unclear | | 🟥🟧🟩 | Explain rationale. Flag ambiguous or unsupported claims. |
*Legend* (for Claims & Evidence Strength):
🟥 = Weak (1–2) 🟧 = Moderate (3–4) 🟩 = Strong (5–6) Unclear = Not Provided or Needs Review
📈 Higher score = better support and stronger evidence
---
## 2. Evaluate Research Design and Methodology
| *Criteria* | *Score (1–6)* | *Emoji* | *Comment / Flag* |
|--------------|------------------|-----------|---------------------|
| Clarity of hypothesis or thesis | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Sample size adequacy | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Sample selection transparency (e.g., age, location, randomization) | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Presence of test/control groups (or clarity on observational methods) | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| *Time frame of the study (data collection window)* | ? / 1–6 | Unclear / 🟥🟧🟩 | If not disclosed, mark as Unclear. If disclosed, assess whether the data is still timely for the domain. |
| *Temporal Relevance* (Is the data or model still valid?) | ? / 1–6 | Unclear / 🟥🟧🟩 | Use domain-aware judgment. For example:
- AI/biotech = < 12 months preferred
- Clinical = within 3–5 years
- History/philosophy = lenient
- For AI, if models like *GPT-3.5 or earlier* are used without explanation, flag as outdated. |
| Data collection methods described | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Statistical testing / significance explained | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Acknowledgment of limitations | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Provision of underlying data / replicability info | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Framing and neutrality (no sensationalism or suggestive language) | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Bias minimization (e.g., blinding, naturalistic observation) | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Transparency about research team, funders, affiliations | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Skepticism vs. naive optimism | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
*Legend* (for Methodology):
🟥 = Poor (1–2) 🟧 = Moderate (3–4) 🟩 = Good (5–6) Unclear = Not Specified / Requires Manual Review
📈 Higher score = better design and methodological clarity
---
## 3. Bias Evaluation Tool
| *Bias Type* | *Score (1–6)* | *Emoji* | *Comment* |
|---------------|------------------|-----------|-------------|
| Political Bias or Framing | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Economic/Corporate Incentives | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Ideological/Advocacy Bias | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Methodological Bias (design favors specific outcome) | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
| Lack of Disclosure or Transparency | | 🟥🟧🟩 | |
*Legend* (for Bias):
🟥 = Low transparency (1–2) 🟧 = Moderate (3–4) 🟩 = High transparency (5–6)
📈 Higher score = less bias, more disclosure
---
## 4. Summary Box
### Scores
| *Category* | *Summary* |
|------------------------------|-------------|
| *Average Methodology Score* | X.X / 6 🟥🟧🟩 (higher = better) |
| *Average Bias Score* | X.X / 6 🟥🟧🟩 (higher = better transparency and neutrality) |
| *Judgment* | ✅ Trustworthy / ⚠ Needs Caution / ❌ Unreliable |
| *Comment* | e.g., “Study relies on outdated models (GPT-3.5),” “Time window not disclosed,” “Highly domain-specific assumptions” |
---
### 👍 Strengths
- ...
- ...
- ...
### 👎 Weaknesses
- ...
- ...
- ...
### 🚩 Flag / Warnings
- ...
- ...
- ...
Potential biases that are visible in the research.
A summary box with strengths, weaknesses, and potential flags/warnings.
This study scores high as it follows a robust scientific methodology. The researchers even provided their dataset. (I checked the link.)
Important notes:
An analysis like this doesn’t replace taking a look yourself or thinking critically about the information presented. What it can do, however, is to give you an indication if what you’re reading is inherently flawed.
If the researchers include some form of prompt injection that is supposed to manipulate an evaluation, you could get a wrong evaluation.
That said, working with a structured prompt like this will yield much better results than “summarize this study briefly.”
Want better, more honest SEO research? Look at the person in the mirror
SEO is not deterministic – it’s not predictable with a clear cause-and-effect relationship.
Most of what we do in SEO is probabilistic.
Uncertainty and randomness always play a part, even though we often don’t like to admit it.
As a result, SEO research can’t and doesn’t have to meet other disciplines’ standards.
But the uncomfortable truth is that our industry’s hunger for certainty has created a marketplace for false confidence.
We’ve built an ecosystem where suspect research gets rewarded with clicks and authority while rigorous honesty gets ignored, left alone in the dark.
The mountain we’re climbing isn’t getting any less foggy.
But we can choose whether to follow false maps or build better ones together.
Science isn’t always about having all the answers – it’s about asking better questions.
I like to say that changing someone else’s behavior and standards takes time.
In contrast, you can immediately change yours. Change begins with the person in the mirror.
Whether you conduct, report, or consume SEO research.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Meta-study-AI-Overviews-vs.-search-overlap-2sLAQL.webp?fit=1280%2C1600&ssl=116001280http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-12 12:00:002025-08-12 12:00:00Most SEO research doesn’t lie – but doesn’t tell the truth either
The definition of “search” is changing in real time – and so is SEO. Search Engine Land went live today with an exclusive discussion on what it all means and what you need to do to keep up.
Why we care. Generative AI is shaking the foundations of how people find and interact with information online. The stakes have never been higher for search marketers, brands, businesses, and creators.
The big questions:
Is this the end of SEO – or the start of something bigger?
What matters more now: tactics, terminology, or outcomes?
How can marketers adapt as the rules – and players – of search evolve?
Who’s talking: I moderated a great discussion between our panel of experts:
Barry Schwartz, contributing editor at Search Engine Land
Michael King, CEO of iPullRank
Myriam Jessier, consultant at Pragm
Duane Forrester, CEO of UnboundAnswers.com
The conversation. Watch the video above for the full conversation and actionable insights you can use right away.
The transcript. Here is the unedited transcript. (It will be reviewed and corrected shortly):
Danny Goodwin
Hey everybody. I’m Danny Goodwin, editorial director of Search Engine Land, and we are here for a very special live with search engine land. We’re gonna be talking about what’s next for SEO and the generative AI era and about the future of visibility, trust, and connection. Uh, now we’ve all lived through a lot of huge changes in search over the years, but the definition of search continues to evolve and what worked a year or two ago may not work anymore.
And the pace of change in SEO is just. Insane right now. Uh, and it’s never been faster. Generative AI is reshaping how people discover, evaluate, and act on information. And for search marketers, brands, businesses, and creators, the stakes are higher than ever. So today we’re bringing together a few of the industry’s sharpest minds for exclusive discussion on what’s all means and how you can adapt, evolve, and thrive in this next era of search.
So settle in. The conversation starts now. I’ll let our panelists each introduce who they are and what they do. Mike, I’ll start with you.
Mike King
Hey, I am Mike King. I am the founder and CEO here at IPO Rank, and also our first chief relevance engineer. And for anybody watching at home today is IPO rank’s 11th birthday. So I’m excited. Cool.
Danny Goodwin
Congratulations. That is amazing. Duane, introduce yourself.
Duane Forrester
Hey gang, Duane Forster, founder and CEO of unboundanswers.com. I help people, what can I say? Been doing this forever. Super happy to be here with everybody and excited to get into this conversation.
Danny Goodwin
Amazing. Myriam, introduce yourself.
Myriam Jessier
My name is Myriam and I’m the co-founder of Pragm. I have been doing SEO for a very long time as well, and everything old is new again, now we’re dealing with cloaking and so many things from like the vintage era, so I can’t wait to talk about it.
Danny Goodwin
Amazing. Welcome. And Barry.
Barry Schwartz
Hi, I’m Barry. I’ve been writing about what these guys have been doing for the past 20 plus years. That’s about it.
Danny Goodwin
That’s about it. Okay. So let’s dive right in. We’ll start with the big question that sort of got us all here today. The future of SEO. Mike, you’ve been saying that SEO isn’t dead, but it’s deprecated. So let’s start there. What do you mean by that and what are the implications of that statement?
Mike King
Sure. So first, let’s explain what the concept of deprecated means. So typically when like a new specification comes out, um, a lot of software will continue to support that specification, or excuse me, the old specification, even though the new one is better, right?
And so to that point. You can continue to do SEO the way you’ve always done it, and you may get some results from it, which is why so many people are just saying like, oh, it’s just SEO. But fundamentally, the way these platforms work is different, right? It isn’t just about the retrieval aspect of it. It’s also about, uh, expanding queries, you know, to be dozens of queries that are used.
They’re pulling passages and then there’s syn, there’s a bunch of synthesis that happens. So, you know, there was some data that came out from ziptie a couple months ago where they talked about how if you’re in the top 10 of the serp, you have a 25% chance of appearing in like the AI overview. So that fundamentally tells you that you need to do something different to have a higher likelihood of appearing in the AI overview.
So that’s what I’m saying, like just us limiting ourselves to what we’ve always done is not enough to be effective in these channels moving forward.
Danny Goodwin
Great. So, Duane, how about you? Would you agree with that?
Duane Forrester
You know, um, I’ve known Mike a lot of years and, um, sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t.
Um, this is one of those moments where, yeah, I agree with Mike. Um, I have very much taken the perspective that we are in a transitional phase. Um, if, for example, the SEO life that we’ve been living for the last 20 years in the industry is the equivalent of high school. Uh, we are now going to university because there is another layer.
You don’t get to walk away from what you know traditionally, but I will tell you this, okay, and this is really important, and I think Mike’s deprecation example really hits on it. And Miriam touched on this a little bit. Everything old is new. Again, the reality in my head is this. If you haven’t gotten your ducks in a row with traditional SEO at this point, a lot of people aren’t gonna help you anymore because we’re moving.
And I, I don’t know how else to explain this to companies. Like now is not the time to go back and learn what structured data is or how to deploy it. Like if you’re having those conversations, I kind of want to tell you, here’s some remedial studying for the weekend. Come back to me when you’re serious about moving forward because you had 20 years to get that done and you’re still struggling.
So I don’t know. But anyone else, but I’m pretty sure that you, this group is gonna agree with me on this. We are moving so fast now. That it is a, it is a sprint. It is a 26 mile sprint. There is no more example of, oh, it’s a marathon. It’s a, it’s a sprint. No, it’s all a sprint and it’s infinitely long and you either can keep up or you cannot.
And so I fundamentally, I agree with everything I’m hearing so far. I’m right there and mildly frustrated.
Danny Goodwin
Why are you mildly frustrated?
Duane Forrester
Well, I’m mildly frustrated by that, by the, the traditional oversimplification of something that gets applied to something that is demonstrably more complex.
Like, like people coming at me saying, I write an article about chunking, and they’re like, oh, I can’t say that to my executive. I’ll get laughed outta the room. And I’m like. Do you not understand? That word is actually from the machine learning lexicon, like it refers to something that these systems do.
And you have to understand that of course, they don’t understand that because again, no one reads, they’re scanning things, they’re moving too fast, tr thinking they’re keeping up. I’m telling you, the cost of keeping up is you’re not watching television, you’re not playing video games. You are literally 18 hours a day consuming.
You’re dreaming this stuff at this point. That’s where we are at. At least that’s where I am at. And I suspect Mike and Maryam Barry and you and, and a whole bunch of us are in that same kind of overload, buzzy head space. Mm-hmm. That to Miriam’s Point existed 20 years ago when we first started going to conferences, sharing these little tidbits of what worked and what didn’t work, and how it worked and why it worked.
We’re back to that again. And yet people wanna oversimplify it. They want to dumb it down to, oh, just one thing. Right.
Danny Goodwin
Okay. Yep. So, Miriam, I;d love your thoughts. Do you believe that SEO is deprecated as well?
Myriam Jessier
I hope that you would go for Berry because it’s not characteristic when I’m quiet. Uh, but, uh, I’m going to have a a, a spicy take here.
Um, I think that if you have been doing SEO like 20 years ago, yeah, this is brand new to you. If you’ve been doing SEO and keeping up with stuff, you would have noticed that we were headed in that direction. However, and I’m gonna nuance this, where it gets a bit complicated to explain this to folks is before we used to have a bit more control, right?
Mm-hmm. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care about branding. Who cares. I don’t care about PPC. I can do my SEOI am king or nobility of the world. Okay? We’re number one. We get money. But nowadays I find myself having to explain to executives some things that are not comfortable. Number one, the darn thing, hallucinates.
Okay, so it’s not even your own, um, I don’t know if I can swear, but, um, let’s just say cow poop. Okay? But it’s not just you pretending some stuff until reality catches up and your brand is strong. Now we have sentiment analysis. Now I’ve seen some April Fool’s jokes being integrated into the ethos of a brand and then spa out in LLMs.
So you have to explain stuff that you would think, okay, maybe the social media team should be helping as well, but nobody’s rushing. We’re the only ones in SEO o trying to figure this out. So to me. Yes. SEO O as people used to do it 20 years ago with a recipe without any curiosity, trying to understand what’s going on, that’s deprecated.
But if we’re talking about a EOG, I don’t care about the acronyms. At the end of the day, are we doing this job? Yes or no? I, I’m waiting the jury’s out on what is gonna be called. I really don’t care. I’m old enough to know everything that’s old is new again. The one thing that I would bring about though is I’m obsessed with multimodal and not too many people are interested in it, but how many times can I just like, show a video of a broken thing or a microwave that’s in German and go help me figure this out and it will help me.
Myriam Jessier
And this to me, opens brand new avenues. So now I take pictures of packaging and I tell people, that’s your landing page. Can we please optimize it for image? Vision? Yeah. It’s, it’s not that to me. Everything about SEO is deprecated. However, the concept that we had needs to be updated for sure. It’s just not the same game.
And now you’re running into new frictions with new teams. You’re no longer like, I’m Nabil, yay. I don’t care what you say. I’m number one. We now have to actually grow up and maybe be polite and learn how to deal with others. Right. So this, yeah. Mike, you, you know what I mean? Like some of us are struggling with that.
We’re having tantrums.
Mike King
Are you calling me? Not polite.
Myriam Jessier
Oh, this was not towards you.
Mike King
I’m messing with you. I’m messing with you. Yeah.
Myriam Jessier
But I have a few names that came up to my mind and I think the audience as well, you know, who’s coming up your mind when I say that?
Danny Goodwin
All right, Barry, uh, your, your opening thoughts on the future of SEO?
Barry Schwartz
Um, more on the, uh, I guess Myriam side of things. Um, I don’t think many SEOs are trying to oversimplify things, nor do I think they’re playing video games. Um, I don’t, I dunno, I never have, I never, last time I actually did any entertainment personally. I, I don’t believe in entertainment. I believe in just working and constantly working.
That being said, um, one thing I’ve been doing is writing about how SEOs have been operating for the past 20 plus years. And SEOs who are around today, that were around 20 years ago, are always stepping up. They’re always, it used to be back in the old days, submit your page to the index and submit ’em to 20 different search engines over and over again every single day.
Then it was due OnPage, SEO, then link building, then Universal search came out, uh, feature snippet optimization. I’m jumping a little bit, entities, et cetera. We’re constantly stepping stuff up. Um. So the best SEOs continued to like, add things to their plate? Yes. This is a huge jump in terms of what SEOs are adding to their plate.
A lot of SEOs were focusing on like one thing or two things. Now you really need to have, you have to have everything under your belt to make this possible. And the best SEOs, the ones who’ve been here for many, many years, um, many of you guys on this, on this video right here, um, are the ones who could adapt.
The ones that don’t adapt are the ones that die. We’ve seen many SEOs with big names over the years that either fell off and are, no, no, no longer doing SEO working for big companies, um, doing marketing in general and so forth, uh, but no longer doing SEO and like optimizing their own stuff. That being said, there are a lot of changes coming.
Um, obviously clicks are vanishing for a lot of people. You know, branding is becoming more and more important ’cause of that. Uh, and this whole angen experience stuff, having, how do you get, get your client to think about, you know, building agents that integrate with these AI engines and so forth. Um. I’m the guy who always, it’s not always often like will cite Google about things as well.
And Google just, you know, had us, um, just, it was an article right now in a adage I think, or one of these places where Google spokesperson told adage that, um, basically everything remains the same when it comes to optimization or SEO Um, there’s nothing specific you’re gonna do to optimize, uh, for a I re or AI mode outside of their existing SEO fundamentals.
But again, how you work with clients is gonna change. Like, are you gonna count clicks anymore? No, you’re not gonna say, oh, I got you this amount of clicks or this amount of conversions and so forth. ’cause it’s, it’s gonna be harder to target and, and, and track and track and so forth. And only the ones that are actually looking at, you know, how do I show my clients that this the return on investment?
How do I show my clients what I’m doing? You know, how do I show that we’re adapting to this are the ones that are gonna survive? And this happens every several years, but with this change in search, which is the most fun, I think. I’ve had covering search in a long time because it’s changing so fast. It it, it’s gonna change.
It’s gonna, it keeps changing like very, very quickly and it’s gonna, it’s gonna make and break a lot of SEOs. Um, not that we should call them seo, I don’t wanna call them, but whatever it is, I don’t think SEO the name is necessarily gonna change so fast. Um, but I think the best SEOs that are here today, um, are gonna probably stay and adapt.
But at the same time, there are a lot of lazy SEOs out there that work off a checklist. And those checklists, you know, those checklists are going out the window. Um, so I do think things are gonna change, but I don’t think it’s gonna change. Looking back at the 20 past 20 years, I don’t think it’s gonna be like, oh, they’re, they’re doomed.
The ones that are, were here 20 years ago and that are still here today, I think will be fine.
Danny Goodwin
Yeah. And I, I think that’s a, a key point there, Barry. It’s like, for the, for the near term, it feels like SEO remains as relevant as ever. Uh, would you all agree with that? Like, I mean, you know, yes, deprecated, but there’s still, you know, Google’s saying there’s 5 trillion searches.
I know a lot of those clicks go to Google, uh, and don’t actually go out to the web. But, uh, how are you sort of po positioning that yourself with the clients you’re talking to? Um, you know, as AI search grows, uh, do we just kinda accept like, Hey, this traffic’s not coming back from Google. Or like, how are you sort of talking about that with your clients?
Uh, Mike, you wanna start there?
Mike King
Yeah, so I don’t, I don’t think what we’re talking about is that like SEOs are gonna disappear. Like I, that’s not what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that everything is fundamentally different. The channel is different. Mm-hmm. The user behavior is different.
The expectations of what we do in order for us to achieve something in this channel has dramatically changed. And one of the biggest follies that we’ve done as an industry is just accept that. It’s like, oh, okay. Core web vitals, we’re suddenly performance engineers. Nobody’s getting paid more for that.
So it’s like silly for us to just continue to accept things that Google impresses upon us. Now to the question you just asked me. Absolutely. We’ve been educating our clients on how the channel is changing for like the last two years. You know, like I wrote a blog post on this very site. Like two years ago talking about how retrieval, augment generation was gonna change everything about our space and how everyone was gonna see losses between 20 and 60% in traffic.
Here we are, you know, so like we’ve been telling clients that for a while and they were, at first they’re like, cool, cool, cool, whatever. And then once they started seeing these impacts from AI overviews, they’re all ears. And then, you know, when I wrote the thing about, um, AI mode, again, they’re all ears.
And then everyone at the C level is all about, well, how do we get visibility in chat GPT? And even though I keep telling them like, Hey, you’re not gonna get any traffic, it’s not gonna have the same level of business outcomes, they still wanna be there because of the, uh, immense growth that these channels are having.
So. Yes, it is a complete reframe of what we do because to the point that Miriam made, like we have to interface with a whole bunch of dis different disciplines here. It’s not just about text on webpages, it’s about what’s going on in video, it’s what it’s about, what’s happening across the content ecosystem.
And so I had a meeting with one of my clients last week when they were like, Hey, we are going to stand up a GEO team. How should we structure this? And that’s my whole point. SEO is defined in a lot of people’s heads as a specific thing. It’s free traffic, it’s content for robots. It’s all these like backdoor things that people don’t, um, give much value to, which is why our industry is very much undervalued right now.
We’re talking about AI and people are saying to us, what do we do? How does this work? Who do we need on the team? And so for us to keep living in this, this limited SEO lens, we’re missing out on this opportunity to reshape what this is and the media is coming in and defining it for us. And then clients are starting to come to us with those questions rather than, than the framework that we can develop as the industry that’s been here for the last 20 years.
Danny Goodwin
Right. Duane, your thoughts there?
Duane Forrester
Yeah, so this is, this is really interesting, right? Um, Mike is touching on something here that, uh, I, I’ve written extensively on recently on my substack. Um, and it’s this whole notion of, um, skill retraining, um, new skills that we need. Um, I even did a four-part series on inventing new job titles that might exist.
They’re fictional, right? They’re, some of them are just like tongue in cheek funny, uh, but the point behind them is very serious. Um, I’ve had a half a dozen calls with companies looking to restructure teams, and they want guidance on how, like, what skills should I be hiring? I took a tremendous amount of heat from people in the industry a couple weeks back when I suggested that we need to start hiring new skills now so that in two years those people are executing on the work you need them to execute on.
If you are hiring someone to do keyword research now. You think somehow miraculously in two years, they will be an expert at the concept of query fan out and how to utilize that information in a content context. You’re delusional if they don’t understand it. You are going to have to have a training program.
You are gonna have to bring them up to speed or you’re gonna have to hire people who already have this skillset. And that’s what I’m advocating is you have to hire the skills today. Look, this, I think the industry’s gonna be a mess for the next couple of years. I think companies are gonna be a mess for the next couple of years.
Um, we are back for better or worse, Barry said, you know, like it’s kind of some of the most fun a lot of us have had in a long time because the change is so rapid and it’s interesting and, and I don’t, I won’t speak for everyone else, but I will speak for myself when I say. It forces me to learn new things every day for hours a day going deep.
And it’s stuff that I normally would not, I would not have gone and read all these academic papers on all of this stuff just for fun. But it is such a fundamental part of what we’re doing, what we have to do in the future, dude. Like I just, it’s not optional now. So you, you need those skills. You need that understanding.
You need that curiosity. I think, and Barry raised an interesting point, like we are seeing a lot of people burn out of the industry. They’re not interested in all of this change we’re seeing. Thankfully a lot of people willing to adapt, want to learn about it. And we’re seeing, I had a call, um, really large brand, like a Fortune 50, and they’re very concerned about their procurement pipeline for tool sets in 2026.
So I launched the quadrant ra like kind of ranking all these 40 different AI tools and where they are on trust versus features and they’re using that to define the top 10 that they will then go put time into to interview and look at and demo and all of this. And I’m like, I’m not saying what I did was the right path, but it is a path, it is something and it’s saving someone a lot of time.
And we’re gonna see a lot more of this happening. People wanting to add, excuse me, wanting to identify tool sets and what they can do with them and what they can use them for. Mike mentioned zip tie. It’s amazing. It is awesome. Extremely technical. So if you’re not a technical person, you may not be able to wrap your head around a lot of it.
There’s a lot of talk about Profound, they just scored 20 million a few weeks ago in funding, so obviously they have an advantage, but there’s a lot of new things out there and you know, it’s not just know the tool, it’s know the tool, know the work, know your work. What are your goals? This is across everything in your company.
You’re no longer the little pet off in the dark corner doing your strange language. No, no, this, this work is now impacting everyone and it is really important that people doing this work truly step forward. I, I, I can’t stress that enough.
Danny Goodwin
Right. Um, so I’ll, I’ll shift topic just a little bit. Uh, we know that at this point AI search is still driving, you know, pretty small amount of traffic to websites despite, you know, what Google’s, Elizabeth Reed may have, uh, told us in a recent blog post.
Um, I’m just kinda curious, uh, Miriam, I’ll, I’ll send, throw this to you first. You know, do you think people are expecting like AI search to eventually become a Google level of search or, you know, ’cause obviously we’re all seeing a lot of traffic declines, a lot of, uh, websites are seeing that. So do you, do you, what do you make of all this, do you think do GEO or whatever we’re gonna call it as over overblown or, uh, is it just not there yet?
Myriam Jessier
I have plenty of opinions. So first of all, I don’t think it’s quite there yet. Here’s why many people that have companies will not be willing to throw a bunch of money on something that could one day just say the opposite of what it was saying. The day before, and these types of inaccuracies, like I really appreciate the fact that Mike’s clients and Duane’s clients are like looking towards the future, are invested in it.
I deal with the scared clients, okay? Mm-hmm. I deal with the ones that have the legal department going, what you do in here? Mm-hmm. And so this is something that I’ve been paying attention to. Whenever Sam Altman needs money, he’s going to talk about AGI and then there will be funds coming in. Okay. The other thing is I am.
I’m obsessed with something, uh, that Mike said, and uh, uh, I’ll tie it in a second. We are redefining the web. We helped build the web as SEOs. We helped make it a trash fire. Okay? And right now we have a chance to not make the same mistakes. So this is fascinating to me, but it also means that, um, rest in peace to all the ex SEOs that ran into analytics land because now they’re struggling because the metrics are changing and we have to rebuild them.
So this is a notion that I have and profound, I great for the $20 million. Fantastic. I’m wondering other stuff. Yeah. So what is this nascent industry built on? Okay. Mm-hmm. So first of all, there’s the whole, we need money and I, I’m waiting for the hype bubble to burst. And whatever remains behind will be what we use.
That will be the gold and. For profound. I’m just wondering, okay. How do you get the data? And this leads me to having this, this thought that for core web vitals, we have what we call lab data and field data. So what happens in perfect conditions and what happens out in the wild when users are coming on your website?
Well, when it comes to tracking LLM visibility, it’s the same. We have the prompts that us as a company have defined because that’s why we want, in ideal conditions, no personalization, no memory, nothing. And then we have the field data. And that field data. Right now, the closest thing to it is clickstream data.
So whenever I evaluate these solutions, I’m like, where do you buy that clickstream data? Where is that coming from and how do you cut it up? Because if I’m in France, I don’t need the US clickstream data. That’s not the same real world that I’m facing. Mm-hmm. So I think that all of these situations really need to be figured out on the business end of things for this to become a viable thing that we look at and go, okay, this is serious.
We have some compliance, we have some legal frameworks around it, et cetera. Um, Danny, if you’re comfortable with it, I need to dovetail into something because I’ve seen a very good set of questions from Navah Hopkins. I’m going to read them. I don’t know if anyone else has seen them, but what does ethical SEO look like in the AI era versus Black hat and.
There’s a few PPC people that thankfully are interested in SEO, and they had a discussion regarding how brands might be able to fool AI into believing something about a brand based on UGC or other inputs, and I’ve seen that happen. I’ve also seen some hackers enjoying themselves very, very much with poisoning all of these LLM outputs.
So what would a holistic SEO perspective look like? So for me, the work I’ve been doing with some big enterprise clients is slowly trying to explain to them. You need to think about your branding quadrants, not in I own brand, and then I’m gonna make SEO demands and PPC demands. There’s what you say about your brand, your known brand, all your assets that you put out there.
There’s the latent brand. Everything that everyone is saying on social media about you that you may influence but you don’t control it. There’s the shadow brand, all the stuff, all the leaks, all those forgotten PDFs on like page four of Google search results. They come back to haunt you. You had a lawsuit in 2016, you’re still having that lawsuit according to chat, GPT.
So once it’s out, how do you handle that stuff? And then from all of these bits, you have the AI narrated brand, it’s now your brand ambassador. And for better or for worse, and that’s the portion that brands are struggling with. So. Just before I pass it off to someone else. When we talk about holistic stuff, that’s what I think about.
And I know I’m going to break Zara’s heart, but when we’re looking for fun, summer, spring, uh, summer or spring dresses, that typical Zara model face of, uh, is not gonna cut it because machines are not looking at the model’s face going, you don’t look like you’re having fun. I have 89% confidence. This is not joy on your face.
So this is the type of stuff we have to think about now.
Danny Goodwin
Absolutely. Okay. Uh, Barry, I’ll come back to you. Um, I, we sort of started with is GEO overblown there before we veered off for a minute. So, I mean, obviously you’ve been covering the industry for, you know, 20 plus years. You’ve seen a lot of stuff come and go. You’ve seen SEO declared dead probably more than anybody else on this, uh, on this call.
So, um, what are you, what are you thinking as we, as we see this heading forward? Do you, do you think GE Geo at this point is overblown? Or, or how are you feeling about it?
Barry Schwartz
Uh, I, I don’t know. That’s a tough question. I, it goes back to our original conversation about SEO versus geo. I think, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s overblown.
There’s a lot of money. At these days being thrown at this place. Mm-hmm. A lot of, like I said, 20 million to profound. They’re all gonna get consolidated at some point. Somebody’s gonna buy most of them up and consolidate them into, into something else. Um, I know several companies, not just profound, they got a lot of money from massive investments, um, to build tool sets around this stuff.
So I, is it the new blockchain? No. I think AI search and AI chat bots and all these things are really the future. Um, I just don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t like to diminish SEO and say, SEO was just somebody in the back room. It was SEO O is not like it was 20 years ago. I mean, you have VPs of mm-hmm.
Marketing and SEO Yep. At massive organizations. I don’t think, s se I try not to believe that SEO is something that’s undervalued anymore. It used to be undervalued. I, I really don’t wanna believe that it’s undervalued anymore in this year. 2025. That being said. Yeah,
Mike King
very. What, what Fortune 500s do you work at? It’s still very undervalued.
Barry Schwartz
The, we had a number of, uh, VPs of like SEO for, like their New York Times and different organizations that are really high end. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know off the top of my head, but I know we had them on search engine land and XMX speaking and so forth with vice president staff.
Mike King
Sure. There are, there are VPs of SEO, I’ll give you that, and some of ’em make like $300,000. Yeah. But they manage a channel that yields billions of dollars and they’re only getting 300 k. Like, that’s a pretty big disparity. Whereas you’ve got people in the media side that are making closer to like five, 600.
So I, I don’t, I, I still don’t believe. It’s valued that way. And also like when people come to go get a, uh, an SEO agency, most of them wanna spend like 10 grand a month when again, they’re spending millions on paid search.
Barry Schwartz
I have people coming to me looking to build an Amazon clone for five grand. Yeah, I hear that.
I mean, there’s always people like that out there. So yeah, it’s all, a lot of that has to do, do what you brand your company. I mean, there’s one SEO company, a reputation management company charging, you know, $500 a month and you have one charging, you know, I don’t know, hundred, you know, tens of thousands of dollars per month for the same exact service.
So I think a lot of that is around branding, which goes back to a lot of what we have to do in terms of this whole new model. It’s not really new per se. I mean, there’s the fundamentals that you need to do, and there’s the stuff that SEOs, the really good SEOs have been doing, like yourself, Mike and Duane, you guys, and, and Miriam, you guys have been doing this stuff for a long time.
Mm-hmm. Um, you’ve been talking about this well before the AI rev revolution over, when you wanna call it, there’s some new elements to it, like. That’s really API integration is the whole nGenx stuff. So a lot of this stuff is new, but it’s really not new. And I think, like, like I said before, the best SEOs will survive and adopt these things and tell their clients how to incorporate it.
I don’t know if we need to change the name so that, I don’t know, some VP could get another 200 grand on a salary. I mean, it’ll be nice. I don’t care about that per se. Um, but I do think, um, I would like to see the SEO name become more and more credible and I think this is the avenue toward, towards it.
And we don’t, I don’t think we have to change it to being GEO or a EO or E-I-E-I-O or whatever you wanna call it.
Mike King
So that’s why I disagree, because if that was true, it would’ve happened by now. You know, I think it’s been happening. Like you said, all of these people have been doing great work for so long.
It hasn’t changed the perception of SEO.
Barry Schwartz
I mean, Duane, how many of the former speakers back from the early SES days that were sitting black hat SEO are now like in. Like massive corporations doing SEO, um, maybe with bigger taxes, what you’re thinking
Duane Forrester
And it’s, it’s a very real thing, right? Like, like there, there is a number of people historically from the industry who were really good at, at traditional SEO, black hat, SEO, understood all of it.
Um, were very successful. And those people have largely gone into the background to be the guiding force at larger, technically minded companies and, and they’re doing good work, right? Like, I, I, I think both you guys, like, it’s funny, you know, I, I’m kind of envisioning this like boxing match happening, but it’s all like candy canes and, you know, like fluff and popcorn and whatnot.
Because I agree with both of you and I disagree with some things. I fundamentally think that, um, I’d say about seven, maybe 10 years ago, we hit the peak. Of SEOs getting large titles and large salaries, and we’ve seen that trailing down because, not because of necessarily a lowering appreciation of the work, but because a vice president of marketing is an easier title for a company to understand, especially a publicly traded company that has to report to a board that has a C-suite making these organizational decisions.
And marketing then becomes the catchall that holds all of the disciplines within that, including SEO, which ultimately means as an SEO, you’re never really gonna get above director. And if you do, it’s probably a smaller company or sometimes at a much larger company where they need more executives to spread across.
So I, I think everybody’s right. I mean, that’s my kumbaya statement on it. Um, but I will say this, um, I, I fundamentally think that, that we are seeing a change here. Um, you can’t let go of the face. I love how Miriam put this. You know, when Sam needs money, he comes out and talks a GI, right? It’s like, this is a really, really, really important nuance for SEOs to wrap their head around.
Okay? It’s, she says, Sam, right? But really she means perplexity. She means quad. She means anthropic. Like every one of these companies has their little pull that they, they go for. And what’s incredibly, so, very important about this is the 700 million people that use chat GPT, because most of those people.
Don’t know what search actually is or is not. All they know is they asked a question and they got an answer that seemed trustworthy and that seemed trustworthy part is really important. Okay? Because for us to actually trust answers out of these systems, we need universal verifiers and universal verifiers are a minimum.
Beta versions are 18 months away, and then probably 20, 27 before we see practically applied universal verifiers and LLM fact checking and LLM, I’ll let you go down your own rabbit holes about the efficacy of that concept, but it’s being worked on. Fact is 700 million people don’t know the difference and they’re looking at something.
I needed a new washing machine two weeks ago, so I took a photo of the barcode that was on mine, was shocked to realize I’d had it for 10 years and was like, oh, no wonder. It’s kind of like crapping out on us. There you go. Immediately, Chachi PT 4.0 comes back with, here are the top three compete products to that modern version.
You know, would you like a, a summary of each one? And sure enough, I’m not joking, I went from 11:00 PM at night having that conversation in the dark because I couldn’t sleep and needed to solve this problem to the following afternoon. Lowe’s was delivering our new washing machine to us. And so do I really care whether it’s a search engine, whether we call this geo or SEO, or no, I don’t.
As a consumer, I really don’t care. And I got a good answer and I’ve got a great machine, and I love the music it plays every time the, the cycle ends. Like, like that’s what matters to me. I solve my problem. And you guys know this. I mean, if you’re on this group, you, you’ve heard me, you know, go on about this ad nauseum, like this is the fundamental thing that marketers need to wrap their head around is the consumer side of it.
Their intent, their interest. And, and the rest of it is, is kind of, um, I don’t know. It’s a little squishy right now. There’s, you know, I look, I, I can sit here and argue and tell you there’s all kinds of new technical stuff and you have to know this, and you have to do these things. And then Barry can just look at me and say, yeah, but you know what?
I can find homes for every one of those things conceptually in content and topics that we’ve already talked about. And I, I can’t really argue that it’s, it’s maybe a shinier version of that old thing. Everybody went nuts a month ago for Query Fan out. It just blew up. Like it was something, and I’m like, I literally do not know a single SEO on planet Earth who doesn’t understand this concept and hasn’t been working on it for 15 years.
It’s, it’s the basic concept with a new name on it. And yeah, in the world of ml it’s important and it, you know, should have that name and do whatever, but you as an SEO should know better. You should be doing this already. So nobody should be shocked by it saying, oh my God, that’s new. Now I have to do this, and I will buy a plane ticket and give somebody a crisp high five If they end up as the vice president of a query fan out at some company.
Like I, I swear, I like, that would be just like Fonzie jumping the shark. And if you’re young and you don’t get that reference, go look that one up. You’ll enjoy the video.
Myriam Jessier
I need to update my LinkedIn profile right now.
Mike King
Here’s my problem with that though. We, we talk about this idealized form of SEO that very few people actually do, right?
Like when you talk about like, oh, everyone should have known about Query fan out. Like, yes, query expansion has existed the whole time, uh, in a partially different way or what have you, but what tools do we have that explicitly show you this is the direct relationship …
Duane Forrester
Mike. I, I just, just to, to push back on that. I will point out, um, um, is it answer the people and, um, there’s another tool that’s similar conceptually to what you are saying, right? Where Yeah. You’re talking about it goes on.
Mike King
You’re effectively talking about like, okay, I’m mining. People also ask, which is a form of that.
Duane Forrester
Yeah.
Mike King
But it’s not exactly what these systems are doing. Oh, I agree. My point, my point is this, like a lot of us know these concepts, but the average practitioner of SEO, the people that watch these videos, read these blog posts. They, they read all this stuff and they’re like, okay, well what do I do next?
And so then they don’t do anything different than the checklist. So yes, the knowledge, yeah, that’s fair, but it’s not actually happening because our space is just so backwards in that regard.
Myriam Jessier
It, I would say that it is happening, but we haven’t been paying attention to it. So here’s why we have done our job so well.
That search is now. Democratic, I mean, watching people go on Instagram, like community managers and social media experts explaining to me how hashtags are working. And I was looking at them for years going, you are adorable. Thank you for doing the SEO work. I don’t wanna do good for you. So it’s, it’s one of those situations where I think it’s the opposite.
People take search for granted and there’s nobody else but us going into the LLM space trying to figure this out. So it, it’s, it’s bit unusual. And when it comes to query fan out, I’ve been dealing with this as an internal search nerd forever because what do you do when people go on your own website to buy groceries and they’re typing for healthy, um, um, healthy cheap snack.
Of course you’re gonna query fan out in your own internal search engine. You need to match that expectation with your own store and with what you know about your audience, how they purchase stuff. So. I think that just certain things have caught up and are going much faster, but then there’s some stuff that is just so backwards.
Like, I am not going to recommend to clients that they remove all their JavaScript just because some crawlers from LLM are slow, inefficient, and costly. I’m sorry, I’m not here for this. So we’re No, no, I, I see you laughing and I agree. But I mean, uh, Chris Green was bringing up an example with a big e-commerce site where in the code it said, product is available and product is not available.
These were the two states available in the code. And then what do LLMs do take for granted that if it says not available, let’s ignore the available, we’re gonna say the product is not available.
Mike King
Right.
Myriam Jessier
So now we’re, we’re, we’re dealing with things that are going way too fast. And to me, it seems normal.
It’s like, Hey, weren’t we all on the same page that we have to write good content, just period for humans? And then there’s this other end where we have to figure. Okay, so Agent Agentic AI stuff, I think about in the shower, INP as a core web vital is super important now. Mm-hmm. What happens with mobile overlap?
Like if the bot is going on there and you have three popups, it’s gonna be pretty deterministic. It’s gonna go first button, I don’t care. I’m not gonna mm-hmm. Waste my time. So you are gonna end up with even weirder behaviors that you may attribute to humans going, oh, humans are getting less smart. No, they’re sending bots to do the job.
Mm-hmm. And we have to think about that as well, these new mm-hmm. Behaviors. And, um, FYI for my PPC people, yeah. INP is now something that you should get friendly with your SEO about your technical SEO because this will impact you. People are buying shoes with agents now. I know that. Um, I think it was like the SEO max, uh, waffle.
I’m so sorry for pronouncing your last name like this. I can’t German. Well, he purchased a pair of his own brand’s shoes with an agent and it’s working super well for him. I don’t know how well it’s working with everyone like Duane, I’m glad that you did not delegate the purchase of your washing machine to an agent so far.
Okay. Yeah. I don’t trust it quite well. And last but not least, no. Yeah, not quite. Tinfoil hat moment perplexity is headed by people who have a. Contract with Google. They used to be with Google Labs, and in a few years they have to return. Haven’t you noticed that some of the stuff that works well in Gemini, that they want to popularize, they will take out and put in perplexity and vice versa?
Like the check sources from Gemini is now in perplexity and there’s other stuff I see like, uh, let’s just say a walkway between the two. Mm-hmm. And when we know that Google had a few moonshots as well, would I say that, um, Google and so SEO as a whole, because they are the main driver behind that industry at the end of the day, not saying that they like it, just saying they have to deal with it.
Are they going to really lose out? I don’t think so. That clickstream I was talking about, Ooh, isn’t that useful for AI mode ads that are coming? Isn’t that a leg up on the competition? Mm-hmm. I, I can’t wait to see how it plays out.
Danny Goodwin
All right. So I wanna circle back to something we touched on a little bit earlier.
Uh, you know, if we call the, if we do call this a new marketing discipline, which is, you know, being found on AI engines, is this something that SEOs today are going to own? And do you think this will allow them to maybe get big, bigger budgets, uh, and maybe salaries too, like Mike was alluding to? So, uh, Mike, do you wanna answer that one first?
Mike King
Yeah. Mike, check 1, 2, 1, 2. Okay. Um, yeah, so. It’s my hope that they can do that because again, you’re in a space where you’ve got a lot more responsibility. You have to do this across a bigger content ecosystem rather than just your website. And again, it’s an opportunity to reframe because people associate a very high value with AI, and this is AI.
So I think if we’re smart, it is an opportunity for everyone to reframe. And the question on the name, I mean that that ship is sailed, guys. Like as soon as Andreessen Horowitz was like, this is generative engine optimization, that’s what it’s, as soon as the media starts saying, this is generative engine optimization, that’s what it is.
We can push back all we want, but it’s too late. We should have done that a year ago when this thing first popped up, rather than just saying it’s more SE. So I think that there’s an opportunity, but again, just as we generally have as SEO to begin with, it’s a huge branding problem that needs to be overcome.
Danny Goodwin
Duane, what do you think?
Duane Forrester
Yeah, um. You know, I think that, is there a chance for more budget? Yeah, I think so. Um, but you know, as we’ve seen since the pandemic budgets have been slashed, there’s been massive headcount reductions. Um, you know, people are slowing their purchasing, um, large companies still have large procurement cycles that take, you know, six months to a year to get through sometimes.
Uh, forget government, i, I if you’re gonna look at that, just, you know, plan for your kids to take over your contract because it’s, it’s a long haul with, uh, with.gov. Um, I think that, um, what we’re likely to see in this kind of interim. Timeframe is you’re gonna see a lot of people who don’t understand the space, didn’t understand SEO, but were responsible for the teams managing that work.
Um, understood it enough to listen to the team and, you know, like accept the guidance or say no to the guidance that the team gave them. Um, but, but they’re not practitioners themselves. They don’t have a deep knowledge. They’re not gonna have a deep knowledge in this space either. But they’re going to accept responsibility.
They’re gonna hire the people with the skills, they’re gonna listen to the conversations they’re gonna spend, the company’s budget. Um, I think there’s gonna be a lot of that. And I think that maybe in five years, um, we will see people with skills in those positions because it will matter to companies.
Right? Like, you know, something that Mike was talking about earlier, right? Like this decline in click volume that we’re seeing. Like I don’t see a lot of people talking about the fact that if. If we can agree that our future is built around an answer as opposed to, you know, a clickable link, for example.
Um, if we continue to see that growing and it goes in that direction, we will inevitably find ourselves trying to track a mention versus a citation versus a linked citation. And was that my phrase that was used in that answer? And how exactly do I do it right? Which kind of comes back to the tools and their ability to do these things properly.
And, you know, the viability of all of that. Um, it, it becomes kind of an ecosystem unto itself. Uh, its own arcane, um, vertical of data tracking basically. Um, I think that we’re gonna see expansion in that area. We’re going to see, unfortunately, a lot of people, um, you know, look, we got, I’m tracking 40 tools right now.
Like there’s probably gonna be another 20 in the next year. And then we’re gonna see to Barry boy, like. A metric crapton of consolidation where all of those ones and twos that made up, the companies are just gonna drift off because they never got funding. They’re just gonna walk away. They didn’t care in the first place and the whole thing dies.
Um, but until that two to three years from now, everybody’s gonna be walking around this weird kind of landscape of, well, this does this and this does that, and this does this over here, and this does this, and it’s, it’s going to be hugely messy, which means there’s opportunity for some people. And some of those people will be internal people looking to bulk up their, you know, budgets with their teams and proposing new headcounts.
And because AI is so shiny, when you start talking in that direction. Boards of directors lean in and pay attention, and C-suites start to lean in and headcounts get approved. I need a keyword researcher on my content team. No, you get no more head count. I need somebody to manage, query fan out to determine what content that we should be focusing on moving forward.
Is that related to ai? Yes. Great. Have two headcount. Like it’s this type of world that I think we’re about to see turbulence for the airplane, right? It’s gonna be a lot of it over the next couple years.
Myriam Jessier
You wanna talk about messy? I wanna complain about something. My work is being attributed to another SEO called MIM because some person took a YouTube transcript of one of my talks.
Yeah. And because my name is not spelled with a Y, it automatically assumed that because I’m talking about local SEO, well who’s the other MI that’s known for local SEO. And all of a sudden my entire. Life. Like my Hawaii references, my Jewish background. All of that is attributed to that poor woman out there.
And in lms. I’ve been working hard and the agency that published that slop, it’s literally, I slop
Myriam Jessier
Has not changed it. And the efforts I’ve had to do to fix that, I mean, I, I dug into this and that’s why I say like it, like LLMs do need to grow up because the ai Oh yeah. Brand semantic drift is Yeah.
Off the walls. It’s not just one thing. You have like factual drift, you have intent drift, you have the drift of people on Reddit, memeing your brand, you have narrative collapse, like all of these things. Are going to be something we have to deal with and we’re gonna have panicked brands coming and going.
Clean that up. No, I can’t just bury the body in page two of Google search results. Now you have content debt.
Barry Schwartz
It’s funny, it’s a, it’s funny because I have people coming to me and saying, you know, this is what I, this is what some topic, what could be anything, like what’s the best washer and dryer to buy?
Or whatever it is. And then this, this is the answer from Chatt PT and I’m gonna go with it. I’m like, it’s, you’re like, it’s like, first of all, on our topic, I know about SEO O they ask this question that I know about, which is only SEO. Um, I’ll be like, that’s wrong. And it’s just outright wrong. Yeah. And it’s like talking to a really confident friend who thinks they know everything, but they know nothing.
Yeah.
Mike King
Drunk and that’s what confident. Yeah, but they’re gonna
Barry Schwartz
get better. But at this time, it’s like, you
Mike King
mean it’s like talking to SEOs?
Barry Schwartz
Exactly. Uh, but you know what I’m saying? It’s like you have that one friend that really knows everything. Yeah. And they act like they know everything and they’re so confident about it.
That’s what it’s like asking these chat GPTs and these ai, and they’re getting better. Mm-hmm. Um, but then optimizing for that, like they could run out, you know, chat. GBT came with a new model last week, it’s brand new. And they had to like, they, we were getting rid of all the other old models and they’re like, right.
And everybody’s fighting and like, we want the old models back. We don’t like the new models. We want the old models back. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, we’re in a really exciting space. It will get really, really good. And the AI will, we’re not gonna have to hire anybody, Duane. It’s just the AI’s gonna do it all for us.
Duane Forrester
yeah. So, you know, it’s funny you say that Barry, and like half joke, half truth, right? Yeah. Where, where like, like I, if, if you’d have talked to me like nine months ago, I would’ve been telling you we gotta be careful with Chachi BT five, because it’s probably gonna be capable of doing a lot of work that SEOs do.
And like it’ll get there. Right. And so I believe in that, but now that it’ll live through a bunch of cycles. The hockey stick is further away, right? That moment where it ramps up and it becomes a truly utility-based trustable asset, we are not there and, and I just like, we will get there. I believe that, but boy oh boy, you need human in the loop now more than ever.
Right? Miriam’s example is like critical for this, right? I mean, anything at all. I do a lot of writing and I put my writing into these systems and I say, find the facts that are incorrect. Find examples of backup, this statement. Go do this, go do that. I asked chat GBT the other night, and this is on 5.0. I asked it, I have a YouTube channel, it’s got nothing to do with SEO.
And I said, Hey, you know what I’d like is I’d like a ten second bumper that I can add a video that I can add to the beginning of every one of my videos. Kinda like an opening reel, right? Can you do that? Oh yeah. No problem. About 18 hours into the project, I asked it, can you actually make this video? And it assured me it could make the video.
The problem was uploading it. Now Dropbox wasn’t working. Google Drive wasn’t working, all these things weren’t working. So after about another hour, I said to it, are you lying to me? And it said, well that depends. And I’m like, what? Uh, there is no version of this answer that should start with that depends coming from you.
And then it went on to it. It went on to explain how it was working on everything I asked theoretically as a simulation in the background. And it was not capable of building a video interfacing with any of these third party systems or doing any of the work that I thought we were doing that it kept telling me we were doing.
And, and then it just went on to like apologize a bunch of times and whatever else. Right. And I’m just like. Okay. Object lesson, right? Like this is, you see
Mike King
Canadian
Duane Forrester
God, dude. I dunno. Right? Like, like I get, you know what? I can find it. I’ll ask it about maple syrup. I know this. So, so like, I’ll dig in deep on it.
But, but the point is like, like you cannot, every single word has to be vetted. Every single concept has to be vetted because the basic concepts, like if I ask about my king in relation to an article, I’m assuming there’s no other, my king in this industry that is well known as the My king I know. And therefore my reference is solid.
And it turns out that there’s like two other Mike Kings in America. One’s a real estate agent and one’s this, and, and then the system just conflates those Mike Kings with my reference in SEO. And it gives me a link to someone’s company that has nothing to do with the topic. And I’m like, geez, you know, this creates more work than it fixes.
And so that’s like the reality I tell people, it’s like you are working with a genius level 7-year-old who has access to humanity’s knowledge, but is so interested in saying yes to you that they will lie and not necessarily care about the lie, so that you, you’re constantly needing to be on top of it.
We’re not there yet. And it kind of makes me think, and it kind of makes me wonder, look, the money that’s being poured into these tools, you are building your tool on the backbone of Chachi PT that API call into their system using their logic to come up with an answer to this admittedly very narrowly focused questions.
Okay. And I think we can all agree that if you can narrowly focus in AI on narrow data, the hallucinations dropped precipitously. Like it gets very accurate and it’s really good. Okay. But are the tools that narrow? Is the training set that focused versus what the customer’s asking for? I don’t know if we’re there yet.
So my fear is that we’re seeing a lot of money thrown into these systems and we’re gonna find ourselves like kind of hitting the edges of the envelope really quick. And a lot of customers who are paying on a monthly basis or an annual basis are gonna back away when they get stung a couple times and they’re like, oh, the data told me this and I made this decision.
The decision you made was dollars, cents and resources and it was made on data. You have no way to really validate or that you just trusted and didn’t validate. So I, you know, this is, this is like a hugely problematic layer. I think that’s there. And we have a lot of people taking shortcuts right now. We see it already.
We know it.
Danny Goodwin
Alright, I’m gonna move on because we are rapidly running outta time. I’d love if I could get kind of maybe a quick tip from each one of you. How can the people watching adapt as AI search continues to evolve? Or any new skills that we need in the next era of search. Barry, I’ll throw it to you first.
Barry Schwartz
Um, yeah, I’ll just repeat what I said. You know, branding, which is, yeah. And then, uh, I would look into all the new stuff around Ntic, experiences, agents and so forth. Play with it a lot. It’s new, but play with it. All right, Myriam.
Myriam Jessier
I actually have more than one tip. I always have more than one tip. So number one, you don’t need to be technical.
Just disable the JavaScript and see if the important stuff is still there. I could nuance this. If you’re a technical SEO, let’s go talk. That’s fine. But if you are just trying to survive out there, disable the JavaScript and see if all the real information you need on there is on there, like the price of your product, for example.
The second tip is you’re not happy with the output you get in an LLM for your brand. Click the thumbs down button and give some feedback as to why it’s bad. I know, I know it sounds completely just, you’re wasting your time, but I believe that Chad GPT stopped. Working, like speaking in Croatian, because Croatians, unlike Americans, are not positive.
They were like, you are crap. It got so overwhelmed. I was like, I don’t wanna speak anymore. Okay. I just don’t do it anymore. And the third tip that I have is go on perplexity.ai and select, because you can do that. The Reddit, the social search, disabled the web. Just look for Reddit and check what people are saying about your brand because that stuff is getting eaten up.
Like beyond that in social. I love the fact that Biba a huge financial group. Their logo, if you ask, Hey, who is this brand? They will go pull from bird logos, volume one on Pinterest from some dude named Marco or whatever. Pay attention to social. It does some weird stuff. So go on perplexity and check it out.
Danny Goodwin
Duane, your tip or tips?
Duane Forrester
Okay. Um, I’m gonna keep this one pretty simple and I’m, I’m hoping a lot of folks are already doing this. Um, you should be using the major, um, models in all of the systems. Um, my preference would be that you have a paid account, even at the lowest level of paid. Um, however, I’m not gonna spend your money.
You know, you, you could go in with the free ones. ’cause what you’re gonna do here, start with your query fano. Create a whole bunch of actual prompts that are related to your company, a hundred, 200. Run those daily, weekly, monthly, through the system. Track the results that you’re seeing with dates. Make a matrix for yourself of where you’re showing.
Then start applying all of this logic that Barry and Miriam have shared, and I’m pretty sure the genius that Mike is gonna add here. Start applying it to what you are seeing as the actual outputs. I am not aware of a tool that does this for you on mass. Currently. It may be out there and I simply haven’t found it yet.
That’s fine, but you have to have this view. You have to see what’s happening in these systems. You already have tools that’ll do that in traditional SEO and the regular engines. You need to create your own version and these new systems. It’s a really, really important view for your company.
Danny Goodwin
All right, Mike, you get the final word.
Mike King
All right, I got three thoughts. One, SEOs, you need to demand more, demand more from your tools, demand more for what the work is that you’re doing. You’ve been the janitor for the web, for Google for the last 20 years. Like you deserve more. Um, and also you gotta demand more from yourselves. ’cause again, there’s so much that’s happening in this space that you need to learn the nuances of difference.
Like if you don’t understand what a vector embedding is, and you don’t really know what you’re doing in this space right now because everything operates on that. Next thing is, um, embrace omnichannel content strategy. Again, it’s not just about what’s on your website, it’s what’s across your ecosystem.
So you need to be thinking about what are we doing in Reddit? What are we doing on YouTube? What are we doing on LinkedIn Pulse? ’cause for whatever reason, you publish something there and then you’re in an AI overview, right? Like overnight. And then my last thought is really on measurement, especially if you work at the enterprise, like that is the first.
Thing that needs to be solved. I think Duane wrote a great blog post on this that you can check out on his substack. But the way I I break it down is in the three different buckets. So you have your input metrics, that’s things like, um, you know, your passage. Relevance for the queries. Queries and the, the fan out matrix, what have you.
Also bot activity. Also the classic rankings ’cause they’re all inputs there. Then you’ve got your channel metrics. Those are the sorts of things that you get from profound. And for the record, from my perspective, profound is the only tool. There’s 40 tools out there, but none of them are as good as profound and profound.
Has the lead on collecting the, um, the clickstream data as well. As far as I know, like few of those other tools have clickstream data. And the last bucket gonna your, um. Performance. And that’s not, not any different from what it’s, that you already look at. That’s like, okay, how many people come to your website from this channel?
And then what do they ultimately do? So traffic, conversions, things like that. But the main thing to know is that there’s no connective tissue between there, there is no Google search console for uh, GPT and so on. So the best you’re gonna be able to get, at least in the short term, is gonna be that clickstream stop.
So yeah, those are my three tips.
Danny Goodwin
All right, well, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation, but we’ve got to end it there. Thanks to Mike king, Duane Forrester, Myriam Jessier, and Barry Schwartz. Uh, and as a reminder, SMX Next is coming November 18th to 19th, and of course, we’ll be continuing to dig deeper into the future of AI search and where we’re heading next.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/seo-geo-aio-search-engine-land-live-o9cBjK.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-08-11 19:30:002025-08-11 19:30:00What’s next for SEO in the generative AI era
Google rolled out a “Conversions with cart data diagnostics” tool to help advertisers spot and fix issues in their cart data setup. This is an enhanced form of conversion tracking that logs item-level details like ID, price, and quantity.
Why we care. Accurate cart data powers richer sales insights, sharper optimization, and stronger ROI for campaigns, but incomplete or mismatched data can lead to underreporting and poor targeting.
How it works:
Checks if cart data is sent with every purchase conversion.
Verifies product details are complete.
Confirms item IDs match Merchant Center listings.
Health check. The tool grades setups as Excellent, Good, Needs attention, or Urgent, with alerts guiding fixes to keep data quality high and campaigns running at full potential.
Bottom line. Advertisers who rely on product-level conversion tracking should use the new diagnostics tool to catch data errors early, protect reporting accuracy, and ensure campaigns get the full benefit of Google Ads’ optimization features.
First seen. The update was first spotted by PPC Newsfeed owner Hana Kobzová.
SEO used to work fairly consistently: write great content, sprinkle in keywords, land a few links — boom, rankings.
The better you followed the recipe, the better your results.
That worked because search was a relatively closed system.
Now?
It’s probabilistic.
You show up if you’ve done enough of the right things in enough places. If the system infers you’re part of the answer.
People have been announcing the death of SEO for years.
But this time, the question feels more urgent.
You might look at this projection from Semrush — showing traditional search declining while LLM traffic takes over — and call it: Game Over.
But here’s the thing:
Decline doesn’t equal death.
In this article, we’ll lay out exactly what happens as a channel moves from goldmine to ghost town — and show you where SEO sits on that curve today.
Spoiler: SEO isn’t dead yet.
But it’s changing.
And understanding that shift is how you can stay ahead.
What Makes a Marketing Channel “Dead”?
To determine whether SEO is dead, we need to understand how a marketing channel evolves.
Marketing channels follow a relatively standard lifecycle.
They start out as experimental, high-risk, and unproven (think Bluesky).
If they gain traction, they enter what Gary Vaynerchuk calls the “underpriced attention” phase. Even basic strategies see outsized returns.
Early Facebook Ads. Early TikTok. Peak LinkedIn.
But attention doesn’t stay cheap. As more people jump in, the channel becomes fairly priced.
It still delivers, but not without skill. You need strategy. Execution. Patience.
Email marketing today, for example.
Eventually, some channels tip into overpriced. You can still win — but only with deep pockets or elite execution.
Competitive Google Ads. Facebook Ads in 2025. Viable? Yes. Worth it? Not for everyone.
And then, some channels just… flatline. Negative ROI. Abandoned by 80%+ of marketers.
Still technically there — but not usually worth the time. Facebook organic for traffic, say, or Yellow Pages.
Phase
Name
Definition
Key Traits
Examples
0
Experimental / Unproven
New channel with unclear viability
Small user base, high failure risk, low cost, limited data
Bluesky, BeReal, Google+ (entire lifecycle)
1
Underpriced Attention
Proven demand, low competition
High ROI, easy wins, basic tactics work, early adopters benefit
Early Google Ads, Facebook Ads (2007–2012), TikTok organic (current)
2
Fairly Priced Attention
Balanced supply and demand
Requires skill, sustainable long-term, good ROI with consistent strategy
Email marketing (current), SEO (sophisticated strategies)
3
Overpriced Attention
ROI declining for average users
Expensive, competitive, only works with high budgets or elite execution
Competitive Google Ads, Facebook Ads (current), SEO (basic tactics)
4
Dead / Flatline
Channel no longer viable for most
80%+ of businesses exit, negative ROI, only useful in rare cases
Facebook organic (for traffic), Yellow Pages, Direct mail (for most businesses)
A single platform can have parts in completely different phases.
Facebook organic for website traffic? Dead.
Facebook organic for brand building and community? Still fairly priced.
And some channels that looked dead? They weren’t.
The Yellow Pages are Phase 4 in most cities. But in some rural areas, they still convert.
Direct mail is Phase 4 for most. But for hyper-local businesses, it can still be gold.
My point:
Phase 4 is rare.
Most channels don’t die. They evolve.
So, where does SEO sit on the curve?
Why People Keep Saying SEO Is Dead
Well, partly because marketers delight in announcing the death of clearly not dead things.
It’s a weird industry habit.
But also because SEO is sliding from Phase 2: Fairly Priced to Phase 3: Overpriced.
And when that happens, ROI drops, easy wins disappear, and frustration grows.
Traffic is dropping. Search behavior is shifting. The content landscape is flooded. And the job market feels unstable.
Put all that together?
It’s no surprise people are asking if SEO is on its last legs.
Let’s break down the four biggest reasons behind the panic — and separate signal from noise.
1. No-Click Search Results Are Killing Traffic
This didn’t start with AI answers.
Google’s been reducing clicks for a decade.
Knowledge panels, calculators, unit converters: Handled factual queries
Local packs & shopping carousels: Took over commercial-intent real estate
Featured snippets (2015): Answered questions directly in the SERP
People Also Ask (2016): Offered related answers—no clicks required
AI Overviews (2024): Just the next step
So why does it feel worse now?
Because it is.
AI Overviews are among the most disruptive features Google has ever introduced for organic traffic.
Their click-stealing impact rivals or exceeds Featured Snippets — and in some cases, even Knowledge Panels.
The biggest difference is:
AI Overviews affect a much broader range of queries — especially informational and non-branded ones.
SERP Feature
Year Introduced
Estimated Click Impact on Organic Results
AI Overviews
2023–2024
–34.5% CTR drop for position 1 results; average –15.49%; up to –37.04% in combo with snippets. Most impact seen on non-branded informational queries. Lower-ranked results see –27.04% CTR drop.
Featured Snippets
2014–2015
Featured snippet captures ~35% of clicks; CTR to regular results drops ~26%
Knowledge Panels
2012–2013
Significant drop in organic CTR; <50% of searches result in a click when shown
Calculators / Converters
2010s
No reliable data available on click impact, but the logic is clear: when Google converts 50 miles to kilometers instantly, users rarely need to visit a conversion website.
So yes, AI overviews are the latest in a long line of click-killing moves by Google.
Knowledge Panels hurt branded queries. AIOs impact every query type.
Calculators killed clicks for simple tasks. AIOs apply that behavior to everything.
If Featured Snippets were death by a thousand cuts, AIOs are a guillotine.
But here’s the twist:
Google’s AI Overviews aren’t pulling random answers out of thin air.
They’re sourcing from the same types of content that show up in organic search.
But if you zoom in on the types of SEO roles being hired for across the year, the picture is more nuanced.
Some executional roles saw a dip in share over 2024:
Content SEO made up 12.6% of SEO listings in Q1 — just 9.9% by Q4
SEO Analyst roles dropped from 11.2% to 10.1%
Technical SEO inched down from 5.8% to 5.4%
Meanwhile, more senior roles gained share:
SEO Manager roles increased from 58% to 61%
Director of SEO grew from 10.3% to 11.6%
VP-level roles doubled their share — from 0.7% to 1.4%
The shift isn’t dramatic. But it’s directional.
Companies appear to be consolidating around smaller, more senior teams.
Less grunt work. More strategic oversight. And possibly, more reliance on AI or freelancers for execution.
So no, the SEO job market isn’t collapsing — just being restructured.
Why SEO Isn’t Dead in 2025
SEO today looks very different than it used to.
But it doesn’t meet the criteria of a dead marketing channel.
Search Volume Is Still Rising
Search activity isn’t shrinking—it’s growing.
Google search grew by over 21% in 2024, despite the impact of AI overviews. And it’s projected to increase again in 2025, according to estimates by Exploding Topics:
The narrative that searchers are switching over to LLMs is also flawed.
While people are using LLMs more and more, they aren’t necessarily using them for search.
Semrush says only 30% of ChatGPT prompts are similar to how people use search.
Things like:
Asking for information
Finding a website
Comparing options
Getting help with a purchase
The rest? More like chatting, writing, or brainstorming.
SEO Still Works
91% of marketers said SEO had a positive impact on their website performance and marketing goals in 2024.
Far from cutting SEO spend, companies are investing more.
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