3 Things To Prepare for the Upcoming Bloodbath with SEO and Internet Search
CEOs and AI Leaders need to act now to improve organizational awareness and begin mitigation steps
For companies reliant on brand awareness and sales leads from Google search and Google Ads, a major shift is imminent as more searches move to LLM-based chatbots within the next 24 months. Product education and discovery are very different and much less controllable in an LLM world.
This is the biggest change in a generation and is shaking up the highly honed and mechanized SEO business and internet ads industry.
Gartner estimates that web search traffic will drop by 25% in 2026, and we have already seen significant user behavior changes due to powerful tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and others. Stack Overflow, a website for answering software coding questions, has already been materially impacted by LLMs.
Enter the phrase: "What are the best EV sedan vehicles in the United States?" and the LLMs or "robots" or "AIs" return different answers (Chathub is a useful tool for this).
Will prospects find your competitors first in the "LLM world?"
Based on discussions with companies and in our weekly GenAI Learning Lab (and especially insights from Rosemary Brisco), we recommend the following steps for AI leaders:
Educate your management team and CEO using live demos across top public LLMs.
Determine your AI strategy (leader, fast follower, slow follower, no follower).
Understand the strategic importance of Microsoft gaining search market share versus Google.
Learn more about Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE), now called AI Overviews and positioned as "Let Google Do the Googling for You."
Monitor changes quarterly - top LLMs and summary.
Explore new vendors such as Revere, Brandrank.AI.
Use tools like Chathub.
Track emerging mitigating techniques. This is a very new, untested area and ideas abound. Here is a partial list:
Use "strategic text sequence" techniques, a format of text on your website that is optimized for search engines and LLMs (often includes questions).
Ensure a good SEO rating in Microsoft Bing, as some speculate that Microsoft may prioritize Bing rankings in the next training data set for ChatGPT.
Use site optimization techniques (here is a list from Rosemary Brisco, a valued member of our weekly GenAI Learning Lab).
Here are records of several sessions at our Learning Lab on this topic
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Notable upcoming events
Weekly GenAI Learning Lab (Zoom call) 7p ET/ 4 PT every Monday. The Showcase for this Monday is on using AI for marketing
Here is recording from our great discussion this week
June 7 at 9a ET (virtual, free). AI Blueprint for MA monthly Zoom call. AI Blueprint for MA is a volunteer effort to help attract and retain AI talent to the State of MA in USA. Email Paul Baier to be added to the calendar event. This event is open to the public.
June 7 all day (in-person, free). MIT CSAIL and Imagination in Action Conference focused on Academics and Technology. will.i.am is confirmed to speak in person. Apply to attend here
Oct 7-8 (2 days. in-person, paid): GAI Insights’ Generative AI World 2024 Conference Boston, MA. We have a great set of confirmed speakers already. UBS and Quantum Gears are our Gold sponsors.
“Work nourishes noble minds” - Seneca
Onward,
Paul