A lot of things are going on in the search world in case you aren’t paying attention. Since the late 90s search has evolved at a pretty fast pace but I haven’t seen anything like this since maybe the absolute beginning to search/Google. Search is now fully conversational. Instead of thinking of the traditional marketing funnel for a website (research behavior to checkout behavior) you are now experiencing the same funnel on Google’s SERP itself. AI search has changed the fundamental behavior and habits of the user and its not everyone seems to be happy about it.
Whats not broke shouldn’t be fixed
Google announced their official transition to AI only search and its called intelligent search box. “We’re bringing our advanced model capabilities to Search with new AI features, enabling you to use agents just by asking a question. We’re also introducing a new, intelligent AI-powered Search box, marking its biggest upgrade in over 25 years.”Google announced a plethora of new capabilities in its lates I/O including its new Antigravity tool.
The main point of all this work and transitions is to make search more conversational. Long gone is the way of one to five word searches, now its all about prompts and follow-up prompts and query fan-outs. Just like any new technology, there will be early adapters then there will be the laggers. However, in my personal opinion change just for the sake of change isn’t great and it appears as if right now it is losing Google some business. “DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, said US installs rose an average of 20.8% week over week in the seven days after Google’s May 19 announcements at its I/O conference.” according to a Business Insider article. This isn’t the beginning of the frustration of the new way of searching. There is a hunger for Anti-AI search because at the end of the day humans want to be in-charge of their own decision making. That may seem dramatic but it is real.
There is a growing demand of old school search experience and this chart indicates that behavior is sought after. This will not be the end of the behavior as I think this trend will continue.
How will the search box change from what we are used to to the Intelligent AI search box?
The short answer is it is going to act as a sandbox. “You’ll be able to build custom experiences with Antigravity, like mini apps, right in Search in the coming months, starting first for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S” The search bar will act as an all-in-one function. You will be able to generate an app and create a long form video in addition to your normal search function.
What does this mean for SEO professionals?
It means endless debates and takes on Linkedin to try to figure out what the heck is going on. SEO professionals have to start thinking of GEO first even though to have a chance at AI visibility, your SEO fundamentals have to be flawless. However, there is a difference that I think people are forgetting when it comes to the main difference between GEO and SEO, it’s the audience.
The official Google playbook on GEO says that there isn’t much of a difference between optimizing for SEO and GEO but the data tells a different story. I already wrote a blog on how to optimize for GEO but frequently we are seeing generated answers in the AI overview than the top ranked search result.
The different audiences of SEO and GEO
In SEO, you are addressing a targeted audience that is a human who is interested in a product or a service, your interest as a marketer is to receive a click that can turn into some sort of a conversion. In AI search you are building a reputation and focused on answering a query. Essentially in GEO are optimizing for the LLM bots and the LLM bots are trying to optimize for the query. that are crawling GEO is more about citation and backlinks. This is why you see old SEO practices coming back into the fold such as guess posting. While GEO has made click through rates of the normal 10 blue links less valuable, not all AI results lead to a click.
My take is you should do what is best for your business, where are you seeing conversions coming from more? If you can test which results is more effective a number 1 ranking on a SERP or an AI overview mention – that is worth testing!
According to Ahrefs if you are ranking #1 you are only about 50% likely to get mentioned in an AI overview. This is a useful chart based on an Ahref study that shows the correlation of SEO tactics to GEO appearances:
Notice that schema is not in the graph above, I found that interesting! GEO has thrown the SEO industry into an upheaval. SEOs have a vague idea of how to optimize for it. For large businesses, in most marketing departments, this has become a priority. My advice is the same as aways, don’t optimize SEO for machines, don’t create content for machines. Create content for humans and you will always win but do not repackage stale content.
Google may be switching to AI everything but that doesn’t mean you should change your strategy. The practice may be different from ranking in SERPs and capturing an AI overviews but if you just keep the user in mind, you will win the end of the day. The LLMs search for content that satisfy queries from a human not a machine. The journey might be different but the destination is the same.
The SEO industry is not going anywhere its just shape-shifting. computers can’t replace users because they can’t make the decision to convert/sign-up or checkout. Whether you are into this AI movement and are embracing it or you are a lagger that switches to DuckDuckGo this doesn’t change how SEO should promote their content.
