The Google interface we know today will be gone in less than three years.
As ridiculous as this prediction sounds, I remember back in 2004 when Google.com finally overtook Yahoo.com. For eight years, no one thought this would ever happen, but it did.
Because?
Simply put, Yahoo had the best user experience on the web for 10 years, but Google provided a better one.
Now, think about this. Let’s say you have all kinds of questions about the world:
Should I wear a jacket today? What is the best sushi restaurant near here? Give me a clue in today’s Wordle.
What if you had a butler who was brilliant at all things in the world and could give you the best answer to any question you had, not just an accurate answer, but also helpful, kind and thoughtful?
“It’s a little chilly, so wear a light jacket in the morning. You can probably take it off around noon.” “Sushi Kingdom is a 15 minute drive from here, but they have the most amazing fatty tuna shipped in from Japan.” “Think of a five-letter word that means ‘tired.’
Oh, and your butler refuses to take money from you. Mainly he wants to compete with your dog to be your best friend without licking himself.
If you had someone available and calling every minute of every day, would you go back to a Google Search box?
The real “zero click” is coming.
Five years ago, Rand Fishkin was one of the first to sound the alarm about the rise of “zero-click searches,” when Google introduced featured snippets and universal search results.
At the time, we all denounced it as a land grab by Google. It had the effect of “trapping” users to Google sites so that they would click on more paid ads and visit more Google properties.
However, to be fair to Google, they were really looking to improve the user experience. They knew that the vast majority of people looking for something don’t want to go through list after list. They just want an answer.
All SEO professionals know this too. almost 70% of searchers don’t even click past the first three results.
In the search landscape of the future, yes, people will still use the Google interface we know today for things like research and exploration. But expect the 70% of searchers who don’t click past the first three Google results to turn to AI for answers.
Is SEO Dead?
Those of us who have been in SEO for a while have lost count of how often the mainstream media has declared that “SEO is dead.”
My answer to this has always been: as long as there are humans in the world and those humans are looking for something, SEO will never be dead.
Of course, the definition of what a “search engine” is will change over time. At one point, it was called “the Dewey Decimal System.” Then it was “Archie”, “Yahoo” and then “Google”.
What will it be called next? “ChatGPT?” “Gemini?” “Grok?” Or something else entirely?
Or will multiple large linguistic models (LLMs) emerge, each trained in different areas of expertise?
Only time will tell what the exact landscape will look like, but one thing is for sure: the world is going to need a lot more “SEO”.
What does SEO look like in an AI-driven world?
To answer the question of what SEO will look like in the future, we need to think about what search itself will look like.
As every SEO knows, today most people search for top terms. A recent Semrush Studio said that 69.8% of searches use 1-4 keywords in the Google search bar, such as “weather tomorrow”, “restaurants near me”, “nfl score”.
It’s a terribly awkward way to communicate, but it’s what we’ve been conditioned to since the 1990s.
That’s about to change.
Let’s think back to our aforementioned butler. Why would you say “restaurants near me” when you can have a conversation:
you: “Where should I eat tonight?”
butler: “What are you in the mood for?”
you: “I don’t know. Maybe a little Italian. Know a good place to get pasta around here?”
butler: “Yes, Luigi’s Pizzeria is half a mile away and has great reviews.”
you: “What do critics recommend?”
butler: “Many recommend the rigatoni with Bolognese sauce or Grandma’s slice.”
you: “Never heard of this place. How long have they been there?”
butler: “Yes, they have been in business for 15 years, although they recently moved to this location.”
The search goes to the extremely long queue.
In other words, the search demand curve we all know and love will change. The big head won’t go away, but the curve will flatten as people get used to asking AI more specific questions and getting more specific answers.
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Is the AI ready?
Not exactly.
If you’ve tried generative AI, you’ve probably noticed something by now. It’s great for solving math problems and translating. You can win any bet from bar to trivia.
But dig a little deeper and you’ll see just how “smart” AI really is.
My sister is one of the leading veterinary pathologists in her field. I recently introduced her to one of the popular AI chatbots. He wrote three advanced questions and found that not only were the answers wrong, but in some cases they were dangerously wrong.
The technology behind AI is revolutionary, but AI doesn’t have knowledge as magic from the get-go. Someone has to teach it.
At the moment, most LLMs are being educated on whatever information they can find on the public internet, which, let’s face it, has been largely shaped by a quarter century of Google and SEO to focus on content superficial and main terms.
What can brands do to prepare?
In Aesop’s fable “The Locust and the Ants,” the locust enjoys the warmth and food of summer while the ants work hard to prepare for winter.
Over the past few years, there have been some companies whose first step when the economy turns sour is to lay off or outsource their employees to “cost centers” such as customer service and content teams.
These companies are looking at the next AI revolution and are probably asking themselves, “How can I best exploit AI so that I can save even more costs and increase my short-term profits even more?”
These are the lobsters. They have a hard winter.
On the other hand, the wisest companies in the world are those that keep putting the needs of their customers above all else. These are the companies looking at the next AI revolution and asking, “How can I be the place where AI (and more importantly, my customers) come to learn?”
These are the ants, and they are the ones that will thrive in an AI world.
If you want to be prepared, here are some basic things you should do.
Take online customer service seriously
Hire and retain the best customer service agents with empathy, expertise and experience.
Build a knowledge base of every question your customers ask and write in-depth answers that reflect what your best customer service agents would provide, both in terms of knowledge and delivery.
Create deep content that demonstrates true thought leadership
Stop chasing head terms. go deep
What do you as a brand have to bring to the world that no one else can? What are the nuanced questions about your industry that you can uniquely answer, whether it’s a highly specialized topic, a unique geography, or anything else unique that you bring to the table? What are the underserved niches in your industry?
Tap experts in your business and industry to write true thought leadership, whether it’s new knowledge or old knowledge presented in a new and accessible way.
Embrace all the media your customers use, whether it’s social posts, podcasts, videos, TV or radio broadcasts; AI will be able to access them all with its thirst for learning.
Invite content generated by expert users
Find ways to get experts among your customers and internal staff to share expert user-generated content (UGC), whether through discussion forums, comment sections, reviews, etc.
UGC has long been the “secret weapon” of businesses looking to rank for long-tail searches. Now that all searches will be long-tail, it will be more important than ever, especially since AI will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Embrace openness and transparency
Longtime SEOs probably remember a time when search queries were often followed by the word “wiki.” These daysqueries are most often followed by the word “reddit”.
Because?
Simply put, while both Wikipedia and Reddit were built with UGC, one is developing a reputation for encouraging open, honest, and detailed conversations while the other is not.
Amazon’s reviews section is another example of the power of transparency: ask anyone you know who buys from Amazon what part of the product page they read first, and invariably many will tell you about the reviews section. If users go to these places to learn, so will the AI.
As a brand, you will need your voice in these places, not as a corporate entity, but as an expert voice in the discussion.
Preparing your brand for AI-powered search
Nothing really new here, it’s the same EEAT that Google has been preaching for years.
The difference is that AI is getting so close to how our brains work that the line between “optimizing for search” and “optimizing for the human brain” will become almost indistinguishable.
Companies that optimize knowledge and empathy will be the ones that control the narratives of their industries and ultimately help lead the AI revolution.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
