SEO will always evolve in the future as the traditional search box becomes obsolete and the majority of searches move to the extreme long tail.
In fact, if you've been in the search space for a while, this isn't such a bold prediction. Data shows time and time again that searchers want to discover, not search. AI will finally make that possible. That's why all the big tech companies are focused on AI.
If you've been around this world for a while, you'll remember the PC wars, the OS wars, the first browser wars, the smartphone wars, the second browser wars, the search engine wars, and the smart speaker wars.
AI warfare is the future that all these technologies point to, so everything will pale in comparison.
Who will win the AI war?
At this point, it's anyone's guess. We know some of the people who captured the early buzz: ChatGPT from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, Grok from X, and Claude from Anthropic.
But count Apple and Amazon realizing in late 2023 how annoyingly unintelligent Siri and Alexa are, and what a treasure trove they would be if they could be made smarter. Don't. They presented their own LLM, Ferret (now his MM1) and Project Olympus.
Don't ignore the countless other AI companies. Will one of them eventually build a better model than the larger company and compete with the larger company, or will it be acquired by the larger company? Or will the AI landscape eventually become fragmented and people learn to go to different LLMs depending on the subject they are looking for?
We still don't know exactly who the winner will be, but anyone who's been in search marketing for a while knows exactly what the winning AI will ultimately look like.
Follow the yellow brick path
In L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy finds herself lost and encounters three lost souls: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion.
Each one is missing something.
- brain
- heart
- courage
- House
These are also all things that are currently lacking in AI.
“All you need is a brain”: Knowledge
“Some dumb people talk a lot, don't they?”
– L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz”
Chatbots seem great right now, but if you ask questions beyond the surface level, you'll quickly discover where they're lacking.
Here is an example. As a parent, I love the idea of buying American-made toys. We support local manufacturing and local communities, and we believe the quality and safety is better than toys made overseas.
When we asked Google Gemini for suggestions for American-made toys, here's what we found:
Here's something strange.
The Manhattan Toy Skwish is made in Thailand, the Nuby Comfort Plush Turtle is made in China, and the Mega Bloks were previously made in Canada but are now made in Mexico and China. The K'NEX label says “Made in China of USA Parts.”
This means that of the six US-made toys that Google Gemini recommends, only one is made in the US. Green Toys My First Stack Cup.
Okay, Google.
To be fair to Google, none of the other AI chatbots got it right. The problem is the age-old problem of “garbage in, garbage out.”
Google Gemini uses Amazon as one of its “authorities” on the subject.But when you visit Amazon's own search results page for his USA-made toys (which happens to rank in Google's top 10 organic search results since the May 2020 core update), you'll see 75 product listings. Almost half of them are do not have Made in America.
“Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth, the more experience you are sure to gain.”
– L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz”
Google could have gotten around the problem by ranking sites based on Google's perceived authority rather than objective truth in organic search, but users of Google's AI are less forgiving. Probably not.
There's a reason Google has emphasized EEAT for years. It's not just out of their good intentions. They need EEAT to survive.
For queries like this, a retailer like FatBrain that accurately catalogs and displays the country of origin of every product has a significant advantage over a less accurate user experience like Amazon. .
AI models that can derive the most accurate information have a huge advantage over their competitors, and so do brands that can generate this information.
“If you have a heart”: Empathy
“I have a brain, and I have a heart. So if you try both, you might as well become richer in heart.”
– L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz”
Suppose you have a question and two people know the answer. One is brilliant, but tends to be pedantic, self-righteous, and self-absorbed. This person may give you the right answer, but he's not the most fun person to talk to.
The other person may not know as much as the first person, but they will be genuinely interested in what you have to say, be open-minded, patient, respectful, and ask meaningful follow-up questions. But it's not just about giving the correct answer. But do it in a way that you understand and appreciate.
Which of the two would you go to for answers? Which of the two would you rather have by your side 24/7?
We all know that SEO requires EEAT. But in the coming world of AI, there will be another “E.” This may be the most important factor of all. empathy.
The winner of the AI war will have superior communication skills. We can see early attempts by AI companies to give chatbots “personality,” but if a chatbot can't or won't understand your question, it won't respond to all the funniest jokes or the most witty. Those side comments are just annoying.
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“If you have courage”: Courage
“True courage is facing danger when you are afraid.”
– L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz”
In 1998, when Yahoo was at the height of its power, Rick Skrenta and Bob Truel created GnuHoo to compete with it. This later became DMOZ. At the time, Yahoo was dominant, and many of us feared that the free and open nature of the Internet was being threatened by one company controlling it.
In 2002, Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and Blake Ross launched what would become Firefox in response to the increasing pressure of Netscape's commercial requirements. Later, when Internet Explorer won the first browser war, it became a bulwark against Microsoft.
Ironically, Google ultimately controlled and shaped the web by dominating both. Now, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft appear to be aiming to control and shape AI (through OpenAI).
Those of us in the search field have witnessed how Google has evolved. Updates like 2018's Medic have done a lot to curb potentially dangerous YMYL sites, but Google has also elevated the voices of the establishment (the “authorities”) and upheld the legitimacy of minorities. The question remains whether it has too much power to drown out the loudest voices.
Google's recent failure with Gemini further revealed what can happen when Google's internal biases have a significant impact on AI training and testing.
When the United States was founded, its founders rooted it in classical liberal principles. All humans are created equal. All human beings are born with certain rights, including the freedom to speak, assemble, and worship as they wish. Those who wield the greatest power on earth were not to violate these rights.
With direct control over the information asked by 99,000 people every second around the world, Google arguably has more power than any government on earth today. Those who win the AI war will have even greater power.
Will the winners of the AI wars be guided by classic freedom (i.e., “I may not approve of what you say, but I will protect your right to say it”)? Or do they do what so many totalitarian regimes have done throughout the history of the world in order to maintain “order” and challenge voices that disagree with them, especially their own power? Will we do things that oppress people?
Just as it took courage for America's founders to do what they did, and 250 years later we still enjoy the benefits of the freedoms they established, AI It would take courage for the victors of the war to do the same. Because another his DMOZ or Firefox will rise up and challenge them.
House
“No matter how gloomy and gray our homes may be, we mortals would rather live there than in any other country, no matter how beautiful it may be. There is no place.”
– L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz”
I'll end with the same bold prediction I made at the beginning of my last article.
Traditional search is finding its way into television, newspaper, and radio advertising. These were once the mainstream advertising media. They are still important today, but only a fraction of their former influence remains.
What will the “new search” look like? People will ask robots for their opinions, and robots will give the best possible answers. No clicks, no SERPs, no ads.
Oh, and AI companies will try to inject ads into your answers, but you'll probably drop their AI faster than you'll drop your friends picking up every conversation trying to sell you to their latest MLM venture.
How will we fight in this new world? How do you survive as a brand in a world where every search has zero clicks, every SERP is a single result, and people can't skip or block ads because there are no ads to skip or block? Will it continue to grow?
The ultimate solution is to go back to 1993, the year before Yahoo was founded.
Build your brand.
Search engines like Google have always been seen as a way to get customers through your door. From there, it was really up to you to bring them into your brand, earn their loyalty, and help them bypass Google and come directly to you the next time they search.
In online marketing terms, if you look at your website's traffic and see an increase in direct traffic, you're in good shape. But a problem arises when traffic from other channels is increasing while direct traffic is decreasing.
In 1993, companies grew by developing great products, caring about their customers, and relying primarily on word of mouth to promote their brands.
In 2024, the most successful companies are still using this method.
When we asked ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini where is the best place to buy books, they all mentioned Amazon. why? Because saying otherwise makes them look stupid.
Amazon does not pay any fees to mention the AI models, and the AI models do not arbitrarily decide to promote Amazon. These AI models looked around and noticed that more people bought books on Amazon than anywhere else, and more people had good things to say about their experience.
There is one thing that will always be more powerful than AI. It is free and independent human thought.
If you want to be known as the best widget company, your job isn't to convince AI or even Google that you're the best. Your job is to convince the customer. Like any other expert, an AI's opinion will be called into question if it goes against public opinion on a whim.
To be fair to Google, the SEO advice they've ever given has always been about brand building, from optimizing title tags to building links to Core Web Vitals and EEAT. These are all things we should always do as a brand, not for Google, but for our customers.
Assuming the winners of the AI wars have better minds, better hearts, and more courage, we're back to where brand building is the most important ranking factor – where it's always been. It will be.
Dig deeper: Modern SEO: Packaging your brand and marketing for Google
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.