People prefer the easiest way. When looking for information, they now turn to generative AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT or even AI Overview in Google Search.
These LLMs provide clearly packaged answers. They don't require information seekers to scroll through a results page, click on a promising link, browse the site's content to find the answer, and click the back arrow if they don't find what they need.
Because of this, marketers must adapt their search strategies to continue to attract online audiences to their brand and its content. To optimize your content for the search revolution, read on for the latest research and advice from some of CMI's leading experts in search, analytics and AI.
AI is not an alternative to Google; It will be the new Google
Even the search giant itself – Google – has delved into the world of AI answers in a way that creates a “serious situation for SEO,” writes Search Engine Journal author Roger Montti.
“In 2025, AI will not only consist of AI overviews. AI is Gemini, its new features coming to Gemini and possibly the release of features developed from Project Astra, a multimodal general purpose agent… All of this is a departure from the traditional search box as a point of contact between users, Google and websites. “, explains Roger.
Will people really switch from the familiar search box to Gemini? Google's recent statements and products suggest that the company is betting on this.
The co-founder of Google's AI lab says the company will “supercharge” the Gemini app over the next two years. Google's universal assistant – Project Astra – will communicate audibly and visually with users through their phones and prototype glasses, providing answers, recommendations and other information based on these chats.
And that's exactly what happens at Google.
Microsoft has integrated its Bing search engine into its AI tool CoPilot. ChatGPT, which is already a slang term for generative AI, has released SearchGPT, which is based on Bing.
And with the growing number of players in the diverse generative AI game, continued disruption to this revolution is to be expected.
No panic; Learn the game board
Revolutions are not unique. If you are a seasoned professional, you know that there are Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, MSN Search, Yahoo! and more before Google became THE search engine. Each had their own nuances, from algorithm preferences to the way they delivered the results.
Response-oriented AI may be at a similar stage. Now it's time to understand what each tool matters most when generating responses and decide where your SEO team should invest more time.
Will Seer and Jason Stinnett of Seer Interactive recently broke down the three types of AI search:
- Training-first systems like Claude and Llama, “generate responses based solely on their training data – snapshots that are frozen until the next model update.”
- Search-first systems like Google AI Overviews and Perplexity “rely heavily on real-time indexing of web pages…It’s like SEO on steroids, with a dash of content curation.”
- Hybrid systems like Gemini and ChatGPT “blur the boundaries by often deciding in real time whether to respond based on their training data or pull updated information from the internet.”
Discover your audience's preferences
Now that you know the possible systems, how do you know what your audience prefers? You should do what every good marketer does: look at your web analytics.
To do a quick check, use a simple GA4 filter, as explained by Orbit Media's Andy Crestodina:
- Go to the Engagement > Page Path and Query String report.
- Set a long date range.
- Click the “Add Filter +” button at the top of the report.
- In the filter settings on the right, select “Page Referrer” as the dimension. Select “Exact Match” as the match type. Enter “https://chatgpt.com” as the value.
- Click Apply.
Then you can see the traffic coming from ChatGPT. Apply the same process but change the “Page Pointer” values to other domains, e.g. B. https://gemini.google.com and https://perplexity.ai.
Given the newness of AI as an alternative search method, Andy says neither site is expected to receive much traffic. As this changes, you will already be monitoring the impact to better understand which response AI tools your audience prefers.
For example, on Orbit Media's website, AI referrers accounted for 0.2% of all traffic in the last 30 days, but that's twice as much as the previous month, Andy explains.
By checking the numbers regularly, you can also see how (if) your traditional search traffic is decreasing from month to month.
Would you like to spend more time setting up this monitoring permanently or creating a custom channel group? Orbit Media offers step-by-step instructions for both.
Boost your AI recommendation engines
Of course, just like you shouldn't sit and hope for search engine traffic, you shouldn't wait for AI websites to deliver traffic. Investigate emerging trends and learn how your brand appears (or doesn't appear) in current systems.
Chris Long of Go Fish Digital did the latter. The agency ran a ChatGPT search test to see how it performed for “digital PR agency,” a search query that performed well for Go Fish Digital in Google searches.
Go Fish Digital was found to be listed in the ChatGPT search, but the agency's notable clients were not included, as was the case with some other companies mentioned in the results.
To remedy the situation, the Go Fish team revisited the source page most cited for their ChatGPT search mentions. A “Notable Customers” section has been added to the content in a bulleted list, a format that the LLM search engine would be more likely to appreciate.
A week later, ChatGPT Search added Go Fish's notable clients to its results mentions.
See the big picture in brand mentions
Seer Interactive took a broader perspective with its proprietary tool to examine factors that impact brand mentions in AI-generated responses.
It took 300,000 keywords related to the finance and SaaS industry and determined their traditional search engine ranking and other related data such as backlinks, format, etc. It also selected 10,000 questions, most of which triggered responses that mentioned a brand from the People Also Ask list. These questions were run through OpenAI's GPT4o API and counted brand mentions in the answers.
The results led to the following conclusions:
- Brands' ranking on page one of Google was highly correlated with their mentions in AI responses. Bing rankings played a slightly smaller role.
- The amount of backlinks had a weak or even neutral influence.
- The variety of content formats (videos, images, etc.) did not have a major impact.
In another test, Seer Interactive examined the importance of keyword variation for generative AI tools – something that is rewarded in traditional search.
Seer asked 1,000 versions of this question: “Who are the best composite decking brands?”
A total of 74 unique brands were mentioned across the 1,000 responses, with an average of six brands included in each response.
Seer Interactive's Christina Blake says the results suggest that AI tools prioritize semantic intent over specific words. Therefore, marketers should focus on the themes and concepts behind the questions, rather than subtle variations in wording, as might be the case with traditional search.
Do the hard work for the easy search route
In the coming year, more and more people in your target group will change their search behavior and choose the easier route.
To ensure your content and brand are presented in well-packaged packages, update your marketing playbook. Don’t forego traditional search rankings as they play a potential role in AI-generated answers. But spend less time perfecting the keywords and other details that don't really matter to your audience or the generative AI tools.
All tools mentioned in this article were suggested by a contributor to the article. If you would like to suggest a tool, share the article on social media with a comment.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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