Will AI make SEO obsolete?

Last week Bo Sacks distributed an article with the compelling headline, “Barry Adams on why AI will not kill SEO.”

That piqued my curiosity because I have said that AI threatens to disrupt Google’s business. Once people can simply get an answer, rather than getting a list of homework to do, they won’t be following links to web pages quite as much.

Note that these are two slightly different but related questions. I was addressing whether AI would disrupt the search engine business while Barry is addressing whether AI will make SEO irrelevant.

Barry makes three main arguments.

First, AI engines require more work. You have to write a longer, more detailed prompt to get what you want. People are used to writing very brief queries in Google. So it’s better for lazy people.

I’m not buying that. People have learned to write short queries in Google, but they can learn to write longer queries. Also, a little bit of work up front, writing a better query, eliminates a lot of work sorting through all the pages you get in the response.

Second, Barry says the large language models don’t have access to current information on the web. News publishers are (generally) promoting current content. This makes news more valuable rather than less valuable because it’s the information people can’t get through AI search.

That is a very good point. Access to recent information will continue to be moderated by search engines, so it will still be important for people who produce recent content to optimize for search.

Third, Barry points out that the large language models are not intended to create factual representations of the real world. They’re just predictive text. They make stuff up. And you can influence the answer you’ll get by the way you frame the question.

That’s true, but (1) the AI people are working on fixing that, and (2) for many types of search, what you get from the large language model is quite good enough.

Barry does say something towards the end of the podcast that is very good advice for publishers. Think beyond Google. Get loyalty. Build a brand, so you’re not dependent on Google or any other platform.

I stick to my original prediction that ChatGPT and similar services will disrupt Google’s business. Barry is right that search will continue to be relevant, particularly for recent content, but I think the large language models will take a very large bite out of the search engine business.

Links

Big Noises: Barry Adams on why AI will not kill SEO

Is Google in danger of being displaced?