As Buster Poindexter would have once opined in the 80s: AI is hot … hot … hot! It seems you cannot read a headline or listen to a webcast that doesn’t tie AI somehow into the narrative. AI is going to take over the world; AI is going to doom humanity; AI is going to take everyone’s jobs; AI can code; and more of the like.
Yes, there is real concern over AI and the lack of regulations surrounding it now. And rightfully so, AI needs some guardrails around it and soon to ensure it is being used in a productive and unbiased capacity to make a positive impact on people’s lives.
But in the short-term, AI is making a real impact on business and consumers right now, and one of the areas it is making waves is within SEO and organic search. AI continues to have real value for benefitting SEO, as it provides a better understanding of natural language and more accurate responses to user queries.
While Google has been using AI and ML in some capacity to power search functionality since 2016, with the launch of ChatGPT the world is reignited with talk about AI and generative AI and how they will impact business and life in general.
Content Creation: Balancing Quality and Ethics
In February 2023 Google posted a blog called "Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content" to establish rules and best practices around generative AI and the content it creates. Google has said it's OK to use AI-assisted content creation, as long as AI is not used for illegal activities, abuse, misinformation, spam, and you know, sex. Funny how sex gets included with the illegal stuff.
- Google’s ranking system aims to reward high-quality content.
- The effectiveness of this claim is often questioned by readers.
- Marketers have historically gamed Google search results.
- AI is a concern due to its use in producing low-quality content.
- Past trends suggest marketers may prioritize quantity over quality.
Personalization and Relevance:
Since 2016 Google has been using AI algorithms to improve search results. AI algorithms allow search applications to understand user intent and behaviors more completely, analyzing data on search history, location and other user behaviors.
Gathering and analyzing such data allows companies to personalize search results better to target more defined customer segment audiences. Companies are also deploying AI-powered chatbots to help customers search for information, and then using that data and results to inform their SEO strategy.
Staying Ahead With AI: Predictive Analytics for Future-Proof SEO Strategies
By using AI-enhanced predictive analytics solutions, whether stand-alone or integrated into other martech applications, organizations can better predict future trends and outcomes. These predictive analytics can inform content creation efforts and optimize SEO and content for user consumption.
Predictive analytics allow businesses to stay ahead of the trends by identifying emerging opportunities to focus on. They also allow businesses to see where they need to improve and how they can optimize their operations.
How AI Automation Is Streamlining SEO Practices
AI can help automate portions of your SEO strategy, allowing you to focus on the aspects that truly matter to your business. Tasks like keyword research and market analysis can be time-consuming, but with AI tools like an AI Kiss Generator, you can streamline these processes and focus on more creative aspects of your work. AI can analyze web performance, user behaviors, and provide keyword suggestions, enabling you to develop a strategy more quickly and confidently. Furthermore, AI can help you stand out from the competition by offering unique keyword recommendations that can help you rank higher than your core competitors.
Protecting Content Creators: Addressing Attribution in an AI-Driven Search Landscape
One of the biggest concerns with how AI will impact search rankings and referral traffic is how it will handle attribution back to source content. Now that Bing has incorporated AI and Google launched Bard, its competitor to ChatGPT, how attribution is handled on these platforms needs to be defined and clarified. So far no one is providing an answer to this question, making me somewhat concerned that original content creators will be disenfranchised by lack of attribution through AI-powered generative search.
- Concerns exist about the quality, accuracy, and validity of generative AI content.
- Uncertainty about sources used to train AI and how to validate their quality.
- Questions arise about who decides what data AI systems are trained on.
- A lawyer used ChatGPT for legal filings in a negligence case.
- ChatGPT generated six fake judicial decisions with fabricated quotes and citations.
- The judge criticized the submissions as bogus, highlighting the risks of unverified AI use.
- The lawyer apologized, pledging not to use generative AI without verifying its authenticity.
Organic Traffic in the AI Era:
I’m also concerned as a media publisher as to what happens when Google answers queries on the same page. The potential lack of organic search traffic that publishers and advertisers rely upon is poised to see some volatility as AI’s integration into search matures.
For many publishers, organic search can be 40%-75% of their overall traffic. Bing is providing links to sources, but are people likely to click them if they got the answer they were looking for?
The Future of AI in Organic Search: Embracing Transparency and Ethical Practices
The reality is AI will continue to impact the organic search and SEO services, not only helping search applications understand customers better as fully-rounded people, but to deliver more targeted results at more defined audiences.
AI can assist in content creation to benefit SEO, which is how Google would like to see it, or it can just churn out tons of low-end search content to game the engines. Google will need to make sure that does not happen and AI is used in a positive way, not manipulation.
Finally, there must be transparency around AI attribution and sourcing. Original content creators should not be disenfranchised and have their identity removed from the chain of content creation. And the sources AI is pulling from need to be authenticated, or else it can be pulling from less-than-reputable sources to shift opinion, not inform.
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