I think something the article glazes over is that all these AI search results, whether it's Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or whatever, are mostly synthesizing and summarizing existing search results from classic search algorithms.
If the results the LLMs are grounded in haven't changed, then LLMs haven't changed SEO much.
...except, of course, stealing clicks from the actual creators.
Author here: That is true, and it's true in perhaps an even more nefarious way than Google's Instant Answers that showed direct quotes from your site. Both kill clickthroughs, but the former at least let you speak in your own voice without smoothing out an average answer from multiple sites.
It's an increasingly hard game to win, with diminishing returns in clickthroughs from "winning." Which makes it all the more crucial to write stuff your followers want to read, and to grow that following person by person, even if it's far slower to start than traditional SEO was.
I think something the article glazes over is that all these AI search results, whether it's Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or whatever, are mostly synthesizing and summarizing existing search results from classic search algorithms.
If the results the LLMs are grounded in haven't changed, then LLMs haven't changed SEO much.
...except, of course, stealing clicks from the actual creators.
Author here: That is true, and it's true in perhaps an even more nefarious way than Google's Instant Answers that showed direct quotes from your site. Both kill clickthroughs, but the former at least let you speak in your own voice without smoothing out an average answer from multiple sites.
It's an increasingly hard game to win, with diminishing returns in clickthroughs from "winning." Which makes it all the more crucial to write stuff your followers want to read, and to grow that following person by person, even if it's far slower to start than traditional SEO was.