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Op-Ed: AI and SEO — Reality vs mythology

This is first-generation AI. Google will evolve new AI to be SEO experts. It’s definitive core business for Google, and it’s huge money.

Image: © Digital Journal
Image: © Digital Journal

Let’s park the mythology about AI in some investor’s daydream. When it comes to advertising, AI and SEO are going to have to use fusion, not the current SEO fission. Spraying keywords and phrases all over the place won’t work either way. Relevance is the only search consideration for AI.

This is first-generation AI. Google will evolve new AI to be SEO experts. It’s definitive core business for Google, and it’s huge money. That money generates itself every single nanosecond. Their SEO is integrated with PPC, AdWords, AdSense, passive income, and advertising budgets, from searches to sales.

The markets may not be too fussed. They’re used to working with Google. Changes are pretty regular and usually well-managed. AI is a very new ballgame, however, and the stakes are extremely high for advertisers.

AI raises the bar so much, and so fast. The reality at the moment is that AI is pretty good at searching, but not infallible. The mythology is that AI will replace SEO expertise with automated algorithms. Everything will somehow become mystically easier and butterflies will flutter around your ad budget spreadsheets.

AI can’t do that. SEO values are determined by user values, not AI values. AI can read links and SEO terms faster. It can’t necessarily deliver sales values, just baseline search values, refined to whatever degree. It’s a tool, not a user. AI searches for different reasons, on behalf of users. The commercial values don’t change much, if at all.

The AI may find something better, or not. The AI will probably influence the user’s search, with enough good information. So that’s fairly straightforward.

But…

AI will also write SEO information. That’s inevitable. That doesn’t mean the AI will get the SEO information right. It’ll be a good-ish ballpark, but not necessarily optimized.  

The new scenario is that AI will be writing SEO for other AIs to read. See any issues? Like quadrillions of them?  

The sort-of good news is that the AI can deliver high volumes of SEO information and that other AIs can read that volume easily and quickly. This is a type of refinement that hasn’t been possible, or economic, before.

The imponderable news is:

SEO quality makes a huge difference to search values. Some AIs will do SEO better than others. This is a generational thing, and it’s likely to mass-produce added tweaks to SEO. Not too surprising, until you realize this will be continuous. Some SEO is highly market-sensitive and responsive. The new iPhone of 2030, with its built-in 3D house printer and Clone Yourself functions, might need a bit of work at the SEO level.

SEO feeds back directly into the markets. What’s interesting? Some folksy 20-terabyte database of sales information, perhaps? The AI can keep up with the SEO, but can the market keep up with the information?

You can do algorithms for this sort of stuff. The top priority goes to the top 10 sales items, for example. …Except that can also change completely in a few minutes. So your algorithm brackets a group of top sales until those numbers also inevitably change.

Search interest comes in waves on different subjects and in different directions. A news article or social media hiccup on any topic can start a stampede. So can a Tweet, or a Reddit article. It’s no accident that top searches regularly make news.

SEO effectively provides a running commentary in real time for the markets on a specific relevance basis. This is where the mythology gets swamped. Expectations of AI are so high that reality has to hit back with a sledgehammer, and that’s exactly what it will do with SEO.

SEO is all about business. The latest squeak from social media doesn’t necessarily translate into sales. Search waves have a life expectancy of a relatively short time frame. Do you change your SEO for that? Should you?

No. Core business can’t (and doesn’t) work on the 5-second whims of mass media. Selling media merchandise, maybe. Short-term products for short-term relevance aren’t exactly unknown. Selling building products can’t work on the same basis.

…So how does SEO AI deal with SEO storms? On the basis of instructions. AI can ignore some things if told to do so. It can exploit them, too, delivering SEO tailored to whatever market teacup the SEO storms are in.  

Could be messy, but could also be fun. The likely future scenarios will require highly responsive SEO AI and a lot of good judgment.  

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

 

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Written By

Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

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