AI search makes earned media even more important

Google’s AI Overviews have been out in the world for several months now. While not an entirely smooth rollout, these AI-written summaries now adorn the top of many searches in the United States, with slower releases happening worldwide.

Now OpenAI has announced it will debut SearchGPT, its own tool focused solely on search.

All of these generative AI options combine both links and text, upending, if not quite reinventing, the traditional search engine model.

“We still haven’t seen a huge impact yet from it, being honest,” said Stephen Walker, technology director at performance marketing agency Journey Further. “We’re still waiting to really see it directly impact a lot of the keywords that our clients are monitoring.”

Part of that, Walker said, is due to a slower than anticipated adoption of Google AI Overviews due to bad press involving bizarre answers, like a suggestion to put glue on pizza to help the cheese stick. While the AI-generated summaries are now commonplace in the U.S. on many searches, Walker said they’re only just gaining steam in the United Kingdom, where Journey Further also has clients.

But another reason is because, as best experts can tell as the analyze Google’s black box, the ranking algorithm hasn’t changed significantly with the expanded role of AI in search.

“It doesn’t really change our approach, because we’re wanting to create the most relevant content for that user to ensure that Google’s going to put the best result possible in front of that audience,” said Beth Nunnington, VP of organic media at Journey Further.

While sometimes that means writing relevant content, the way that AI search uses content – and the nature of what people use it to search for – is making earned media an even more key part of SEO strategies.

AI searches are, at present, still very information-based, Nunnington said. People aren’t using it for high-intent or transactional searches. Rather, they want to know about things. Ensuring your principals are featured as clients in trusted news sites can help their answers be drawn into AI overviews.

“Being featured in reputable publishers is going to be even more important than before, really, because these are going to be the sources that are going to be answering a lot of the questions that people will be asking, because they usually rank really well within Google, because they’re high authority,” said Walker. “So, if you can use PR tactics to make sure you’re featured in product roundups or guides around specific things, then your brand is going to be pulled from that content and part of the answer itself.”

A shift to conversational search

While the front-and-center introduction of AI into search might seem like a seismic shift to a layman, it’s actually a natural evolution of where search has been headed already. Walker points out that AI and machine learning have been an important part of Google for years, just in a more behind-the-scenes capacity.

Additionally, while keywords are still a major part of many SEO efforts, the move toward conversational search has been long-established. As far back as 2017, Google said  15% of its trillions of annual searches were totally new language that had never been searched before, indicating  people are typing like they talk rather than sticking to rigid, terse keywords.

“Everyone’s questions to these LLMs will be completely different and varied,” Walker said. “So, we need to understand what our customers want even more and what sort of query they’re going to be asking, and then essentially create content specifically around those areas.”

Beyond Google

Google is responsible for a massive 91% of the global search market. But generative AI tools, including a souped-up version of Bing, startup Perplexity and the new SearchGPT are all looking to take a slice of that search pie.

Walker was granted early access to SearchGPT and dubs it better than Google’s AI Overviews so far.

“They’ve got a very simple sort of UI,” he said. “They’re not trying to do two things at once. I think one of the problems with Google is that they’re trying to satisfy the traditional searcher, as well as shoehorn in a lot of the new AI content as well, whereas with OpenAI and ChatGPT, they’re not burdened with that sort of baggage.”

So far, there hasn’t been a great deal of client interest in addressing new tools like Perplexity, but the time to start thinking about generative AI search strategies is now.

But no matter how the technology changes, the emphasis is still on providing original, useful content that answers end-user’s concerns. Nunnington is even optimistic it might lead to an end to some of the “black hat” SEO techniques that have plagued the industry for decades.

“I do hope that it encourages people to really, finally shift away from anything that they’ve done in the past that’s quite dodgy and just not what the end user wants to see or read,” she said. “It’s a bit of a cop out, but it is really just doing the quality, the great work that everyone should be doing in 2024.”

Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Daily. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.