AI's search spill: Agencies race to reverse engineer bot results ...
New keyword order (L-R): Andi Search CEO Angela Hoover, Resolution Digital GM SEO product innovation David Castle, Hotwire global CEO Heather Kernahan.
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The impact of AI on search engines
The race is on to crack AI search before brand and publisher rankings slide. The latest version of Google's AI Overviews has Resolution Digital's David Castle optimistic that the SEO wheel won't need to be completely remade when it lands in Australia within the next six months, with Google already testing AI Overviews ads in the US – but Castle fears deciphering chatbots will prove more difficult.
Hotwire CEO Heather Kernahan claims the firm has managed to reverse engineer where AIs are pulling from and what’s influencing them – but it’s early days and only in testing with a handful of clients. Meanwhile, a new generation of search upstarts are eschewing the ad-funded model entirely: Andi Search CEO Angela Hoover suggests ads would lead to her platform's "ultimate destruction". But that’s what Sergey Brin and Larry Page once said. Perhaps they were wrong on the timing.
According to David Castle from Resolution Digital, in AI Overviews, 80 per cent of the time one or more of the links that's featured is consistent with the top three ranking results, and half the time it is the top-ranking result. This suggests that if you rank well within the SERPs (search engine results pages) then you will be featured within AI Overviews, or at least cited.
The changing landscape of search
The days of search as we know it may be numbered and brands, publishers, and agencies are grappling with what to do about it. In February, Gartner predicted that traditional search engine volumes would drop 25 per cent by 2026 due to the rise of AI chatbots and other virtual agents.
Bing was the first mainstream search engine to integrate AI into queries and since then Google has reacted, with literally mixed results. How hard Google pushes AI Overviews remains to be seen, but early research has suggested it will cannibalize organic search terms by as much as 90 per cent while potentially pushing brands and publishers off the first page entirely.
Challenges and opportunities with AI in search
Resolution Digital's GM of product innovation, David Castle, says that AI Overviews’ predecessor, Search Generative Experience – or SGE – “was looking like it was going to be far more broad content-based than we'd ever really had to deal with before”. Since the limited overseas launch of AI Overviews in May, Castle says traditional optimization practice has been back on the cards.
Castle highlights the difficulty in understanding the content ranking systems within large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Despite this, he believes that SEO professionals will be the first to crack the code and understand how these systems work.
Influence in AI search
Hotwire CEO Heather Kernahan claims that the agency has established a model that could reverse engineer an AI search strategy via a bespoke design layer that sits on top of the LLM and can access the source content that’s been drawn on. This has led to the development of a new product dubbed GAIO – short for generative AI optimization, which provides insights on influencing sentiment or reach for certain search terms or questions within the LLM platforms.
Next generation search ads
While the focus has primarily been on organic AI search rankings, there are also developments in the advertising front. Perplexity is pitching advertisers on a suite of ad products set to launch in Q4, targeting 15 key categories including health, technology, finance, arts and entertainment, and food and beverage. The advertising package will include off-site deals on third-party publisher sites, starting with those in its publisher revenue share program.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman has been noncommittal on the future of the company’s search prototype, SearchGPT. The search for innovative and effective ways to navigate the evolving landscape of AI in search continues.
