Chatbots & LLMs
Let’s have just a brief description of some of the most popular ones and then hit on why they matter for us in the industry.
Starting with Gemini, it’s Google’s Large Language Model and is a standalone software, but also used to help run their new top search result, AI Overview & their AI Mode solution.
AI Overview – Remember, I said in the title that I am oversimplifying here. Well, it is meant as a solution for people who query Google, and it provides them with a straightforward answer. To the point of not even having to go to any of the websites provided. But those Blue links are still available and are still important.
AIO, for short, basically provides a summary pulled from the top 50 to 100 results for you.
It is a mixture of Gemini and Google’s search algorithm.
AI Mode – You will find it to be similar to Gemini in that it is a Chatbot. Think of it as being more like AI Overview, but you can continue to expand the conversation as you chat.
Where it differs is that Gemini is a multimodal AI. (write that down)
Multimodal allows you to provide more than just text questions. You can upload spreadsheets, images and will continue to be more inclusive of other file types in the future.
So we have:
- AI – which summarizes
- AI Mode – which allows for continual conversation to really dig into research from results on the web.
- And Gemini – which is a full fledged LLM Multimodal Chatbot.
Now before we jump in, we need to mention some of the other contenders out there.
ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot… and every week a new product is introduced to the market.
These are similar to how I just described Gemini. Multimodal Chatbots. However they do have their own algorithms and source data differently. Therefore, you will get different results from each.
Why do we care?
Because this is the new world of SEO.
Now, I know the technology goes beyond just search. But remember, I said this was oversimplified, and I am only talking about how AI relates to Search Engine Optimization.
Or GEO, AI Assistant Optimization or whatever we end up calling the new SEO.
By the way… I will continue to call it all SEO. But I do admit it will be different moving forward.
See, whether we are talking about AI Overview or Copilot, the industry is contending with the fact that we are seeing less visits to our websites. And that the AI Assistants are evaluating our websites differently, and thereby, the signals we once counted on to help us rank, and be front and center for consumers, have changed a bit.
Not only that, but people search and behave differently on these platforms. We previously would consider 5 words in a query to potentially be longtail. Try three paragraphs now. These are ongoing iterations built on question and answer threads.
The user journey itself is shifting. Whereas someone may have visited your site 7 times doing research previously, they now may ask the AI Assistant 10 questions, gotten their answers, and now visited your website with the intent to purchase. That is one click through instead of seven.
Another issue is that people have developed a confidence in the answers provided not realizing that these are an amalgamation of potentially 85 websites and the AI is trying to figure out the true answer.
As an example, if you don’t make your pricing public, people will receive an answer based on all of those websites and maybe pull together an average consensus. If the consumer is not paying attention, they may consider the response to be a fact.
But in reality, is this really that different from Search results before? Opinions differ.
Big Questions
The issues that we as a community are asking is how do I optimize for the AI Assistants and do we need to use different base metrics?
We are seeing unlinked brand mentions acting like authoritative backlinks in some of these algorithms.
Pulling from multiple pages to get answers, we are evaluating fan-out queries rather than just keywords.
Is your brand name that appears in a result, the stronger impression than your website showing up as a link in AI Overview?
Since people are not clicking through the links as often, does this mean Click through rate is not as important anymore?
We are all trying to figure out what KPI’s will be the most reliable for performance. Management wants to see numbers and percentages on reports after all.
These are the issues we will all be exploring over the next few years. Just know you are not alone out there
In the meantime, for now, follow smart people online – I have a list of people below doing great research – For most everyone, the best I can recommend is to just keep doing what you have been doing. We do know that the New World of SEO isn’t so different that you will fall behind by creating good content and following current best practices.
I promise the industry will get a better handle on all of this and the AI Assistants will improve their algorithms.