This is the question I’ve been chewing over for the last few weeks. From the moment ChatGPT announced shopping functionalities were going to be rolled out, I’m sure I’m not the only SEO who’s felt like they were working on quicksand. 

The looming threat of AI

As an industry, we’ve been tearing our hair out over the impact of traffic to our sites, thanks to the AI overview now top of page on all major search engine results. The ability to add ‘-ai’ to a query, although a nice workaround, seems unlikely to be taken up en masse as a way to avoid them.

The general consensus as a solution online has been focusing on making sure that content is more conversational, and is positioned to serve the human query and not the demands of the machine. But as someone who delivers such services for SMEs, I know that it’s not the way it works. 

If we want our content to be treated well by the machine daddy, we have to do what it tells us to get the best results. So, we work for both algorithms and humans… but it’s the algorithms that ultimately show our content to the humans. The content must play by the rules, and then at some point, the rules take over. Is it a chicken and egg scenario? Perhaps.

Now we’ve learned that this upcoming iteration of Google’s AI mode, being rolled out across the USA, doesn’t clearly pass identifiable data. I mean… How are we supposed to report on what we’re doing if/when AI mode becomes the default? 

Let’s get even more existential. What happens when content creators stop creating? Google has provided no incentive for continued creation. It’s our content that feeds the beast, no? (Thanks to Lily Ray for sharing). 

So, to tackle the question, is AI an existential threat to the SEO industry? My answer is: yes, and. SEO is slowly dying, and whatever replaces it will look entirely different. We’re not going to know what that is while the AI arms race is still unfolding. In the meantime, our clients need clarity, not chaos.

Virtually none of my clients care about AI overviews. They care that traffic is down, leads are drying up, and that reporting is getting murkier by the day. We’re the data nerds worrying about the why, not them.

How to survive

If survival means playing inside someone else’s machine, maybe the only real power left is ownership. Of audiences, Of distribution, Of data.

I’ve said elsewhere that first-party data and direct communication are only going to become more important. So: build your email lists. Cultivate direct traffic. Yes, there’s still an awareness piece to solve – I’m still working on the destination, not the route.

More than ever, we need to create content people would miss if it didn’t exist.

That means growing loyalty. Trust. Real value. Because if you’re just filling space for rankings, you’re not going to beat the machine at its own game. If this is something you need help with, contact us to learn more about AI and SEO.