A trending topic these days has to be the introduction of AI in search. This has many tech experts wondering if that means SEO might be dying.
Thanks to experts at Google, this topic was assessed in-detail during a recent episode of Search Off the Record. It shared more about how SEO continues to stay unchanged despite many people’s theories.
Clearly, there is a major divide as many digital experts and publishers would beg to disagree with Google’s claims about how nothing has changed despite AI entering the search realm.
John Mueller started off the topic about SEO entering the dying path where AI’s role in SEO was positive or negative. On that note, Gary Illyes shared some skeptical statements on how SEOs were busy predicting the fallout of SEO for so many years.
Image: DIW-AIgen
People were talking about the end of SEO since the start of 2001 so he didn’t seem to be worried. But many were surprised to see how many reciprocal links didn’t work or even when some failed to believe Google was suppressing the tactics. Most speculations had to do with Sandbox which prevented sites from carrying out ranking. At this point in time, it was more about SEOs falling back or not explaining what is taking place which fueled the speculations about it dying out.
What seemed to be missing from this discussion was talk about how Googlers didn’t mention the drawbacks that small and large-scale publishers witnessed in the past year. They could have been wiped out so easily.
When the topic of how relevant SEO is for 2025, we found out about RAG or Retrieval Augmented Generation. It provides replies that assist LLMs stay up to date about facts. The system gets information from different outside sources including search indexes and knowledge graphs. These can roll out the answer as chatbot interfaces provide replies in natural language.
A better explanation came from Martin Splitt who shared more about how much easier it is to upload documents and out of the five uploaded, you’ll get a reply from somewhere. So the more the sources, the better and more reliable of getting a quick and accurate response.
Mueller further spoke about the concept of RAG and how it links SEO with AI Search. Yes, crawling as well as indexing still exists with ranking but RAG is just as important. So the next time you think AI is a magic box and you’re not sure what’s the link with it and SEO, you might want to consider RAG, he added.
Before we end, we thought to share what the actual impact of AI on search is. A lot has changed and while it’s not openly discussed, we’re jotting it down for you below.
For starters, bid farewell to organic SERPs as they’re basically obsolete. It’s been like this for 15 years but thanks to AI, it’s disappeared. Next, natural language search queries are the way to go. They’re bound to give you precise and quick answers so wording is important. Lastly, back-end AI algorithms are just as important. They make some very abrupt changes in terms of behavior and while not all publishers desire that, it’s there. And it can throttle traffic and different mindsets instantly.
Remember, the damage that AI algorithms continue to cause over time is always questionable when we look at the tech industry. Still, things are improving but traffic has really ended up getting wiped out ever since AI was incorporated into Google’s backend. The world does hope for a better change in 2025 when the Android maker can better address the matter. For now, it looks like publishers will have to eagerly wait and watch to see what’s next. Hopefully, by then, the CEO will be able to better explain the real impact of AI on search.
Read next: Top Data Scientist Geoffrey Hinton Backs Elon Musk In Lawsuit Blocking OpenAI from Switching to For-Profit Firm
Thanks to experts at Google, this topic was assessed in-detail during a recent episode of Search Off the Record. It shared more about how SEO continues to stay unchanged despite many people’s theories.
Clearly, there is a major divide as many digital experts and publishers would beg to disagree with Google’s claims about how nothing has changed despite AI entering the search realm.
John Mueller started off the topic about SEO entering the dying path where AI’s role in SEO was positive or negative. On that note, Gary Illyes shared some skeptical statements on how SEOs were busy predicting the fallout of SEO for so many years.
People were talking about the end of SEO since the start of 2001 so he didn’t seem to be worried. But many were surprised to see how many reciprocal links didn’t work or even when some failed to believe Google was suppressing the tactics. Most speculations had to do with Sandbox which prevented sites from carrying out ranking. At this point in time, it was more about SEOs falling back or not explaining what is taking place which fueled the speculations about it dying out.
What seemed to be missing from this discussion was talk about how Googlers didn’t mention the drawbacks that small and large-scale publishers witnessed in the past year. They could have been wiped out so easily.
When the topic of how relevant SEO is for 2025, we found out about RAG or Retrieval Augmented Generation. It provides replies that assist LLMs stay up to date about facts. The system gets information from different outside sources including search indexes and knowledge graphs. These can roll out the answer as chatbot interfaces provide replies in natural language.
A better explanation came from Martin Splitt who shared more about how much easier it is to upload documents and out of the five uploaded, you’ll get a reply from somewhere. So the more the sources, the better and more reliable of getting a quick and accurate response.
Mueller further spoke about the concept of RAG and how it links SEO with AI Search. Yes, crawling as well as indexing still exists with ranking but RAG is just as important. So the next time you think AI is a magic box and you’re not sure what’s the link with it and SEO, you might want to consider RAG, he added.
Before we end, we thought to share what the actual impact of AI on search is. A lot has changed and while it’s not openly discussed, we’re jotting it down for you below.
For starters, bid farewell to organic SERPs as they’re basically obsolete. It’s been like this for 15 years but thanks to AI, it’s disappeared. Next, natural language search queries are the way to go. They’re bound to give you precise and quick answers so wording is important. Lastly, back-end AI algorithms are just as important. They make some very abrupt changes in terms of behavior and while not all publishers desire that, it’s there. And it can throttle traffic and different mindsets instantly.
Remember, the damage that AI algorithms continue to cause over time is always questionable when we look at the tech industry. Still, things are improving but traffic has really ended up getting wiped out ever since AI was incorporated into Google’s backend. The world does hope for a better change in 2025 when the Android maker can better address the matter. For now, it looks like publishers will have to eagerly wait and watch to see what’s next. Hopefully, by then, the CEO will be able to better explain the real impact of AI on search.
Read next: Top Data Scientist Geoffrey Hinton Backs Elon Musk In Lawsuit Blocking OpenAI from Switching to For-Profit Firm
