This is something I have been thinking about and discussing with peers quite a lot these last few weeks.

Generative AI has already made significant impacts on search as we know it, and is already embedded in the search engines we know and love.

Google recently began inviting people to Search Labs where they are giving us a window into the future of search engine results and it is… fascinating. I got an invite.

I’ve done a number of query tests with this prototype SERP in Search Labs and the layout is different, but so is how content is surfacing on that page. It is a massively improved UX over current state.

Questions that keep surfacing for me are:

  1. With generative AI at the top of the biggest SERPS, what does this mean for indirect, non-branded search and how SEO can respond? If the embedded AI can generate good enough answers to these types of queries does this render what has been an accepted best practice for years irrelevant? Think of all the content we’ve been focused on generating to attract people and drive to site. Will that still be a thing?
  2. If we are still generating this content and/or wanting to continue to benefit from content already created, how do we ensure that is getting through to the answers that AI is generating in search? That is a gigantic unknown, and my tests have yielded universally neutral and non-branded content.

I have already been working through the initial mechanics of AI assistant optimization (AIAO – you saw this here first!) which I discussed in a previous post, and have actually begun implementing this with clients whereby we structure some amount of website content to be easily pulled by AI assistants with the messaging and supporting content we desire potentially coming through intact.

The SEO SME who is early to an articulate POV and methodology to address these questions will be very busy as the impact to client digital footprint of this “simple” change to SERP structure is not at all insignificant. We plan on that being us.