Bing’s Advice on Optimizing for AI Search Engines. Everything is New Here </sarcasm>
Is AI SEO different from the traditional SEO?
A lot has been happening in the AI-powered search industry that I wasn’t covering, so here are a few highlights:
ChatGPT has launched its own search engine (which is powered by Bing’s index)
Bing has launched its own version of AI Overviews
Perplexity is testing ads: They work as follow-up questions. If a brand is paying for certain keywords in prompts, it will be suggested as a follow-up question. For example, if someone asks for “The best laptop” recommendation, Perplexity will suggest something like “Why Lenovo is the best laptop” as a follow-up question if Lenovo pays for the ads. It is an interesting monetization approach that will surely help with branding but will likely be difficult to directly measure the impact.
Google is testing ads within AI Overviews. They look very much like Google’s traditional search ads.
Here are Bing’s “AI Overviews” in action:
What to make of these recent developments?
Nothing essentially new is happening.
As we expected, the PRO membership model is not sustainable for generative AI platforms. ChatGPT will start figuring out its advertising strategy very soon too.
The monetization model of generative AI remains old school. It relies on clicks. Nothing new here. All the predictions that traffic will soon become less important are being proved wrong.
Generative AI is being monetized by clicks. This is good news. This model relies on the symbiosis with publishers and brands. So organic results and clicks will remain key. The quality of organic results will remain the determining factor of high-quality answers.
Essentially, and please prove me wrong, I don’t see any huge changes here. AI-powered search is simply a search that looks a bit different. Yes, things will ultimately change but not quickly. Search and AI giants are trying to figure this out and we are watching.
When there’s less fuss/buzz and more balance, we will know how to deal with it.
Optimizing for AI-Powered Search Engines
Microsoft’s Bing released a guide on optimizing for its AI Overviews (I am calling them the same as Google’s for consistency).
And guess what?
Nothing new as well.
To save your time, here’s a very clear version of what Bing recommends:
Worry less about keyword matching and more about search intent
Target long-tail keywords
Optimize more for conversational search and questions (Think what people say rather than which keywords they would type)
Include semantic keywords (those that usually appear in the same context). BTW semantic keyword optimization = intent optimization
These are the exact keyword optimization guidelines I’ve been talking about for about 10 (or more) years.
The bottom line here: No one knows where it is all going. Apparently, both startups and established players are still figuring this out. Once they know how they are monetizing their glorified AI search engines, there will be a balance. It won’t be just about them stealing publishers’ content and going with it. There will be a balance and a symbiosis.
Until then, find a partner that is ready to help you fit in.
