While the AI tools themselves are evolving every day, it seems generative AI search engines aren’t going anywhere. Since Google launched its AI search, it’s already made leaps in relevance and accuracy.

1. New Information Retrieval

AI-powered generative engines have majorly shifted how users are retrieving the information they’re searching for. Instead of providing sources for the user to read, generative engines are providing summaries to answer questions in less time.

2. Less Spam

Earlier this year, major search engines like Google started cracking down on what they considered spam or unoriginal content — many of which were AI-generated. AI search engines don’t respond well to spammy content and, instead, are looking for high authority, highly structured articles that the bots can easily scan. As a result, it seems that quality is above quantity when it comes to what’s most important with your content (though many argue that was already the case).

3. Lower Web Traffic

As AI-generated answers start popping up on search engines, websites have seen lower levels of web traffic overall. Top-ranked websites have seen traffic dips as significant as 10%. This makes sense, given that many users are stopping at the summary instead of proceeding on. This adjustment means the goal of content might not be to rank highly but, instead, to be used by AI and cited in summaries.

4. A change in traffic source

The above point has a bit of nuance. Most content can expect a dip in traffic, but for content that’s highly visible to large language models (LLMs), you could see an increase in engagement by upwards of 40%. That’s because the goal of writing for AI search is to be cited as a source. When you’re cited in a summary on Google AI Search, users can easily click on your content to learn more.

5. De-emphasis on SEO

What makes an article great for search engines is a bit different than what makes an article great for AI bots. Whereas SEO is focused on keywords, backlinks, and searchability, generative engine optimization (GEO) emphasizes highly structured articles with lots of sources.

Learn more best practices for AI in content marketing on our partner, HubSpot’s blog. Get started with your AI journey with Goose Digital.

 

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