Thoughts on SEO & SEO for AI, part 1

0:04John Mueller.

0:10Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Search Off the Record, a podcast coming to you from the Google Search team, where we talk all about search and maybe have some fun along the way. My name is John Mueller. I'm a search advocate here at Google Switzerland. And today we have Danny Sullivan joining us all the way from over in California. Hi, Danny. Hi, John. It's good to be here. Fantastic to have you here, Danny. You've been active in search for a really long time, and I'd love to talk with you a bit about some of the fancy new things that are happening in the world of search and SEO. So everything kind of around AI.

0:48Or is this like really a new thing? It feels like these fads come and go. Is AI a fad? But like, how do you think? Oh gosh, you know, my favorite thing is that we should be calling it LMNOPEO because there's just so many acronyms for it. Is it GEO for generative engine optimization or AEO for answer engine optimization? and AIEO, I don't know. There's so many different names for it. And, you know, I used to write about SEO and search. I did that for like 20 years. And part of me is just so relieved. I don't have to do that aspect of it anymore to try to keep up with everything that people are wondering about.

1:28And on the other hand, you still have to kind of keep up on it because we still have tried to explain to people what's going on. I think the good news is like, there's not a lot you actually really need to be worrying about. So it's understandable. I think people keep having these questions, right? You know, I mean, you see search formats changing, you see all sorts of things happening and you wonder, well, is there something new I should be doing? Totally get that. And remember, John and I and others, we all came together because we had this blog post we did in May, which we'll drop a link to or we'll point you to somehow to it.

2:02But we were getting asked again and again, well, what should we be doing? What should we be thinking about it? And we all put our heads together and we talked with the engineers and everything else. So we came up with nothing really that different. That was kind of challenging. Yeah. And it's hard. I mean, again, I think people really see stuff and they think they want to be doing something different. It is a natural reaction. And so the short answer, because we'll do a long answer because we've got a podcast or maybe two that will come from what we're doing. But, you know, it is the natural reaction you have.

2:33But we talk about sort of this North Star or the point that you should be heading to. And when it comes to all of our ranking systems, it's about how are we trying to reward content that we think is great for people, that it was written for human beings in mind, not written for search algorithms, not written for LLMs, not written for LMNL, PEO, whatever you want to call it. It's that everything we do and all the things that we tailor and all the things that we try to improve, it's all about how do we reward content that human beings find satisfying and say, that was what I was looking for. That's what I needed.

3:10So if all of our systems are lining up with that. It's that thing about you're going to be ahead of it if you're already doing that. To where the more you're trying to optimize or GEO, whatever you think it is for a specific kind of system, the more you're potentially going to get away from the main goal, especially if those systems improve and get better, then you're kind of having to shift and play a lot of catch up. So, you know, we're going to talk about some of that stuff here with the big caveat, but we're only talking about Google, right? That's who we work for. So we don't say what, you know, anybody else's AI search, chat search, whatever you want to kind of deal with and kind of go with it from there.

3:52But we'll talk about how we look at things and how it works. And yeah. One of the challenging things I noticed when we came out with that blog post, basically saying you don't need to do anything different, was that people were hearing all of these things that they had to be doing. It's like, you have to split your content up, or you have to do this, do that. And us going out and saying, well, actually, you don't need to do any of that. I can imagine that for some people that felt a bit like, well, Google just doesn't know. They don't realize you have to do all of these new things now. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's the same thing with the traditional SEO.

4:36Like you may find something that you discover if I do this one particular thing, maybe I'm getting a little bit more success than I expected, or maybe I'm being successful in ways that were wildly more than I expected. but also I think those things don't tend to last because of what I said before you you went after one specific thing rather than going after the overall goal so when all the other factors that came into play start to change around and things shift and things improve then your one little thing that you did before isn't the one little magic trip that whatever it was those ads used to say one little trip and you can use your belly fat.

5:17Uh, yeah, except that one little trip was like, I needed to eat less and I do like to eat. But anyway, let me, let's, let's start off and we kind of go into this further and like set some definitions. And like, to me, um, this is what I've, I've been using when I've, I've talked or tried to explain things to people is that SEO is the practice of improving content for search engines. Right. And it's funny. I used to, again, I was outside of Google and people would ask me like, oh, what's SEO? I'm doing all this stuff for Google. And I used to be like, no, that's not what you do as SEO. Like SEO isn't just I'm going to try to show up in blue links on Google.

5:59SEO is you are understanding how people seek information. And then you're understanding how that information appears and you're ensuring that you're doing the things that are helping you to be successful, which would even refer to, Oh, something gave me a voice response. Well, how did it figure out the voice response? And was there a way for me to be president in it or whatever? So I think I did that at a blog post like 2010 or something like that, where I wrote about all this sort of stuff. But anyway, those days, my hair was a bit darker then. But I think that even as people are going through all this and they're hearing all these different acronyms and they're all trying to figure out what to do, I don't think that the nature of search engines changing and getting new format changes that the umbrella term remains SEO.

6:47And that AEO, GEO, LMN, LPEO, whatever you want to call it, to me would be a subset of the SEO. you're focusing on AI formats. Some people do local SEO, right? It's not a different kind of SEO necessarily. It's completely removed from it, but there are some things that may be specific to local listings. You try to understand it. So I think that one reframing of this is that you understand that there's these new formats and how do they apply into my world of SEO that I'm thinking about. And then are there specific things I do need to be doing or not be doing for these kinds of formats? But, you know, start off with it's still SEO, you know, and it's still kind of the kind of thing that you go with it.

7:35Oh, can I do a little tiny little caveat in there too? Okay. Two little ones, sorry. You know, I rant, I'll roll along, but one thing, because I don't want to forget this, I should have forgot a piece of paper to write things down along the way. one thing it's just a reminder that if you're not an seo you didn't do seo you don't think about seo or you don't even know what that means great that's like wonderful you don't that's we we will we have you guys have written you know everybody at search central put together the whole guide of seo to tell people who want to understand from our point of view things you should think about.

8:14But we really just want you to focus on your content and not really worry about this. If your content is on the web and generally accessible as most people's content is, that's it. I've actually been heartened that I've seen a number of people saying things like, I don't want to think about this SEO stuff anymore. I'm just getting back into the joy of writing blogs. I'm like, yes, great. That's what we want you to do. That's where we think you're going to find your most success. Like that's wonderful. But that said, people didn't ask questions. They want to know. So then we, you know, we talked about the SEO stuff.

8:50And the other thing is, and I've seen a number of people remark on this, is this concern that, well, I've been doing SEO, but now I'm getting clients or people saying to me, but I need the new stuff. I need the new stuff. And I can't just tell them it's the same old stuff. So I don't know if you feel like you need to dress it up a bit more, but I think the way you dress it up is to say, these are continuing to be the things that are going to make you successful in the long term. Like I get you want the fancy new type of thing, but the history is that the fancy new type of thing doesn't always sort of stick around if we go off and do these particular types of things.

9:32I'm keeping an eye on it, but right now the best advice I can tell you when it comes to, how we're going to be successful with our AEO is that we continue on doing the stuff that we've been doing because that is what it's built on, which is easy for me to say because I don't got someone banging on the door to say, well, actually we do. And so we are doing that. So that's why, but that's part of the podcast. It's just to kind of reassure that, look, just because the formats are changing didn't mean you have to change everything that you had to do and that everything you had to shift around. And in fact, that the more that you dramatically shift things around and start doing something completely different, or the more that you start thinking, I need to do two different things, the more that you may be making things far more complicated, not necessarily successful in the long term as you think they are.

10:21I'll take a breath now. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the things that perhaps throws SEOs off a little bit is that in the early days, there was a lot of almost like a technical transition where people initially had to do a lot of technical specific things to make their site even kind of accessible in search. And at some point nowadays, I think if you're using a popular CMS like WordPress or Wix or any of them, basically you don't have to worry about any of those technical details. So it's almost like that technical side of things is a lot less in the foreground now. And you can really focus on the content.

11:08And that's really what users are looking for. So it's almost like a transition from technical to content side with regards to SEO. I think that's great. And I think it reminded me also of, again, And being so old, thinking back to, you know, before Google even existed, I remember we would write about stuff. And there were tools people would use or techniques people would use because they would like, I'm making a page for AltaVista. Look it up, kids. Lycos. Making one for Webcrawler. I'm making one for OpenText. And they would like do six different versions of content for six different search engines.

11:54And sometimes they did have some very specific types of things that maybe you could be a little more successful, but they weren't that different. And it generally wasn't going to be worth that much of an effort for a typical person to kind of go through all that sort of stuff. And then over time, because I think they were all aiming towards the same sorts of things, the differences became less. We also got fewer search engines along the way. But I don't think that takes away from the fact that it didn't continue on, that people were constantly making content for typically making content for specific types of search engines.

12:32There are obviously some people who always go to some whatever extremes that they can. But it wasn't like a typical strategy people would do. Cool. Yeah. So what would you say web creators should focus on nowadays with all of the AI? A key thing is to really focus on the original aspect. Not a new thing. These are not new things beyond search. But if you're really trying to reframe your mind about what's important, I think that one hand, there's a lot of content that is just kind of commodity content, factual information. And I think that the LLM AI systems are doing a good job of presenting that sort of stuff.

13:15And it's not originating from any type of thing. So the classic example, as you know, will make people laugh. I'm sure it's something to call it. But every year we have this little American football thing called the Super Bowl, which is our big event. Everybody gathers around and watches it and sees what happens between whatever teams are going, whatever. But no one ever can seem to remember what time it's on. So everybody would come in and they'd do a search on Google and they're like, what time is Super Bowl, right? And I think it's always like 3.30 all across America. We unify on a single time at that point.

13:49Every year it would happen. Multiple places would then all write there, what time does the Super Bowl start in 2011 post? And then they would write these giant long things. And in the history of Superdolls, before the dinosaurs roamed on Earth, people wondered about time. What is the concept of time? And how does it take us across the universe? Well, and then the Super Bowl will be at 3.30 p.m. Eastern. So, you know, and then at some point, we could see enough information and we have data feeds and everything else that we just kind of said, you do a search and we're like, the Super Bowl is going to be at 3.30.

14:29and like most people i think the vast majority of people say that's a good thing thank you for just telling me the time of the super bowl it wasn't super original information um it's a bummer if you were one of the things that was always competing doing it for that particular day for your little spike in traffic um and maybe you even had to adjust for that month to understand you weren't going to be getting that much anymore but i think that is a thing people need to understand is that more of this sort of commodity stuff, it isn't going to necessarily be your strength. And I do worry that some people, even with traditional SEO, focus on it too much.

15:08There are a number of sites I know from the research and things that I've done that get a huge amount of traffic for the answer to various popular online word-solving games. Just every day, I'm going to give you the answer to it. And that is great. until, you know, the system shift or whatever, and it's common enough, or we're pulling it from a feed or whatever. And now it's like, here's the answer. But that wasn't really your strength as a publication or as a site or whatever. That wasn't your original voice. Your original voice is that thing that only you can provide is your particular take.

15:45And so that's what we think was our number one thing when we're telling people is like, this is what we think your strength is going to be. As we go into this new world, it was already what you should be doing, but this is what your strength that you should be doing is focus on that original content. I think related to that is this idea that people are also seeking original content that's in – it's authentic to them, which typically means it's a video. It's a podcast because we're talking. See, now we're more authentic. Or there are posts where they're getting these firsthand perspectives. or whatever.

16:22And you've seen that in the search we've already done where we brought in more social, more experiential content. Not to take away from the expert takes, it's just that people want that. Sometimes you're just wanting to know someone's first-hand experience alongside some expert take on it as well. But if you are providing those expert takes, you're doing reviews or whatever, and you've done that in the written form, you still have the opportunity to be doing those in videos and podcasts and so on. Those are other opportunities. So those are things that, again, it's not unique to the AI formats, but they just may be, as you're thinking about how do I reevaluate what I'm doing overall in this era, that these are things you may want to be considering with it from there.

17:06I think that makes a lot of sense also because the web, like even without AI, the web has evolved so much that it's like there's a lot of this commodity content already out there. And what really sets you apart is kind of that unique voice that you bring in. And when we're talking about something like the Super Bowl, it's not that we can present a page of search results that are basically all the same thing. It's like, here's the history of football since the dinosaurs. But people want, on the one hand, they do want to see some generic information, some commodity content, but they also really want to see unique takes and kind of understand what is different or what has changed or what is kind of a unique take on this situation.

17:56Yeah. And I think it maybe helps you learn beyond things too. I suspect that you're going to see this is what we're thinking about is if we are presenting the commodity information, but we also want to ensure people are continuing to be satisfied or learning more or learning things from the open web, then how can we point you to things that let you go beyond it? Like, you know, so I don't know if it'll be the history of the time of the Super Bowl. Maybe is that sort of history of the Super Bowl or in that particular place. That's the kind of thing we might show alongside it. Or why it somehow, over time, a football evolved from a round spherical object originating in England and somehow managed to turn into this sort of elongated, ovolic type of thing that is known and is so popular in the rugby playing countries.

18:49But also, if you don't get it, you don't know. Like American football or football is completely different from football, which is football or soccer or whatever. But anyway, but it's coming home, John. It's coming home. It's coming home. Okay. I think also with regards to authentic content, it feels like that's the kind of thing that you can't really artificially create. where you can't go out and it's like, oh, I have to write something about the Superbowl. I will create something authentic and follow this pattern. Well, and I think that's where I always come back when people say, well, how, what did you think about this, et cetera?

19:31I always think about it in terms of social media, right? And now fair enough, there's plenty of social media that's quote authentic, but it's not really authentic. Like, you know, it's whatever, but there's, it's resonating with people. And I think it seems that a lot of people who are on social media, the ones I especially like, they just have something great that they want to share or they have a passion about it. And they didn't sit down and think, how am I going to tweak it so that this is super great for, I don't know, Instagram, but not for Snap and now for, you know, whatever. Don't get me wrong.

20:08I don't make videos and there's certainly things you can see people we're doing and like, and make sure you put in the captions so that I can listen to me when I'm don't have my volume on. I'm like, thank you, everybody, whoever just does captions. Cause I never have the volume on when looking at stuff, but even textual posts or whatever there are, I think there's kind of these technical things you do and things that you learn a long way, but the core is you were authentic to people who started following you because you were just authentic. Like that you, you were speaking to what you were knowledgeable about and you didn't get lost so much into how do I manufacture it so much, I think.

20:45But I'm sure there are people out there who will tell me, no, you're so wrong. It's all, yeah, I know. I get plenty of that stuff on threads myself. Only people who were born and lived in the 80s will know what this is. Okay, I'll tell you what it is. It's a pencil. You used it to rewind a cassette tape, which is the way you used to listen to music before we had CDs, which was the way you listened to music before we had MP3s, which was the way you listen to music before we had you know streaming that sounds very multimodal so there's nice segue this brings it back to the blog post we're trying to come up with other things like well is there anything else we could say and we said we'll be multimodal i hate the term multimodal i just hate it it says nothing so like when i try to explain to people It's like, look, you search one way and get information back in the other.

21:38So a good example of this was I was walking around in Portland and killing some time before I did a talk out there. And I saw these geese on the ground, not in the air, but they were on the ground. They're all over the place and they were eating something or doing something or poking at the ground. So I did a video of them and then I sent it off to Google, conveniently enough, because we can do that. You can send a video through the app. And I'm like, what are they doing? And it came back and said, they're eating. What did you think they were doing? All right, I thought it would be a little cooler, but it was like, it did say they're eating grass and stuff.

22:20And I'm like, okay, well, at least I knew. But I didn't say anything like, I see geese. They are this color. They're in this area. They keep poking their heads at the ground. They're walking. I just like, here's a video. What are they doing? And it came back and gave me a textual response. That was multimodal. It did this search. And then it came with a video and came back with a textual response and understood it. I've been doing this all the time now because I'm so lazy. I was clearing out my closets and getting rid of some stuff. And I'm just taking pictures of things. I'm like, what is this worth?

22:56Hey, I'm like, what is this worth? It's like, worth nothing. Throw it away. Just clear it out. That's worth nothing. Or what is this? How do I fix this thing? I couldn't even be bothered to type in the name of it. I'm just like, what is it? How do I fix it? Oh, that thing? I know. So anyway, to get back to the advice is that like, so we're matching up with things where we can identify other people who have images and video and text along with this, where we can put all this stuff together. And so if you have been more textual in nature and you haven't been doing images or video, then by maybe making sure you have more content-rich original content, you potentially are going to have opportunities in some of these multimodal search experiences.

23:42This isn't just AI specific. It's been, again, one of these things that's something that you could be thinking of. But it was one of those things like when we were all putting our heads together, it was like, yeah, let's emphasize that as well. Because that's something people can focus on that will help them in both of these kinds of areas. So yeah, multimodal. I think it also helps with regards to what is presented to people. Because on the one hand, you're searching with a video, other people are searching with text, and sometimes a video is a good answer for that. Like, how do I fix this thing?

24:15It's not going to be like this wall of text that is on some blog post, but maybe a link to a blog post that has a video embedded. And then you go off and watch that video. Because it's just, I don't know, maybe an easier way to digest that information. So that feels like something that works both for AI and for normal search. So maybe it's just like SEO. As long as there's an O in it, it's all the same. That's the unifying thing.

24:47So what's the best way for sites to kind of make sure that they're hitting this target, that they're doing the right thing? Well, I mean, everybody's going to be different. So that was the other thing. Oh, I want to put a little quick thing. We also mentioned structured data in there, right? And I think that was another thing where it wasn't like, if you didn't have structured data, that's it, you're done for. No A, E, I, O, P, and O, G for you. It was more that we looked at that and we thought that could be helpful for that. It's already helpful for other things. And people aren't always thinking about that.

25:25So it was more of a think about this along the way, you know, type of thing. Not that that was your secret. Aha, structured data. Now I have it. There I am. AIOs, I own you. So, but I think the big thing we kind of put at the end was this like sort of measure your full value. That's what you're asking. How do I know if it's successful? It's like, well, we don't know how you know if you're successful. Only you know that you know how you're successful. But sometimes even in this age, people aren't seeming to even define what their success is beyond I got a lot of clicks. Right. And what we were saying was, well, you probably want to start measuring quality clicks and quality conversions.

26:07Like you've got to figure it out for yourself and you've got to determine what makes sense for you or whatever. But the one real thing that we've been finding with these new formats is people arrive and they seem to be more engaged when they get there. How do you know they're more converted? How can you tell? We just do. It's fine. We know. No.