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Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast

19 Sep 2026 · 1m · 1 chapter

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In five years will we still be talking about SEO rankings?

In short

Whether SEO rankings will still matter in five years, and how SEO should shift from “positions” to being recommended/recognized in search results, especially via citations and answer validation.

Guest backgrounds

Jason Lax, senior SEO and AI expert at SAP. Host: Jordan Cooney.

Key claims

Rankings will remain measurable but won’t be the headline metric; the focus will be on whether users are recommended to click or validate answers. SEO success depends on integrating strategy, technical work, content, and reporting with cross-functional teams, not on cookie-cutter, low-success agency projects.

Notable examples

Mentions brands using Previsible—Yelp, eBay, Canva, Atlassian, Square. Explains rankings as click recommendations and citations as validation/next-action guidance.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes.

Chapters

0:49

The Future of SEO Rankings

Discussion on the evolving importance of SEO rankings and their implications.

“We'll still be measuring a position somewhere, but it won't be the headline, the most important thing.”
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Transcript

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0:00Jason Lax: The Voices of Search podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit IHearEverything.com. Welcome to the Voices of Search podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything podcast network. Ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts? Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Jordan Cooney.

0:42I'm Jordan Cooney, and joining me today is Jason Lax, senior SEO and AI expert at SAP. Looking years into the future here, will we still be talking about SEO rankings? We'll still be measuring a position somewhere, but it won't be the headline, the most important thing. And the main question will be, are you being recommended or not? Are you being recognized?

1:23with hourly charges, or you can work with a cookie cutter agency to quickly launch a strategy-less project with low success rate. None of those sound very good, now do they? Well, that's where Previsible's integrated consulting model comes in. Previsible draws from a collective 40 years of SEO and digital marketing experience to unlock your organic growth opportunities. They build custom solutions that combine strategy, technical expertise, content, and reporting to effectively operationalize SEO for your business. Pre-Fizzable's four-stage approach ensures that your SEO programs thrive by starting off with a strategy-first approach.

2:00Then they support you in your efforts to create quality content, help you identify technical issues, and most importantly, they'll work with your cross-functional teams to integrate your SEO strategies to make sure that your SEO budget actually drives results, not just your agency's bottom line. So join brands like Yelp, eBay, Canva, Atlassian, Square, all who rely on the SEO consultants at Previsible. For more information, go to previsible.io. That's previsible, P-R-E-V-I-S-I-B-L-E dot I-O.

2:35In many ways, that's maybe what it's about. You know, the ultimately a ranking was a recommendation about where to click through to. A citation is a recommendation about where to validate the answer or maybe even what to do within the answer itself.

From the publisher

SEO rankings may soon become invisible metrics behind AI-driven recommendations. Jason Lax, senior SEO and AI expert at SAP with nearly two decades in search, is leading the enterprise shift from traditional SEO into AEO and GEO. He reframes success around recommendation and recognition—being cited as the answer validator rather than just the click-through destination. The discussion centers on redefining ranking as a proxy signal, treating citations as trust recommendations, and building measurement frameworks that track recognition within AI-generated answers rather than page position alone.

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