It’s the most interesting time to be in SEO in the past 20 years.
At least that’s my perspective as someone who’s been out of the game for 10+ years at this point.
Not because more people are using Google. Because of the AI chatbots. ChatGPT, Claude, even Google’s AI search.
Here’s where I’m coming from. I run a tiny little ecommerce store. Yep, just a little side business, but it keeps me informed on what’s happening in that space.
It’s been ranked number one or number two for its top terms for the past decade. So not a whole lot of attention has to get paid to the SEO.
Every once in a while some goofball still reaches out with a “looks like you’re not ranking number one on Google…” Then I go check, and they’re just casting a wide net. Not actually looking.
But last week, somebody reached out and said they used ChatGPT to ask about my business. And I didn’t come up.
Now here’s the thing. If they had shown me what they actually searched for, actually did the work, I probably would have responded. They didn’t. Just casting a wide net again, basically mass spamming everybody.
But it got me thinking.
I don’t know if I’m ranking well in ChatGPT. I don’t know if the chatbots know what I do. I don’t know if they’re recommending me.
I show up on Google just fine. Heck, I even show up on Reddit. But the chatbots?
No idea. No clue.
And I think there might be a resurgence coming in SEO services because of it.
Google has been the dominant search engine for 20 years at this point. Ranking on Google is old enough to buy beer.
You’ve heard “you need to rank on Google” for two decades now, so every offer sounds the same. In fact, I don’t even take on SEO clients at Pipelineology anymore.
It’s such a stale offer that it’s really hard to help those companies get appointments and meetings. I think it’s been three years since I had one.
But AI works differently. It ranks things differently than Google.
So I’m expecting to see kind of a new gold rush. Whether it’s still called SEO, or AEO, or whatever you guys end up naming it.
I just think it’ll be really interesting to watch how people go about getting their company to be the one the bot recommends.
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