SEO has been around and relevant for a few decades now. There are so many reasons why we search (ideas, curiosity, gain insight, satisfying a need, helping others, and much more) and SEO helps to solve those problems and meet those needs. Within the last 5 years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become more and more relevant and even starting heavily competing with search engines such as google. My blog post will be based off of an article I read into: Is traditional SEO dead? The real impact of AI on SEO explained – SEO Engico. One of the questions asked was if SEO was “dead”. The question was brought up due to a big shift in SEO after AI was incorporated into it. We have talked about it in class even, but AI responses or AI overview is almost the first thing people see as a result when they search on a search engine. The article suggested that SEO wasn’t dead, but note “recent industry data shows click-through rates for position one results have dropped from 15% to 8% over the past year”. & “AI-generated summaries have cause a 34.5% decline in top-position click through rates”. Pretty significant decreases in click through rates, but nonetheless, everyone still searches, it is the way people respond to the results that has changed because of AI. AI platforms are still rapidly growing and over the last 5 years have adapted and been rapidly growing. Think about it, AI has “stolen” frequent users from other search engine platforms such as google, and has monthly, weekly, and even daily active users for AI search. However, the article does mention an “AI Trust Gap”, meaning that users can’t fully trust AI-generated answers and the results that they are given from a search. The credibility of AI can still be questionable, which gives search engine platforms the upper hand for credibility and more intensive search. I’d say from personal experience and I’d be willing to be others would agree, but AI answers are usually pretty good and satisfy my need enough, however if I was going further in depth with a topic, needed more specific information, or needed to make sure it was absolutely credible information and accurate, I would use search engine platforms instead of AI generated results. Although AI and search engine platforms do compete with each other in a way, it has significantly impacted (I believe in a good way) SEO and SEO marketing in general. The needs and desires of users are only being satisfied more and more efficiently.
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