The AI Search Fallacy

Speaker 1 0:34

I was in the kitchen in my office building earlier this week , not our kitchen . I was in the kitchen to my office building and there's another guy there , yeah , a little older than me . I would probably guess We've chatted before . Really nice guy I think his wife works in here too and he asked we've never like spoken more than a few sentences . But he asked what do you do ? And I said usually when I'm talking to that generation people in their probably 50s or older .

Speaker 1 1:04

I'm not really sure they're going to know what SEO is . So I said , well , I do a type of marketing . It's called SEO . And I kind of raised my eyebrow . He's like , oh really , I do SEO . Now , this is the first time this has ever happened to me in my career . Ever I have never just blindly said to someone I do SEO and they're like , oh , me too . I've met other people who do SEO , but that's not how I met them . And then he said something about , well , it's probably going to be changing soon or something along those lines , and I was curious by that statement . And then he went on to say there's this new uh search feature in chat GPT . It looks like it's probably gonna . I don't . I don't think he said the words kill SEO . But he said , sort of that will kind of be the end of SEO . And I could tell like right away I could tell , oh , he doesn't do SEO , he offers SEO . Seo is part of what he offers to and his clients are nonprofits which is great .

Speaker 1 2:07

That's super . I was like , oh , that's really cool . Seemed like he , not somebody who has a lot of experience in SEO , because my response immediately was yeah , and I've spoken about this here on the podcast . Yeah , but ChatGPT just uses a search engine and he looked at me like he didn't . Obviously he doesn't listen to this podcast . Wow , but I said yeah , chatgpt uses Bing , Google's AI uses Google . And then I thought well , if this person who is not really claiming to be an SEO professional , but certainly selling SEO services .

Speaker 2 2:40

That's what he does .

Speaker 1 2:42

Yeah , if he still thinks , or if he thinks that chat GPT search is going to be the end of SEO , that seems like it's probably a pretty widespread opinion . I know we've talked about it on this podcast before , but I want to try to clear this up a little bit .

Speaker 2 2:59

I think that's a good idea .

Speaker 1 3:00

Give you a kind of tip on . You know where things are and where they might be going .

Speaker 2 3:05

Yeah , well , might be when they are . Let's focus on where they are now .

Speaker 1 3:09

Okay , so I've come up with this kind of theory . I was going to call it the AI fallacy , but I googled AI fallacy and AI fallacy is already something , and this is not it , so let's call this the AI search fallacy , and there seems to be this belief , even among like . This is what I used to think . This is what this guy thinks that AI is all knowing , right it knows everything , oh yeah . Yeah , whatever it does , it's coming back to you with the right information .

Speaker 2 3:38

Absolutely the absolute truth .

Speaker 1 3:39

Yes , there's two and that's not true . Yeah , ok , I can give you two examples Of why .

Speaker 2 3:45

I say that's not true . Yeah .

Speaker 1 3:47

Number one . If you go to and I think we've done something sort of like this on another episode If you go to ChatGPT and you do a search who are some of the best family photographers in Brooklyn it's going to come back with a list , right ? If you go to Bing and type the exact same question , it's also going to come back with results in a list format , basically right . So I did those two searches . I'm just going to give you the list of what ChatGPT gave me and I'm going to give you the list of what I found on Bing . I'm sure you might have a running commentary on these . First , chatgpt who are some of the best family photographers in Brooklyn ? I'm going to just read off this list Le Studio NYC A Lime Green Dream Brooklyn Family Portrait Dorota McCauley Photography , daisy Betty Photography , michael Kormos Photography and Meredith Zinner Photography .

Speaker 2 5:28

Oh , wow .

Speaker 1 5:29

Okay , that was ChatGPT . Now let's go over to Bing and same question who are some of the best family photographers in Brooklyn ? Now it gives some local results . First , Brooklyn Family Portrait .

Speaker 2 5:41

That was number two on the ChatGPT list .

Speaker 1 5:45

Then it says Justine Cooper , not on the ChatGPT list , meredith Zinner . And then Blue Skies Studio , new York Photography , not on Chet GPT's list , the number one . So I'm going down the search page here . The number one organic result is an article from Expertisecom the top 10 family photographers in Brooklyn . In that list , number one Lace Studio , nyc . Number two , a Lime Green Dream . Number three , daisy Betty . Number four Justine Cooper , not on the chat GPT list . Number five , karen Wise . Number six , michael Kormos . Number seven , emily Burke . Number eight Brooklyn Family Portrait . And then Lente Studio .

Speaker 2 6:32

So you see some .

Speaker 1 6:35

Well no , this is a list that you literally probably pay for and just get onto .

Speaker 2 6:39

Oh , yeah , right .

Speaker 1 6:41

So , but you can see there's some pretty heavy overlap . Where do you suppose ChatGPT came up with those results ? Yeah , so that was example number one . Example number two I was doing a search recently on Google and I was actually doing it during part of a workshop , so I was doing it live . And I did a search on Google about something about SEO . I was just trying to demonstrate some results and in the AI-generated response that came back , it said to do something that was clearly spam , clearly violated Google's policy . It was spam . It wasn't it's not my subjective opinion , it was really spam .

Speaker 1 7:24

Now , how does that happen ? Yeah , now , how does that happen ? Well , I was doing a live workshop so I couldn't dive deeper , but I can almost guarantee that there is a blog somewhere near the top of Google that says you should do that . And so what Google's AI doing is something very similar to Bing . It's scanning the top results . It's taking what it thinks is the best advice or the most authoritative advice and putting it into its AI results . Now , why am I telling you this ? What does this mean ?

Speaker 2 7:53

That you can't trust everything you read in AI .

Speaker 1 7:57

That's true , but also this is the next evolution of SEO . This is how SEO changes . People keep saying SEO is dead . No , SEO adapts Like literally .

Speaker 2 8:09

Like everything .

Speaker 1 8:10

Literally . If you're using ChatGPT as a search engine , why wouldn't search engine optimization still apply this ? Is true , even if the actual , even if chat , gpt and AI results are kind of a layer on top of the actual search engine .

Speaker 2 8:27

Yeah .

Speaker 1 8:27

Because what it's kind of basically doing is it's just Googling shit for you putting it in and summarizing Right .

Speaker 2 8:33

And you said the second example , the most recent , when you were teaching a thingy that I think

The Future of SEO

Speaker 2 8:39

you did . You say it was in Google or ChatGPT .

Speaker 1 8:42

That was in Google .

Speaker 2 8:43

Okay , because you may have said ChatGPT Okay .

Speaker 1 8:46

Well , if I did , then I meant to say Google . So this is really , I think , the first big evolution in SEO in probably , I would say , a decade . Like SEO changes little bits pretty much constantly , but this is a pretty big shift , so clients used to ask me . I haven't gotten this question recently , but they used to ask how do ? I get my website into AI and I've mentioned that before on the podcast and for a long time it was like I don't know , nobody knows .

Speaker 1 9:18

Like we have no idea now . It's pretty obvious how that works . I don't know what's going to happen in the future , but for right now what ? For right now two things you can be at the top of search engines yeah , that's , that's the best way . And number two , be on additional lists , like that list I read from expertisecom yeah , so my question is pay for those things ? That's part of SEO . Some of those lists are going to be worth it and some are not .

Speaker 2 9:49

Okay , how do you differentiate ?

Speaker 1 9:52

Probably the best advice I could give you is if you see a list that's somewhere near the top of Google , that would be a good one to be on . Okay , a list that you can't find anywhere in Google , you know what ? Google doesn't really appreciate that list very much , so I would say don't worry about that one .

Speaker 1 10:06

So , it's not going to take what is in that list and put it in its AI results Makes sense . So there is kind of a circular aspect to this and it does make it confusing . I'm still , you know , right now what I'm doing in terms of being a consultant is that's where I'm looking . How is that algorithm whatever algorithm is going to select results from search engines and select which lists to look at . That is what I say when I mean the next evolution of SEO . It's looking at that . So that's where we are now . You might be wondering , well , what's next ? What's coming next ? What should I be ?

Speaker 1 10:47

prepared for yeah that I don't know , but what I can say is you don't need to freak out and think that SEO is dead and there's this whole new thing that's going to take over .

Speaker 2 11:00

Immediately overnight .

Speaker 1 11:02

It will take care of it . There's people like me working on this , and so I guess my message for the episode is I don't know the future , but don't worry about it , We'll take care of it Whatever happens it's going to happen Right , and change is inevitable . Yeah , we're going to keep changing .