The evolution of SEO in relation to generative AI
- The integration of ChatGPT into Bing has not yet changed user habits. Google remains ultra-dominant in terms of search engine market share.
- ChatGPT has nonetheless shaken up Google, which is currently testing SGE in the USA, India and Japan. With its roll-out announced for early 2024, we’re set to see a profound transformation of the search engine’s results pages.
- In terms of impact, SGE will result in a decrease in the volume of organic traffic, but this will be more qualitative. Nevertheless, sites that manage to position themselves in the TOP 3 should see an increase in traffic.
- To prepare for the arrival of SGE, it’s even more important to offer quality content, to respond correctly to search intentions, to use conversational keywords and finally to deploy Schemas markups.
- Google has modified its official communication, suggesting that AI-generated content will no longer be penalized, provided it is properly written, proofread and optimized. AI will not, however, replace content written by an expert in a given field. Generative AI should be used as a writing aid, not to replace the work of a copywriter.
- External references (social networks, reviews, mentions, links, referrals…) will become even more important as they are used by AI.
- Companies will need to implement an AI policy to prevent sensitive or personal information from being indexed and used by AIs (Google indexes Bard conversations).
- News sites can potentially see AI in search engines as a risk to their business model. It is therefore now possible to block access to AI crawlers via robots.txt. Several major American media outlets have already blocked this access. In France, TF1 is the only medium to have currently blocked access to Bard (Google) and ChatGPT. However, no information has been released on the potential impact on SEO for sites that refuse to train AI models.
- Some web users are wary of the answers provided by AI. So classic organic search is not going to disappear.
- SEO isn’t dead; on the contrary, we’re witnessing a new revolution in the field that puts content quality, structuring and optimization back at the heart of the game.
