Overview: These are independent perspectives from our Leadership Team. They may or may not align with strategic recommendations for current clients, and/or may simply be the way we feel as individuals. Rather than giving you a curated blog article, we wanted you to know how we, as humans, think.
- Marcelo (CEO): Search has been dominant for so long, some might have thought it would never change. However, with the rapid increase in AI LLM usage, I do think that search as we know it is changing and may never return to its former self. Clients right now should be thinking about whether their KPIs and gated content still make sense.
- Peter (Content Director): Writers, content marketers, and marketing leaders need to understand that we’re no longer just writing for humans: AI has become one of our primary audiences. While optimizing content for search is nothing new, adapting to AI search, AI summaries, and user behavior requires a new perspective on how we create content and what that content’s objectives are. Key skills to develop in the next year will include learning how to balance the content needs of humans & AI, as well as motivating creatives to specifically address synthetic audiences.
- Matt (Technical Director): While the nature of search is definitely changing, I think one of the bigger things that LLMs bring is the ability to adjust how you consume information to meet the needs of your specific learning style. Instead of sifting through pages of search results hoping to find content that clicks for you, you can have a conversation: asking follow-up questions, requesting explanations in different ways, or diving deeper into the parts that matter most to you. For neurodivergent individuals, this interactive approach to learning can make complex topics more accessible than traditional search ever could.
- Mike (Assoc. Director Paid Media): The influence of AI on search behavior continues to grow and shows no signs of stopping. Traditional search engines like Google and Bing are still the primary choice for most people seeking out general information, but the appearance of AI summaries on results pages is negatively impacting click-through rates across industries for both organic and paid links. Recent studies indicate that up to 20% of Google search results globally now include an AI summary, and when an AI summary is present people are almost 50% less likely to click on a traditional search result link. As AI summaries in search results have become more common and familiar to users, it’s also changing how people search – queries are becoming longer, asking questions, or using full sentences. Understanding that dynamic is going to be a critical piece for developing effective SEO and SEM strategies in the future.
- Matt M (Director of Project Management): Users are going to become more reliant on finding quick easy answers rather than forming their own opinions by comparing multiple sources they find from communities (such as Reddit), as they’ll trust the AI to synthesize community consensus for them. Local discovery is going to make a dramatic shift for ease of use and accessibility, such as local/enterprise businesses that will appear to be more relevant both based on geography and also previous AI-search queries. The challenge ahead? Distinguishing between results that reflect genuine community consensus versus those influenced by paid placements.
