As much as all the SEO folks are hoping there’ll be some magic bullets for analytics in AI – it’s just not going to happen. It’ll probably be largely a black hole from here on out.
1. Searches are not keywords anymore, It could start by pasting in a paragraph, an image, a video, an email, or combination of any format.
2. Because it’s chat, searches are iterative. You’re modifying & nudging the previous response, not typing in 3 new keywords. You’ll never know which part of the chat created the trigger.
3. No-click – most answers will be answered in the chat window, resulting in no clicks, but also no links even provided. This doesn’t mean the chat didn’t eventually result in a sale, it just means you have no chance of tracking it.
4. Offline. We’re going to see LLMs built in to our phones and computers. It’s just much cheaper to run them that way. In many cases, that will be as useful to the customer as a search on the web. You’ll never see any of this.
5. Agent-to-Agent. ChatGPT is an agent today when it searches. But increasingly, the agents will go out and use MCPs, APIs, browse data etc and you’ll never know what it did with that information. It gets passed between agents to complete tasks and it’s potentially never viewable by a human.
“Never viewable by a human” doesn’t mean it didn’t work.
There are more.
You’ll see lot’s of gurus of course claiming to have all of the answers. Some might be useful. Others will just pump out nonsense for exposure.
The BEST simple thing you can do right now, is to get YOUR company data published on your website. All of it. FAQs, detailed product information, anything a customer may ever ask about.
