Advances in AI search are opening a new chapter , as customers seek out alternatives to Google.
- ChatGPT has reached a fresh landmark of 300 million users actively engaged each week .
- Perplexity has grown to serve 100 million search inquiries each week .
- Google’s global market share dropped below 90% for the first time since 2015.
The swift emergence of AI-driven search platforms presents substantial opportunities along with increasing challenges.
On one hand, brands can boost visibility and drive demand like never before.
On the other hand, they face new hurdles, such as copyright concerns, increasing infrastructure costs, and the ongoing challenge of measuring ROI.
Even with changes in search interfaces and consumer behavior, the underlying user intent remains unchanged.
Individuals seek out data – be it via a catalogue, a search engine, or an artificial intelligence interface.
Modern tools just enable customers to reach their destination more quickly.
This increased efficiency compels brands to reconsider the ways their content gets noticed and distributed—lest they vanish amid a growingly intricate search environment.
The new bot landscape
For twenty years, searching has required significant time and effort from customers.
Currently, AI search streamlines and unites the customer journey within an AI platform.
Consequently, we may anticipate changes in traffic patterns as robots assume the primary role in uncovering and disseminating web content for users.
AI search platforms are assuming more responsibilities that were once managed by consumers.
Consequently, forecasts such as those from Gartner — anticipating a A reduction of 25% in search engine traffic anticipated by 2026 As AI chatbots and virtual assistants become more prevalent – these occurrences are growing increasingly probable.
This change is fueled by an increase in automated bot activity and a reduction in human interaction.
However, what precisely defines the emerging bot ecosystem?
Several kinds of crawler bots influence AI results.
- Certain bots, such as OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot, gather and catalog information from the internet similar to conventional search engines like Google and Bing, with the intention of enhancing the precision and reliability of user experiences.
- Others, such as OpenAI’s GPTbot, utilize internet information to enhance and improve their models. large language models (LLMs).
- Nevertheless, others (such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-User) utilize an existing search index, typically from Bing, to deliver up-to-date results.
Every crawling bot employs comparable techniques for exploring and navigating webpages; however, AI-driven crawlers function distinctively compared to conventional search engine crawlers.
By utilizing natural language processing (NLP) alongside machine learning, AI crawlers can grasp content more thoroughly, taking into account context, intent, and subtleties.
Given that AI models are limited to referencing only the information available to them, it's crucial to make sure that AI crawlers discover the most pertinent material related to your brand and offerings.
By February, ChatGPT’s fundamental understanding relies on information up to June 2024, causing an outdated gap of more than seven months.
This means it can’t provide real-time information like the seven-day weather forecast or the latest shopping deals.
Nevertheless, these systems employ retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), depending on up-to-date crawlers and indices like those from Bing to enhance and deliver current answers.
If AI platforms do not recognize your brand, they cannot mention it in their conversational interactions with customers.
Improving for these bots guarantees your brand stays noticeable and competitive.
Dig deeper: AI optimization - Strategies for enhancing your material to align with AI-driven searches and assistants
Here are three methods to kickstart your bot enhancement process:
1. Start with conducting an audit
To enhance functionality for bots, begin by comprehending their activities on your website and the manner in which the information is handled throughout this process. indexing or training.
Begin with a technical SEO Audit, since the same challenges that have historically impacted Googlebot—such as problems with indexing—will similarly affect these newer, less developed bots and AI engines.
Next, examine how your content – as well as your competitors' – appears across various search and AI platforms.
What chances and areas for improvement do you observe?
Keep in mind that if your content isn't crawled, it won't get indexed, used for training AI models, or viewed by customers.
This stage assists you in determining which content should be revealed, combined, or prevented from being accessed by AI bots.
Consider analyzing your log files to:
- Grasp how robots discover your material.
- Recognize their movement behaviors, size, and speed.
Analyze user agent logs to detect the bots accessing your website — such as Bytespider (TikTok), GPTBot (OpenAI), or ClaudeBot ( Anthropic).
What are they eating and drinking, and in what quantities?
Merge this information with traffic data and analysis to identify trends linking crawling activities and traffic, offering you a more transparent view of return on investment (ROI). This insight will shape your governance strategy accordingly.
Examining log files goes beyond being purely technical—it's also a strategic endeavor.
Through comprehending how bots behave, you can pinpoint performance problems, enhance website efficiency, and boost visibility in conventional as well as AI-driven searches.
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2. Define your objectives and create a governance plan that emphasizes return on investment (ROI).
Consider your website objectives and traffic targets, and assess how well they match up with the utilization of your content.
Examine the expense details, including:
- The cost associated with bots browsing your website.
- The effect on your infrastructure.
After grasping your desired return on investment, create a governance strategy with support from the organization to determine which bots are permitted to access your website and which ones should be restricted.
Significantly, publishers are leading the charge in preventing content scraping, copyright problems, and misuse of material by stopping bots.
After pinpointing the key bots for your brand, refresh search engine crawls of your content to ensure it’s included in AI-produced outcomes.
To do this:
- Keep your sitemaps updated.
- Ping protocols like IndexNow .
- Even send content directly to Bing for indexing.
Dig deeper: 3 reasons why you shouldn’t prevent GPTBot from accessing your website
3. Enhance, polish, and don't overlook the basics
Just like traditional SEO The evolving search environment demands ongoing refinement—this isn’t a “one-and-done” scenario.
We need to continually improve our tactics and adhere to well-established top-tier methods.
Keeping up with the basics of technical SEO and website health remains crucial. This encompasses:
- Strong information architecture.
- Up-to-date sitemaps.
- Tackling problems such as sparse or repetitive content.
Doing well in natural search results continues to be one of the most significant aspects.
For instance, in Google’s AI Overviews:
- Three-quarters of the links Also achieve a ranking of at least 12th place in organic search results.
- Ninety percent of all AI overview links originate from ranks 35 or lower.
As numerous AI platforms obtain up-to-date content from natural search indices, your ranking positions have a direct impact on how visible your brand appears within AI searches.
Despite users not clicking on these links, your natural search positions can still influence how people discover your brand.
To remain noticeable, concentrate on your highest-value material, monitor what’s achieving success, and pinpoint sections needing enhancement.
The bonus?
Powerful organic rankings assist you beyond merely AI overviews.
They enhance visibility on Google searches, Meta AI, voice assistants such as Siri, and various other AI platforms.
Dig deeper: 6 simple methods to adjust your SEO approach for enhanced AI presence
The road ahead
There aren't any strict guidelines – not just yet.
We understand that the basics of SEO remain important, and we're continually discovering what proves effective as the search environment changes.
Approaches may differ across sectors — whether you're a publishing company such as Search Engine Land or a retail business like Nike — yet considerable potential lies ahead, despite the ongoing efforts required.
Dig deeper: Your 2025 strategy guide for AI-driven multi-platform brand presence