AI IS GOING TO CHANGE THE BUSINESS MODEL OF THE WEB.
The business model of the web for the last 15 years has been search.
One way or another, search drives everything that happens online with search engines, social networks, and most of all, AI Chat and AI Search.
CHANGES AT GOOGLE OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS
If you look back 10 years, if you searched on Google, you would get a list of 10 blue links.
Starting in 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches end without a click-in 2024.
The answer is that today, 75 percent of the queries that are put into Google are answered without you leaving Google, and they are responded to on that page.
CLICKS IMPACT GOOGLE SEARCH RANKINGS.
Click ranking was confirmed during the Google antitrust trial and is indicated by the findings of the Google Search leak.
Moreover, it is essential to remember that not all users want to click on a link and visit a website to get an answer. Also, according to technical SEO consultant Pedro Dias on X, many of those zero-click searchers were never your target user/client in the first place.
AI IS UPENDING THE WEB’S ECONOMIC ENGINE, AND GOOGLE IS AT THE CENTER OF THE DISRUPTION.
AI is going to fundamentally change the web’s business model.
For the last 15 years, the web’s business model has been search, and search drives everything that happens online. Moreover, websites, blogs, and directories have grown to depend on the visibility of search engine links and clicks.
ZERO CLICK SEARCHES
Today, 75 percent of the queries get answered without you leaving Google.
This trend, long criticized by publishers and SEOs, is part of a broader concern:
AI companies are using original content to generate answers that rarely/never drive traffic back to creators.
AI CHAT AND SEARCH AGENTS (LLMS) MAKE THE PROBLEM WORSE.
Large language models (LLMs) are accelerating the crisis.
AI companies scrape far more content per user interaction than Google ever has, with even less return to creators.
For example:
Chat GPT
Google Gemini
Perplexity
Meta AI
Grok
Anthropic
If content creators can’t procure value, then they’re not going to create original content.
The modern web is breaking. AI companies are aware of the problem, and the web’s business model can’t survive unless something changes.
HOW DO I PREPARE MY WEBSITE TO GET SEEN IN AI CHAT AND SEARCH?
Today’s AI systems examine vector embeddings, semantic search, cosine similarity, and retrieval augmented generation.
These words are part of the AI engineering lexicon used to understand contextual data.
First, to prepare your website for AI, you need to understand the difference between how AI Agents and Search Engine Crawlers retrieve and synthesize information.
I. Traditional methods of backlinks, meta-tags, and keywords represent the old way of information retrieval, also known as Lexical search.
AI agents are entirely different. For instance, they do not continuously crawl and index the Internet. Instead, they actively search for content online whenever a user prompt requires accuracy and freshness.
Other times, AI agents such as ChatGPT rely on their training data, which includes large volumes of data from books, websites, and other sources for general knowledge queries. For example, AI pulls information from the internet, such as brand mentions and citations from:
a. Online news sources: The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, BCC
b. Major eCommerce stores: Home Depot, Amazon, Walmart
c. User forums: Reddit, Github, Quora
d. Press Release: PR Newswire, EIN Presswire, GlobeNewswire, PRWeb
Moreover, AI tools tend to look for authoritative sources online that frequently update their content.
II. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) play a significant role in how AI tools retrieve information online.
APIs enable AI tools to fetch data directly from a source instead of manually browsing a website. That means a tool like ChatGPT avoids having to crawl a site by using an API instead. Therefore, if you have a public API that search engines are able to index, you stand a greater chance of appearing in more ChatGPT responses. TIP: Make your API AI-Friendly.
a. Include JSON-LD schema markup
b. Allow AI crawlers to access your website content via your robots.txt file.
c. Use an embeddable API or plugin that lets AI assistants query your API
d. We propose adding a /llms.txt markdown file to websites to provide LLM-friendly content. This file offers brief background information, guidance, and links to detailed markdown files.
III. Continue to create high-quality content that ranks well!
Another way to get mentioned more on ChatGPT and other AI agents is to create consistent, high-quality content that ranks well on search engines. In other words, focus on building topical authority for your brand. Topical authority is highly beneficial for both search engines and AI responses. For instance, creating interlinked content clusters will help search engines recognize your expertise on a particular topic (or topics).
IN CONCLUSION: SHOULD YOU OPTIMIZE FOR AI MODELS?
AI optimization shares many similarities with traditional SEO, such as securing backlinks and improving search rankings. AI tools are continuing to rise in popularity, especially in search. Therefore, we recommend balancing AI optimization and traditional SEO practices.
If your website is not appearing in AI chat or search results, give us a call, and let’s get started optimizing it for AI chat and search.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Vidallon, the Creative Director at VISIONEFX, designs professional websites for small business owners throughout the United States. Please read what our customers have to say about VISIONEFX on Google Reviews. For more information, call (757) 619-6456 or use our contact form.
# Optimizing Your Website for AI Search and Chat
Post Excerpts from:
Search Engine Land & The Hoth
