In a recent interview conducted by David Iwanow, Google’s John Mueller discussed the future of SEO in AI Search, explaining which traditional practices will continue to matter and that the rise of AI Search doesn’t necessarily change what makes a successful SEO strategy.
About Those Listicles
The interviewer asked John Mueller about listicles. Listicles are like lists of “top companies” that have been used by companies as a way to influence AI chatbots to rank the company creating the listicle as the top choice in their industry. The interviewer acknowledged their usefulness in general but also pointed out that they’ve also been abused and turned into slop content.
Mueller responded that building a solid foundation for a website is preferable to relying on short-term tactics because those always have an expiration date, whereas a site that focuses on quality, what Mueller terms a solid foundation, doesn’t face that kind of expiration date where traffic disappears.
Mueller responded:
“I think, when I take a step back, like this happens all the time, right? It’s like something comes out and people realize, oh, this actually works particularly well. And then everyone goes off and does it and half the people go off and do it in a particularly bad way.
And then at some point the systems catch up and they’re like, oh, anything that has a listicle is a sign that it’s spam. And it’s like the circle closes and you find something else.
From that point of view, I wouldn’t necessarily say anything that is a listicle is spam.
…It needs to add value. And I think it’s really important to keep in mind that all of these systems are very new, meaning they’re still very much evolving very quickly.
So if you go all out and say, my whole strategy is listicles, then at some point that’s going to switch off and you’re left with nothing really.
Building up a serious, stable foundation for a website, I think that’s the most critical part. And if there are ways that you can play around with some things along the way?
Try things out, maybe that’s fine. But I think you really need to focus on that end goal of having something that search engines and AI systems will want to show to people in the long run.”
Businesses Should Keep An Eye On Their SEO Vendors
The interviewer lamented that shady SEO companies are utilizing low-quality AI SEO tactics in order to rank their clients.
Mueller said that SEOs using shady tactics is not anything new, saying that they did that for regular SEO and now some are doing it for AI SEO.
Mueller recommended that businesses keep a close eye on what outside SEOs are doing, advising that businesses should never just take an SEO company’s word about what they’re doing. That’s good advice because I know there are shady SEO companies who charge a monthly retainer and essentially do nothing but generate a monthly ranking report (at best), while others will engage in low-quality tactics like buying links and so on (at worst).
Mueller responded:
“But that’s always been the case, right? It’s like you’re paying consultants and they do, I don’t know, keyword stuffing. Or back in the early days, it’s like white text on white background.
And it’s like, it works for a bit, but at some point, it doesn’t work. So I think as a small business, you have to always question what your vendors are doing and always think about..”
Technical SEO Will Remain Relevant For AI SEO
Mueller explained that AI system answers rely on factors that are inherently classic SEO, and for that reason, he expects technical SEO will continue to be important. Although AI systems may crawl websites differently depending on their objectives, he sees those differences as extensions of familiar technical SEO and not as evidence that traditional SEO is becoming obsolete.
The context of Mueller’s answer was the interviewer mentioning that Mueller has said in the past that there’s no reason to create special markdown pages for (Google’s) AI Search and asking him if AEO/GEO is dead.
Mueller responded:
“I think you’ll see that a lot of the AI systems, they build on SEO. So from that point of view, I think it’s going to continue to be relevant. I think especially technical SEO is going to remain very relevant.
It’ll be a little bit different because my understanding is AI systems crawl slightly differently. They have different intents with regards to crawling because they want to do it for training versus just like getting the freshest content. But that’s just is like another flavor of technical SEO. So I think that’s great.”
Takeaways And Thoughts
Something that many experienced SEOs see (and I have over 25 years’ experience) is that people who are relatively new to SEO are rediscovering old ways of doing things, and so there is a resurgence in old, old tactics like cloaking (showing one thing to AI crawlers and something else to users) as if that’s something new. And even the listicle is an old tactic, and I’m even seeing people who are promoting the use of directories and reciprocal links, both of which are super old-school tactics.
Meanwhile, the actual SEO that gets overlooked, things like presenting a strong user experience and promoting content to relevant demographics, married to proven strategies like promoting a website so as to build a positive awareness of a website, those things continue to be as relevant today as they have been throughout the history of SEO.
Watch the John Mueller interview here:
