This article is adapted from our October newsletter, a monthly round-up from [the better web co team], straight to your inbox. Subscribe to not miss future issues.
Conversations at the better web co this month have been dominated by one thing: Google and AI.
Is AI Mode a true replacement for search? What are the real-world impacts of AI Overviews? And what does it mean when Google says it’s “redefining spam”?
With the VP of Search, Liz Reid, making headlines about how Google plans to “show people more of what they want,” it’s clear the search landscape is shifting once again.
But what does that mean for publishers, content creators, and brands who rely on Google traffic?
To unpack it all, our Editorial Director, [Gareth Beavis], sat down with our Founder, [Sam Robson], to discuss what’s really changing and how brands can stay ahead.
Sam’s Insight: The Founder Q&A
Gareth Beavis: What did you make of Liz Reid’s recent comments, saying that Google is trying to ‘show people more of what they want’?
Sam Robson: It sounds sensible on the surface, but platforms like Google do have some responsibility not just to serve users what the data says they engage with most.
When platforms do that, at best, you could end up with people just watching cute puppy videos. At worst, everything becomes an echo chamber and you never get exposed to alternative viewpoints..
Personalisation is important, but if pushed too far, it devalues platforms. You want a mix of curation, personalisation and quality signals, so people are still exposed to other types of content.
Reid also said a lot of stuff that we want to hear, such as AI content isn’t always spam. That’s sensible, and correctly understands the nuance that it’s the quality and value of the content that’s most important, not how it was created.
We also know, from an SEO perspective, that humans have also created a lot of content that’s not great over the last 10 years.
It doesn’t matter where it comes from; slop is slop.
GB: What I found interesting was the idea that the definition of ‘spam’ has been upgraded, where she said it’s ‘content that doesn’t add very much, kind of tells you what everybody else knows’
That feels like a pretty seismic change, based on the way some sites create content – so that sounds like it’s going to materially affect some if true.
SR: Over the last few years, we’ve seen that what Google says and what actually happens are not necessarily entirely aligned.
It’s interesting that Google has decided it can redefine the word spam, because I wouldn’t necessarily say that ‘churnalism’ (rounding up or re-reporting other news in your own tone and style) is spam.
What’s worrying is that this term has negative connotations, and it generally means you’re intentionally doing something wrong. However, we’ve heard this stuff from Google before, saying ‘we value unique voices’ and then you see content syndicated to Yahoo outranking the sites that originally wrote it.
So, on a surface level, great, you’re not going to give as much visibility to people who are just regurgitating what’s already out there. You’re going to boost your sources. Brilliant. Let’s actually see if that happens.
GB: A lot of people are worried about the impact AIOs are having on their traffic. What about Reid’s comment that people click on ‘richer and deeper’ content in AIOs?
SR: It feels like it’s passing the buck a little bit. It depends on the framing. How has the AIO surfaced it to show it’s richer? If it says ‘This is a really important article’, people will click that. If it just regurgitates the source material with no emphasis, then it’s much harder.
Again, on paper, the comment makes perfect sense. In reality, it’s still very much under Google’s control. It’s about how the algorithm can correctly identify ‘value’, and how that recognition will play out.
GB: How do you think this all plays into the increasing presence of AI Mode in search results? What will ‘organic search’ look like in the coming months and years?
SR: The realistic answer is that no one quite knows.
A good way to think of it is that with AI Mode coming in, search engines are splitting between ‘answer engines’ and the search experience we’ve known for years.
Whilst I try not to get too caught up in terminology (I don’t care if you call it GEO or AI search, for example), I have started using this differentiation myself mentally.
So it’s not about the true definition. It doesn’t matter that Perplexity labels itself an Answer Engine and Google a Search Engine. But, when you’re targeting a search term, I think it’s a really helpful exercise.
If someone is just looking for an answer to a thing, like the time or date of an event, you should let them get it somewhere else, because LLMs will do an increasingly good job there.
This kind of purely informational content only really became a ‘thing’ in the last 10 years, as publishers got fixated on answering ever-more specific search queries to gain traffic.
GB: Yeah, headlines became about keyword management and intent more than being playful and alluring – even though it’s slightly shifting back recently, the world of content is still very different to a decade ago.
SR: Publishers never used to cover topics that were only informative. Pre-internet, that’s what encyclopedias were for, right? Factual stuff with no colour, with no further insight – just ‘this is what happened’.
Obviously, encyclopedias were made redundant by the internet because why would you then need them when the facts can be called up at will?
But the internet didn’t get rid of all books. It didn’t end other forms of media that offered more than just the basic facts. If you care about a subject, you crave more depth, detail, first-hand experience and storytelling.
That’s where the future of online content is likely to sit. And that goes back to the ‘old days’ of search, where journalism, insight and experience really mattered.
We utilised SEO to help people discover great content we were proud of; we didn’t create content just because we thought it served SEO purposes.
So now, before you think about creating content, ask: will this be solved by an answer engine, or will someone discover it through a search engine?
GB: Sure – and that’s good, because it makes the principles of E-E-A-T more important than ever. But what if AI Mode begins to take that too? Giving users that extra context so that they can work out what the reader would want to read next?
SR: Think of it like recipes: there are loads of sites telling you how to make bolognese, but there will still always be a place for cookbooks. Cooking TV shows will still exist, because there’s more to cooking than just combining tomatoes and onions and mince.
GB: But if that recipe from the cookbook is online, what’s to stop ChatGPT or AI Mode scraping it and sharing it there? Or the opinion of an art critic being repeated in the AI chatbot environment?
How would someone create content that would always stay ‘book-like’ rather than being easily regurgitated by LLMs?
SR: Well, yes, that’s the thing. People move from cookbooks to TV shows to live events to get that connection. We’re seeing lots of chefs who actually turn up on stage and perform, because they’ve become a brand in themselves.
So fundamentally, it goes back to connection. Even if an LLM can export his recipes, it can’t be Gordon Ramsey and go and swear at people in a kitchen.
There are still bits of personality that come out that AI can’t replicate. They can’t be as soothing as Nigella Lawson is. With cooking, you have a blend of art, science and entertainment, and AI can’t effectively cover all three of those bases.
When you wrote reviews on TechRadar, I wanted to read what Gareth said about the iPhone. I didn’t just care about the score you gave out of five.
I actually wanted to read the way that you’d constructed those sentences and put it all together, telling a story about why it’s interesting, how the phone is to live with day-to-day and whether it’s worth upgrading (and inevitably finding a way to put a hidden picture of your cat in there).
If you want content to be valuable, you have to put effort in. If you’re consistent with that effort and reach the readers where they are, that’s how you ensure you remain relevant and valuable.
GB: I completely agree. Every good writer I’ve ever met isn’t afraid of hard work – it barely even feels like work when you want to get the truth out there or tell a great story.
Some brands are becoming focused on ‘bottom of the funnel’ content, as that’s what they’ve heard they should focus on.
Yet I’ve seen great results when you combine ‘SEO content’ (i.e., the pieces that are driven by reader intent data) with human stories – not just telling them what’s happened, but why it matters.
What’s the solution to get that in front of more people? Should brands just be spreading their content across more platforms?
SR: The key thing is you’ve got to become known for something that you do better than other people.
Like we talked about with the chefs, people seek content out because they value something about it, or the person making it. That’s more important than the platform.
Publishers have sometimes been guilty of thinking ‘oh, we need more video and social content’ – but they haven’t really thought of whether they got something that actually works on video.
Someone being a great writer does not mean they’re going to be great on TV. Someone great on social media is not necessarily going to be a great reviewer.
If you’re a larger company, or a conglomerate of people, yes, you should be multiplatform and you should be in as many places as you can be, and you should hire people who are specialists in each format
But it’s really important to be consistent, though, and not to have a completely different voice on every platform.
That’s how it links into the world of SEO. Don’t get too sucked into ‘ways’ of doing things, such as putting in a specific number of keywords or writing the ideal post for the LinkedIn algorithm, because the ‘advice’ says you have to do exactly this thing.
That might reach more people, but whenever you look at anything like that, if you’ve got half a brain, you just think: “This is just optimised garbage”, and they’re less likely to return.
GB: So it’s all about being completely authentic now if you’re worried about AI search?
SR: Of course, there is also still a world of optimisation out there. It’s just different to what many will have been used to.
So while people aren’t clicking out from AI Mode very much, if your business is more service-based, that’s fine.
AI searches for recommendations will be subjective, such as ‘what restaurant should I go to?’ That world is still going to be quite heavily optimised, and where real value can be added.
GB: That’s where content that talks about the experience, the authentic nature of the night out, is really important. AI search will scrape that, understand it and use that to make a recommendation, because either you’ve specified that you want somewhere with a warm atmosphere, or the chatbot will know your favourite styles.
SR: We all know the world of AI search is a worrying place for media publishers because it just doesn’t offer the traffic that was there before.
But if you’re a restaurant, it’s a less seismic change. AI mode is just another place to get discovered, so you tweak your strategy and tactics a little to have a better chance of being the cited answer.
It’s not enough to just have a good website, but also the easy stuff of making sure that you’ve got your phone numbers, your customer service details, what’s on your menu, who’s cooking – tell that story yourself a bit more.
Ranking well in third-party review sites also takes on a whole new importance when it comes to AI search, so having good PR is key too.
It might be that LLMs are better at Google at that – really niche queries of different dietary types or whether the restaurant uses organic ingredients – that’s been pretty poor in search, and still is now.
If you search for an Italian restaurant, Google will often just point you to the nearest chain. No thanks.
The small detail that’s added now has the potential to become more valuable to be able to show how unique your specific business is – and having a new way to showcase that is a nice place to be.
Final Thoughts
AI search is changing the rules again, but the fundamentals of great content remain the same:
- Be useful.
- Be unique.
- Be authentic.
- Be consistent.
That’s how you’ll stay visible (and valuable) no matter how Google redefines the web.
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