Artificial intelligence (AI) has made swift moves into nearly every facet of life. Within even a simple internet search, AI technology sweeps between algorithms and search results to glean key details and present them to users without needing to click a single link. All in an instant, these non-human actors, or AI agents, appear to be navigating a space between people and the world around them, while the world and the internet itself work to keep up.
Business leaders and digital creators alike can benefit from these intermediaries with the tools to leverage AI power rather than try to ignore it. AI is already shaping and reshaping internet traffic, SEO playbooks, and ultimately human decision-making. Using AI-powered tools enables users to automate processes, optimize market research and SEO practices, and create attractive content that works with AI for better, smarter results.
The New AI Audience
In digital spaces, views are practically currency, with algorithms having the power to drive viewership or hinder it. As more internet traffic is initiated, filtered, and even summarized by AI models, these systems can considerably impact decision-making. Automated assistants review and retrieve massive amounts of data before presenting a summarized version to the user.
Subsequently, following a review of those summarized results, decision-makers help shape what is seen and what is considered trustworthy information. Understanding how these AI tools interact with what users view as reliable is key to fostering customer relationships between consumers and businesses, or even content creators and their viewers.
Optimizing for the AI Agent
With this new intermediary AI layer, businesses need to understand how to optimize search results for an AI agent, rather than a human being. Naturally, this presents a certain amount of challenge as business professionals are far more equipped to cater to humanized queries than how an AI agent might review and respond to information. In the past, a marketing team would largely study how to attract human customers; now, they must optimize to understand how to communicate with the technology that delivers information to them.
How Traditional Funnels are Failing
Traditional marketing efforts rely on so-called funnels, which describe how a consumer is initially introduced to a product offering to become a loyal customer of that product or service. In today’s internet environment, the search results are often summarized, and the prospective customer may never even click on the link to learn more. They might have been informed of the service in the summary, but whether the marketing touchpoint occurred is unclear. The AI intermediary disrupts the traditional funnel pattern, and business organizations must adapt to this shifting environment.
Optimizing Content for Machines and Humans
The solution then is to ensure that content is optimized for both man and machine. Content creators and businesses must restructure web content in a way that communicates with AI and is accessible to humans through SEO. Newly imagined guiding principles should ideally include clarity, entities, and provenance. Rather than leaning heavily on one facet or another, content optimization must strive for a balance that attracts human interaction and AI models.
The Metrics Have Changed
Unsurprisingly, the formerly reliable metrics like bounce rates, sessions, and click-throughs are less informative in the AI age. AI agents generate invisible traffic and non-human engagement undetected by these traditional measures, but can still impact viewership. Metrics must consider these non-human interactions for a clearer picture of reach and accessibility.
Why it Matters
Some may argue that AI is a fad, or their unchanged marketing practices have yet to take a hit despite the proliferation of large language models. Still, organizations would do well to incorporate forward-thinking best practices, be ready to pivot, and embrace change as it comes. Many enterprises are quickly adopting large language models, and large search engine providers have incorporated these AI agent-based search assistants. By and large, AI optimization is not tomorrow’s task; it is here today, and appears poised to stay.