Nasser: 

Welcome to Shift Happens, I’m Nasser Sahlool with DAC.  Today on Shift Happens, I’m joined by Matt Southern, senior news writer at Search Engine Journal. Matt has spent years covering SEO, AI, search platform changes and the questions marketers are asking as search continues to evolve. 

Matt is actually one of my favorite writers on this subject, and one that I’ve read for many, many years. In this episode, we’re talking about he’s hearing from search marketers right now, because the questions are getting bigger than Google rankings alone. Marketers are trying to understand AI search, zero click behavior, Amazon, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, maps, marketplaces, and how all of these environments shape the way people discover, compare, validate, and choose brands. So today we’ll separate the signal from the noise, what’s overhyped, what’s underestimated, and what marketers should actually do next. Matt, welcome to Shift Happens. 

Matt:  

Thank you for that warm introduction, Nasser. It’s a pleasure to be here. And thank you so much for being a reader. 

Nasser: 

Absolutely, it’s what I do with my time. So, Matt, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on is that Search Engine Journal has a front row seat to what marketers are asking about search right now, and the questions seem bigger than just how do we rank on Google? Marketers are trying to understand AI search, Google’s changing results page or lack of page? Amazon, TikTok, all of these different areas, all the places where people now discover, compare and validate brands. So from where you sit at Search Engine Journal, what are search marketers asking right now and what should they be asking? 

Matt:  

Well, one thing I’m noticing is that the questions people are asking are getting a lot grimmer over the past year. It used to be, how do I rank for this? And now it’s more like, is SEO even worth it anymore? Do new publishers stand a chance, and are website still needed? Those are the kinds of questions I’m getting. And I think the honest answer to that is it depends on what kind of SEO you’re talking about. If you mean launching a site and filling it with content you could have gotten anywhere else and collecting ad revenue from it, yeah, that version is in serious trouble. Google is saying that pretty openly right now. 

At a recent conference, they used the expression commodity versus non commodity content, and the message was pretty clear about what type of content they’re trying to reward. But SEO is a way to get good work in front of people who are looking for it, like a business sharing a case study of how they solved a customer’s problem, something that can help other people, that’s not dead. And in fact, you know, SEO is probably more important than it’s ever been for that type of content. Because one people are hungry for it, and two, Google wants to surface it. So you just have to give them the right signals. 

Nasser: 

You know, it’s funny, I can’t think of another industry or category where people are constantly having to say, no, this category or industry is not dead. And I think I’ve been hearing that said from, I don’t know, going to search marketing conferences back in the early 2000 and it just constantly is this thread. It’s like, no, no, no, we still exist. We still matter, right? 

Matt: 

Oh, it’s been on life support my whole career. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Nasser: 

I want whatever they’re drinking if it means that it leads to that kind of longevity. So wherever the search industry changes, there’s always a mix of real signal and hype. What do you think is being overhyped right now? 

Matt: 

In my opinion, the idea that AI is going to replace traditional search at least any time in the near future is overhyped. You know, Google just reported search revenue is up 19%, queries are at an all time high. Whatever is changing and things are changing of course, it’s not a replacement story. At least not yet, and maybe not ever. It might end up being more of an expansion. So more places to search, more ways to get answers… 

But Google is still sitting in the middle of all of it and connected to that,  I also think that the rush to chase every new AI search tactic is overrated. And a reason for that is because the citation patterns change every time there’s a new model update. So if you’re building a whole strategy around how ChatGPT cite sources today, that might not work after the next model rolls out. So the better move is what it’s always been, which is to prioritize based on your audience, your business model, and your category. That’s not the most exciting answer to give, but it’s a lot more durable than chasing whatever the hottest AI tactic is right now. 

Nasser: 

100% agree. So on the other side of this, what are marketers underestimating? 

Matt:  

As far as underestimating, I’d point to a few things. First is how much influence they might already have before anyone clicks anything. You know, a buyer might read an AI generated summary that was shaped by your business content and make a decision based on that,  and you might never know. That’s happening right now and there’s no analytics for it at the moment. 

Second, I think the basics are being overlooked. One of the jobs of an SEO traditionally, is to help ensure a brand is represented consistently and accurately everywhere it appears on the web with things like structured, consistent and trustworthy brand information. Again, that sounds a little bit boring, but it does matter, and AI systems are pulling from every available data source to generate answers and recommendations. 

So if your brand information is inconsistent across sources or incomplete or outdated, you might be misrepresented by those AI models that are influencing customer decisions. That also applies to reviews and Reddit discussions, YouTube videos. All of that is feeding the AI systems that answer questions about your business category. So if your business already has real conversations happening about it on Reddit, and real customers leaving reviews on maps and hands on content on YouTube, then you’re in a stronger position than you might realize and you could be underestimating that. 

Nasser: 

So the danger here isn’t just losing traffic, it’s losing influence earlier in the journey, especially when we consider how important these areas are. You know, it’s interesting when I contrast this conversation with performance marketers and media. And there it seems to be a similar conversation where people are so used to kind of return on ad spend metrics and so on, that there’s sometimes resistance in moving beyond the bottom of the funnel media into more upper funnel media. 

What you’re basically saying is on the organic side, it’s a very similar requirement for long term health, is we need to consider the entire journey and all of the areas that influence beyond the website itself. 

Matt: 

Yeah, absolutely. There’s so much that happens between someone searching and making a decision that if you’re not showing up at every touchpoint, that is a real danger. 

Nasser: 

Absolutely. So let’s talk about Google itself. We don’t want to suggest the marketers should move away from Google. As you said, their search revenue has gone up even with their latest earnings, especially in the US and Canada. But the way that Google works as a marketing environment has changed. How should marketers think about it now? 

Matt: 

Well, I think they should still see Google as foundational. It’s still the center of most search strategies, and it should be. The experience of using Google is changing, but the volume is still there. So walking away from it doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint, but it’s becoming something different. Google used to be a list of links that people would click and read through to make a decision, and now Google itself is more like a decision interface. You can get immediate answers from AI overviews. 

There’s product comparisons and checkout pages right on the search results page. So Google is increasingly the place where the decision gets made, not just where the research starts. And that changes what it means to show up there. You can be visible on Google and still not get the click because the person got what they needed without ever leaving the search result page. A useful way to think about it, in my opinion, is can Google answer this in two sentences? So if someone’s looking for store hours or return policies, or what size does something comes in, that’s a two-sentence answer and Google’s got that handled. It’s normal to lose traffic from those types of pages. But if what you’re offering goes deeper than that, like original data or a first-hand account or even a custom tool that they can download, that’s the content Google can’t replace. And that’s where clicks are still happening. 

Nasser: 

So that’s really interesting because, you know, telling people that it’s not just about rankings and organic sessions and visits to your website. I mean, that’s search Kryptonite right there. The way that a lot of people have measured this historically over the years. But you’re saying that success is more than that now? 

Matt: 

Oh, well, rankings and traffic still matter, of course, but they’re incomplete. And if that’s all you’re tracking, you’re only seeing a part of the picture. There’s a growing list of things that matter that don’t show up in a traditional SEO report like, are you appearing in AI overviews? Are you getting cited in AI chatbot answers? What does your local presence look like? Is Google’s new “ask maps” feature recommending you? Success on Google means showing up credibly in the moments that shape customer decisions, and that could be an AI overview. It could be a Reddit thread. It could be a YouTube video someone watches before they buy something. You can’t always measure that impact directly, but if you’re only looking at rankings and sessions you’re missing parts of the picture that are becoming a lot more important. 

Nasser: 

So let’s move beyond Google, and talk about a little brother that’s been around for a long time. Our friend Bing. And I’m going to lead into this with a little bit of an anecdote. I remember a few years ago, I was sitting there on the couch and I was with my now wife, then girlfriend.  So this is I’m really kind of dating this. And she was watching Gossip Girl. It wasn’t me. I want you to understand that I wasn’t watching Gossip Girl, but my then girlfriend was and one of the characters asked someone a question and the other one said, oh yeah, you can just Bing that. And I was like, wait a second, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. Is that something that’s broken into the zeitgeist?  And then I realized that it was just a sponsored placement. But is there still a role for Bing in this conversation? 

Matt: 

Well, I don’t know Nasser, let me Bing that for you. But yeah. There’s definitely a role for Bing and more than most people think. Bing quietly climbed past 10% market share in the US, and it recently hit a billion monthly active users. And in certain categories, that’s a bigger deal than market share numbers suggests.  

So I’m not saying that you need a separate strategy for Bing, but you should at the absolute minimum, check your indexing and Bing webmaster tools and make sure your site is being crawled. That’s important because ChatGPT’s search results run on Bing’s index for web results. So when someone asks ChatGPT a question and it pulls in web sources, it’s pulling from Bing. And if your site isn’t indexed properly, you might be invisible in ChatGPT’s web results as well. 

Nasser: 

So what you’re saying is Sam Altman is a Gossip Girl fan. That’s what I just took away from this. 

Matt: 

100%, never misses an episode. 

Nasser: 

All right, so that takes us into AI search, which of course is a very, very big topic right now. And a lot of marketers are trying to understand ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, you know, Google AI overviews and all of these answer-based experiences. What actually changes for brands? 

Matt: 

As we touched on a little bit, the biggest change is what happens between the search and the decision. You know, there’s the whole AI layer in the middle now that you need to consider that summarizing, comparing things and making recommendations to people. So a brand can influence a purchase or a choice without ever getting a click. And we touched on that, but we didn’t get into what to do about it. 

And the answer to that is not to try to game the system.  There’s no trick to getting ChatGPT to cite you more. On top of that, the citation patterns change with every model update. So the tactics used today might not work for the models tomorrow. The better move is to make your brand easier to understand, easier to verify, easier to trust, and easier for AI to cite. And that’s a lot less exciting than, “Here are five ways to optimize for ChatGPT today.” But that’s the more realistic answer. 

Nasser: 

So you mentioned to make sure that your brand is easy to understand. And I think this is a really critical point because some brands work in technical spaces or scientific spaces or B2B environments where there’s a lot of jargon. And from my understanding, the AI platforms have a harder time in understanding that versus write it as if you’re talking at a grade school level, and they’re much more likely to understand. Write it for the layman as opposed to for the scientist. Is that a fair statement when you say make your content easier for the language models to understand? 

Matt: 

Yeah, that’s definitely a part of it. But the biggest part of it is consistency. Like, you don’t want your Google Business Page to say one thing and your website services page to say another thing. It has to be easy to understand everywhere that it crawls your business and your business shows up. It has to see a consistent answer and that makes it easier to understand. But even then it can still get things wrong sometimes. So the trick is, you know, give it as many signals as possible. 

Nasser: 

Definitely. So when we talk about signals, let’s move a little beyond that. One of the points in the article that you put up on this subject recently, which we’re going to have a link in the description to reference, is that a lot of search behavior never touches the traditional search engine. So let’s talk about that. Where do platforms like Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Maps fit into a modern search strategy? 

Matt: 

Okay. Well, that’s a great question. That all depends on what your audience is trying to do when they search. So if they’re looking to buy products and they already know what they want, a lot of those searches never touch Google. They just go straight to Amazon. So Amazon is a search engine for reaching an audience with a clear purchase intent. But if they’re looking to learn about a product, maybe they don’t know what they want to buy yet and they want to view a demo, or see a tutorial or a customer review from someone who’s used it. That’s where TikTok and YouTube comes in. 

If they’re looking for feedback from other customers, that’s when you want your brand to show up in Reddit and third party reviews. And Reddit’s interesting right now because it’s pulling double duty. It’s a place where people talk about products and brands, and it’s also one of the most heavily crawled sources for AI generated answers. 

Nasser: 

And what is the role of maps and local in that? 

Matt:  

Oh, if the intent’s local, if they’re searching for a local establishment or something they can buy today that’s maps. And maps is AI powered now as well. Google’s launched Ask Maps, which makes recommendations. It actually will recommend specific businesses based on what you ask, instead of just giving you a list of location pins. So the quality of your Google business profile and your reviews matter more than ever, because AI is actively choosing which businesses to recommend. 

Nasser: 

So marketers shouldn’t ask, should we be on every platform? They should ask, where does our audience build confidence? 

Matt:  

Oh, exactly yeah, that’s a great way to put it. And it’s going to be different for every category. A retailer, a restaurant chain, a health care provider, for example, or, you know, an accounting firm, they all have different search ecosystems. And the customer journey touches different platforms at different stages of that journey. And the job is to map that out for your specific business. And where do your customers discover you? Where do they compare you to alternatives? Where do they go for validation before they make a commitment? And where does that conversation actually happen? 

Each of those touch points might happen somewhere different, and the places that matter most for your specific category are the ones worth investing in. You don’t need to be on all of them. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Just the ones that actually shape decisions for your audience. 

Nasser: 

Okay, so speaking of the audience, if you’re a marketer listening to this and thinking, okay, search is bigger, noisier and harder to measure than it used to be, what should you actually do next? 

Matt: 

The quickest win is to make sure you have a solid foundation in place. And the reason this matters more now is that AI systems rely on the same signals to decide whether to include you and represent you. So the fundamentals aren’t just about Google rankings anymore. The next thing is audit where your brand shows up. Audit your brand’s full search footprint. That includes AI tools, Amazon, Reddit, Maps, YouTube, everything we talked about. If you only know your Google rankings, but you don’t know where your brand shows up or on ChatGPT or what’s being said about it on Reddit, that’s a knowledge gap you have to fill. Next map where the decisions happen, figure out where your audience discovers, compares, and shops, and that can vary by category.  After you’ve identified your top platforms, make your brand easier to understand across them with clear content and consistent entity information, complete product data, location data reviews and third-party signals. 

And lastly, update how you measure your success. Because relying solely on last click organic traffic gives you an incomplete picture as we discussed. Traffic still matters, it’s not the only indicator though. Another good indicator is whether more people are searching for your brand directly. Local search actions is another indicator, tracking customer reviews and overall sentiment. And you can monitor AI visibility using Bing’s AI performance dashboard, which shows how often you’re getting cited, which pages are getting a surface for which queries, and Google doesn’t have anything like that so far. And another thing to consider is review sentiment and share of search signals as an indicator of brand health, beyond organic clicks. And just to make this clear, I’m not saying to replace traffic as a KPI, but it’s time to start adding some new metrics. 

Nasser: 

Love it. So here’s the shift. Search is no longer just about ranking on Google or earning a click to a website. Google still matters. SEO still matters, but the search journey is expanding across AI tools, marketplaces, social platforms, maps, reviews, communities, and recommendation systems. So for marketers, that means the goal is bigger than visibility. The goal is to be understood, trusted and chosen whenever decisions are being shaped. Which, I mean, isn’t that the goal for all of us? The brands that win will be the ones that know which signals matter, which trends are noise, and how to build a search presence that works across the full decision ecosystem. 

Now make it happen. Follow Shift Happens, leave us a review and share this episode with your team. If you have any questions for the podcast, please email us at shifthappens@dacgroup.com, we’d love to hear from you. 

So one thing that I do want to mention there is the upcoming webinar with DAC with Search Engine Journal on May 28th at 2pm Eastern, which is about fixing your KPI blind spots, how to finally tie AI search to performance, which speaks directly to a lot of the things that Matt has been talking to us about. There’s a link in the description below. 

Matt, thank you very much for joining us today.  

Matt: 

Thank you so much for having me. We’ll see you on the webinar. 

 Nasser: 

Thank you very much. I’m Nasser Sahlool.