Welcome to the Age of A.I. You’ve seen the advent and ascent of artificial intelligence, dear human. You can tell the kiddos that you remember a time when there was no ChatGPT or Gemini or Perplexity. Heck, you’ll be able to tell kids when there wasn’t a different A.I. kiosk on every corner (of the internet, at least). It is a wild and wily herd of cats that we humans have let out of the bag. But is there a correct way of referring to the discipline of herding such A.I. felines?
What do you call A.I. search optimization?
I don’t mean to put a terrible idea in your head, but you could just copy that question and paste it into the Copilot Search in Bing search box. But please don’t do that! Give this kind, well-meaning human a chance before you check me against Bing’s A.I. answer.
The answer is: Time will truly tell.
My two cents are that the Search world still needs to settle on its preferred term for referring to the processes and techniques that marketing professionals, product developers, and engineering experts will use to increase their websites’ likelihood of being referenced in A.I. search results. We all know “S.E.O.” by heart. Your grandma has probably even heard of SEO. But what should we make of the terms that are vying to become the artificial intelligence version of “search engine optimization”? Here are some things to keep in mind.
Let’s break down the A.I. search experience
If you’re still with me, thank you. You are a search geek or linguistic dork or a member of my family (or all of the above). Either way, you rock. And I hope you’ll enjoy the following (100% human-brain generated) quick breakdown of the artificial-intelligence search experience.
1. A search engine is still a search engine
This is the easy part. We are all as used to using search engines as we are to using toasters and tooth brushes. A search engine is still a search engine whether it is Google or Perplexity. If there is a search box into which you enter (or speak) some kind of query and then have a technology spit out some results, it’s a search engine.
Then why isn’t optimizing a website for ranking in an A.I. search also called “search engine optimization,” eh? Ah, if only the SEO Director in me could have directed that that be made so. But the reality is that while SEO is still incredibly important for A.I. search optimization, and SEO best practices are still foundational for A.I. searches, the kind of search engine is different when it comes to artificial intelligence.
2. A generative search engine is a different breed of cat
Google has been the world’s biggest search engine for decades—by far, dominating ~70% of global searches. If we’re sticking with our cat metaphor from above, that means that Google has been the 800-pound gorilla, er, saber-tooth tiger of the planet’s search engines. Artificial intelligence search has threatened to dethrone the King Cat. That is because A.I. search is so powerful, so unlimited that its inherent potential became the first true threat to Google’s dominance.
Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning give the A.I. search engines true intelligence, which grows and learns essentially everything there is out there on this planet that keyword-centric Google Search used to rule. Add to that “generative search” and you end up with A.I. search engines that actually generate their own content, answer direct questions, and keep up a contextual theme as you essentially converse with it in a particular session. The saber-toothed cat is now on a leash and standing in the shadow of a beloved, bipedal, walking, talking Tony the Tiger with the sentient brain of HAL 9,000.
3. LLMs teach the new cat newer tricks
Large language models (LLMs) help the generative search engine to actually learn and to understand real, tangible, human language. This core aspect is “generative A.I.” Generally speaking, the bot may seek content on the internet, keep internalizing what it learns, and then is able to provide you, dear human, with a more personalized set of search results than the old-fashioned, keyword-dependent search results of the saber-toothed variety.
As I wrote, the good news is that SEO still helps with generative search.
So what’s the A.I. version of the term “SEO”?
The short answer is that you can take your pick right now, and then stay consistent in your usage of it. Whether you go with
- generative search optimization (GSO) or
- generative engine optimization (GEO) or
- A.I. search optimization (AISO) or even
- AI-powered search optimization (too clumsy for an acronym/initialism!)
the particular term and its acronym don’t matter as much as your overall understanding of generative search and the reality that these terms are also relatively new and in the process of being adopted by society at large. Yup, we humans will align on a favorite.
My vote is for generative search optimization, because I think that it is most important to reflect the importance of the act of searching. Human beings will become more and more dependent on generative engines, but our primary goals in using them will be to find the x‘s and y‘s at the end of search quests. So let’s keep this new generative-A.I. frontier focused on the timeless human act of searching.
Let’s discuss your GSO ASAP
Is your brand appearing in A.I. search results? Are you monitoring your website traffic gains from Gemini, ChatGPT, and the like? I would love the chance to discuss your GSO thoughts and needs, and would really like to help get your products and content out in front of your competitors on the generative search front. So please reach out so we can go GSO!