The Rise of the Machines and How they Affect Your Brand’s Search Results.
Well…we knew it was coming, search results are no longer ten blue links with some PPC ads. The results are now in AI Mode, replacing the results that we’re all used to (links and ads) with conversational responses written by Google’s A.I. chatbot…complete with a from time to time disclaimer that AI sometimes gets it wrong so be careful (as if traditional SEO always got it right).
Important: LOL
This has major implications in that people are not clicking through to your website like they did before. (This New York Times article is excellent about the effects). Websites that rely on big traffic are taking a hit, and brands and clients are seeing traffic dip as people’s behaviours shift to searching with ChatGPT and similar.
So…what is AI Search?
In a caveat riddled internet nutshell, AI Search is/are the results and answers that we now see in Google, Chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude and a plethora of other AI tools (has anyone else noticed everything seems to have AI as an appendage now? Anyone else fed up with yet another AI tool interrupting your flow??)
Some of you will remember this guy/scourge…and if you do, you’ll defo remember the names you used to call him. AI Tools are beginning to remind me a lot of how annoying he was and how ineffective…spto tyrign ot ceorrct ym spllenig…and YES he has my eyebrows!
Going forward, and accepting our robotty-overlord future:
What can we do to increase your brand awareness in AI Search?
We now have to build your brand, its assets and content so a ‘machine’ can understand it. We now have to make sure your brand shows up in AI search results or AI tools like Chat GPT, Claude, Perplexity etc.
We now have to make sure people reading your content don’t dismiss it as AI slop or AI generated. This is where brand first digital thinking comes into play. You must sound like something, and that something must be your brand. You must stand for something and that something must be your brand values.
Is AI Search a good thing?
It depends on who you ask, but, in our book, yes it is.
Why?
Because it means you have to create good content that is creative and credible. It also has to sound natural and have its own tone of voice, these are things Ebow Digital loves to help our clients create, manage and distribute.
Rumour even has it that people will be penalised for having too much AI produced content – this is to avoid more slop on the web. Craftsmanship still has a role. Craftsmanship is king of cut-through .
What can Ebow Digital help with?
At Ebow Digital we use our Four Corners of Excellence: Strategy | Creativity | Marketing | Technology together to amplify your brand and its essence (the heartbeat of any good brand) across ‘traditional’ search (SEO), AI Search (AEO and GEO).
SEO gets you found.
AEO makes you the answer.
GEO helps you become the recommendation.
Brand makes you the choice.
What is AEO?
AEO is the new world of search and user behaviours that brands are now in. Put simply, you must strengthen your website and your content so search engines and AI-powered tools can not only understand them, but use them to answer people’s questions.
Think about it…beforehand we all searched the internet using keywords, now…we all ask Chat GPT questions like:
Q: I want to go golfing in South West Ireland in September. Can you recommend a tour operator?
A: We’ve highlighted our client(s) in these results:
Q: I am spending a day in Dublin on Nov 29, 2026 near Grafton Street and would like some things to do…
A: We’ve highlighted our client(s) in these results:
What is GEO?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation. Basically, it’s how we make your brand and content easier for generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s AI and Copilot, to understand your brand, trust your brand, reference your brand use your brand’s content and potentially/hopefully recommend your brand.
It’s not about creating realms and realms of AI generated content/slop, cats with grenades, or human created content (yep, I just wrote human created 😰), it’s about building a premium and credible digital presence for your brand that gives these systems, and people, good reasons to engage with it and see it as an authority.
It’s now the Battle for Hearts, Minds & Machines ❤️🧠🤖
Ebow Digital has always believed that the best brands compete and win the battle for hearts and minds. The best brands appeal to both logical and emotional factors in consumer decision making. They love your store, and, they know its good value, is the perfect example.
Now, AI adds a third audience: machines.
Our goal is not to make your brand become robotic. It is to make your brand’s humanity and meaning and essence unmistakable wherever people and platforms encounter them.
Hearts
Create a distinctive brand people can feel, recognise and remember.
Minds
Give audiences clear reasons to trust your expertise and choose your organisation.
Machines
Give search engines and AI systems consistent, structured and credible signals they can interpret, retrieve and reference.
Finally, and freakily, are the machines here to stay?
Yes.
And it’s only going to get more and more fragmented (as if it wasn’t enough already).
And as much as we may think this is a bad thing, there is massive opportunity in it. Google’s search experience has gotten worse and worse over the years and PPC ads, in our opinion, are now a tax you have to pay to just have an online presence.
The new era of AI search tools are a much better experience (don’t get too excited though, enshittification* will arrive, it always does…) and allow much more opportunity and new audiences to reach, and thus, lower Google’s stranglehold.
*What does Enshittification mean? 💩
According to the internet stalwarts, and generally reliable Wikipedian’s at Wikipedia:
“Enshittification is the gradual process where online platforms and services decline in quality over time as companies shift from pleasing users to maximizing profits.”
What is Ebow Digital’s laundry list of AI Search Services?
We cover all the bases, and we make sure to execute everything we do in a manner that you can be proud of, and that can get you results in the new robot-ty machine-y world of the even wider web!
- Search and AI visibility strategy
- Technical SEO and website audits
- Audience, keyword, question and prompt research
- Content strategy, information architecture and optimisation
- Structured data, schema and machine readable content
- Digital PR, authority and third-party corroboration
- Search, answer engine and AI visibility measurement
- Website redesign, migration and AI-search readiness
Contact Ebow Digital now and find out what the machines are saying about your brand…
Have a look at our Trinity College Dublin case study, the work is lovely, so is our SWING Golf work and case study.
I write like I mean it and enjoy bad punctuation and long sentences so you know it’s real.
Be real. There’s too much fake.
Dayvid.