The 3 Biggest Mistakes People Make About AI Search Optimisation
Navigating the importance of the old and the new playbooks
There’s no doubting AI search optimisation is the biggest change to search since Google became a household name.
But whilst it’s tempting to tear up the old textbooks, the truth — as ever — is a bit less extreme. So how are people mistaken about AI and its effect on search visibility? Here’s what we’re covering this time:
Why AI search is on everyone’s mind
The 3 biggest mistakes people are making
What to focus on instead
Let’s get started!
All aboard the hype train
There’s this thing called “AI” which has been in the news a lot lately.
Yeah, who knew?
It’s supercharging the world of search, trashing everyone’s metrics and causing marketers to freak out. Google’s dying a death and SEO is becoming totally useless since everyone’s searching on ChatGPT and Perplexity now.
Ok, maybe that was hyperbole.
The truth is, Google are still way at the top of search. But for the first time in about 20 years, other businesses are actually in position to challenge them for the top spot. And if they do bring down the behemoth, then it changes the playbook entirely.
But will they?
Time for the hot take
OpenAI aren’t going to win the fight for domination of AI Search.
Nor will Microsoft or Perplexity.
The company in the best position to win this fight is…Google.
OpenAI may be chasing a $500 billion valuation; not exactly small potatoes.
But it is dwarfed by Google’s mammoth $2.8 trillion valuation (fun fact: at the time of writing, the most valuable company in the world is Nvidia at $4.2 trillion).
In the AI race, Google are playing catch-up. But they’re still weathering the storm incredibly well. And whilst other companies are nipping at their heels, we can still see their dominance from the number of daily requests:
Google: 16.4 billion searches. That’s around 190,000 per second.
YouTube: 3.5 billion.
ChatGPT: around 2.5 billion. Catching up, but has a long climb ahead.
Bing is at 900 million; Perplexity 26 million.
And yep — YouTube is owned by Google.
They’re definitely not going down in this game without a serious fight.
With that in mind, here’s the first mistake a lot of people make with AI SEO.
Mistake #1: Thinking AI search optimisation is everything
It’s tempting to go for the new, shiny thing.
And in this case, you should! AI search will be the future. But we aren’t so far down the path that nothing else matters.
Even in the case of AI search, it often does web searches in the background. If you’re invisible to search engines, you’re invisible to ChatGPT.
And even then, the simple fact is, the whole world hasn’t spontaneously agreed to stop using Google. As we saw above, it’s still getting billions of hits per day. Each day you spend not optimising for that potential traffic is potential money lost.
Still, let’s be honest. AI search really is just better.
The kind of tailored results I’d get from ChatGPT or Perplexity is just something classic Google can’t replicate.
But a big part of the misconception is, since AI search is becoming more popular, that all search engines will turn to AI as quickly as possible.
They won’t, and here’s why.
Picture this: OpenAI is still not profitable
Have you ever tried using ChatGPT? It’s pretty great.
It can be your productivity assistant, your therapist, your sous-chef and your best friend.
It comes at an absolutely humongous cost. OpenAI hit $12 billion ARR a few months ago. They’re still projected to make a loss of $9 billion in 2025. DeepSeek might have a way to bring costs massively down. But getting started still isn’t a quick — or cheap — process.
We aren’t on the cusp of every search interface snapping over to AI just yet. Traditional search is going to be around for a little longer.
Mistake #2: Thinking AI search optimisation is nothing
But that isn’t at all to say AI search optimisation is nothing.
Several still think, since Google dominates search, optimising for other platforms is superfluous. And they’re right…kind of.
Optimising for every search engine in the world is impractical. Even if similar strategies work across them all, you’ll get the most from picking one (so, Google) and focusing on it.
Add AI to the mix and you have your work cut out for you.
But I’ll say this until my face turns blue: AI search is the future.
Google is already slowly rolling out AI mode, a experience similar to Perplexity’s. We don’t know when they’ll make it default, but they don’t have a history of rolling back big features. The “10 blue links” experience won’t be a thing forever.
Then consider that more and more of the users who aren’t using Google are using ChatGPT, not Yahoo or Bing. It is just a matter of time before AI search becomes the default, by which time the leaders of this strategy will already have been chosen.
They’ll also be much harder to dislodge.
When those users start asking AI about the problems you solve, you want your site to be the answer. It’s far from the only source of traffic right now…
…but it’s only increasing.
So for now, not considering AI search optimisation is a lost opportunity. But in the future, it’ll mean becoming invisible.
Mistake #3: Not updating the game plan
SEOs are notorious for their proclivity to “set it and forget it”.
Just make sure your pages have your keywords, you’ve set your title and meta description and your site loads really fast. Done! Let’s all go have some cake.
Even 10 years ago, this was a bad idea.
You could spend hours perfecting your meta descriptions. Your pages might even rank really well. But things change over time. Your competitors won’t give up trying just because you’re ranked number 1. The story of the tortoise and the hare comes to mind.
Then, if the constant effort to stay top of Google wasn’t bad enough, now we have AI too. Not only do you have Google updates and competitors to deal with, you also have the crazy fast world of AI search optimisation.
Over time, traditional SEO will lose its effectiveness. One popular strategy, that being top-of-funnel blog posts (of which, more later), are already not worth the time.
Old school SEO is still important and will be for a long time. But even within this, the ways we apply it — and how we balance it with AI search optimisation — will keep changing.
What to do instead
Mercifully, search engine and AI search optimisation aren’t mutually exclusive.
I’m not going into a full scope of SEO tactics here. But these are some of the main optimisations which will boost you on Google, as well as show results in AI search:
Internal linking. It helps boost your site’s crawlability for both search engines and AI.
Backlinks. These are still a trust signal, except AI also responds to unlinked brand mentions.
Structured data. Especially with FAQ schema and product schema for eCommerce sites, they don’t just help you qualify for rich results; they help AI understand your site too.
Get a good content strategy in place. More on this in a bit.
Focus on your traditional SEO first, then consider going after AI. This doesn’t mean you need to be at rank 1 for every keyword on Google before looking to the future. But make sure your strategy is solid and that you’re getting results from it before doing AI search optimisation.
Traditional SEO used to be the entire game; now it’s just the foundation.
But it’s not all useful.
One common practice has been dying a slow death for the last year…and once the “10 blue links” experience fades into obscurity, it’s going to take this next thing with it.
Top-of-funnel blog posts will be no more!
To be fair, they’ve been dying for some time.
But in May last year, Google brought something into bring which delivered the coup de grâce: AI Overviews.
That’s right. Blog posts which answer surface-level informative questions are now officially not getting clicks (or, at least, fewer).
Google, not to mention other AI providers, are using the information on your site to train their models. Even if your post ranks #1, most of your clicks are being eaten by AI Overviews.
This genuinely is a big change brought on by AI in search, and is one we’ll have to react to.
Here’s how your blogging strategy should look instead.
Focus on depth. Well-researched content backed up with (ideally original) data produces the insight AI is incapable of on its own.
Yep; there’s those good ol’ EEAT signals again. The more Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trust you build into a piece, the less AI can cannibalise it and the more likely it is to cite you.
Write middle-of-funnel content; that being, content targeting people almost ready to buy. Some great middle-of-funnel post formats include:
Versus: “[Your brand] vs. [Competitor]”
Alternatives: “Best alternatives to [Competitor]” or “Best alternatives to [Other product]”
Best product: “Best [solution] for [problem]”
This is one key example of something that’s being dislodged by AI search.
And whilst it’s not the only one (more will emerge over time), we’re nowhere near the point where we need to completely strip down and redo our strategy. Yes, you should absolutely push your brand visibility with AI search optimisation. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of what’s going to increase your bottom line today.
Ignoring AI search optimisation will be deadly in the long run…but trading everything for it will be deadly for you now.
Got your basic SEO in place, and ready to start optimising for AI search? That’s fantastic! Subscribe to Seen by Search to stay ahead of the curve.
And until the next one — stay visible!
-tommy
Written by Tommy McDevitt, a Senior Engineer with 10+ years experience. Now advising eCommerce businesses about SEO and Digital Marketing. Want to work with me on your online visibility? Let’s see what we can achieve together!