[cjenkins]

Perhaps far too optimistic, but if AI search gets pushed heavily and traditional search becomes less relevant, could we see SEO fade for traditional search and it become less polluted over time? Or will search engines just stop caring about traditional search and it will become an even worse cesspool over time?

[fhd2]

SEO is definitely a relevant component still, AI mode does a traditional search under the hood. Gaming the system to rank high on the index is still going to matter. But it'll be less about tricking people into clicking and more about tricking LLMs into considering the information relevant and authoritative. For someone using traditional search, I'd wager that would actually improve the results a bit over time.

Then again, SEO gaming got a whole lot cheaper with LLMs, spammers spam even if there's not a great return, as long as it's cheap for them.