I’ve been wondering how Google and Bing will integrate the AI Chatbots answers in with organic search results. I was concerned about how organic results may be pushed further down and out of the top of the page. Would SEO still play a significant role in determining the order of search results?
With the new releases of Bing and Google search featuring integrated chatbot answers with sources/references linking to those websites, I now see that we can directly influence the AI chatbots’ answers with SEO. Also, I note that using an author page with attribution likely played a role in my content being the first referenced source. The same content on a partner’s page was also referenced, but lower in the reference list. The partner’s webpage actually ranks at the top of the Google organic search results. The AI chatbot must have recognized that my content was more authoritative. This is actually true, since the content originated from me. I don’t think the AI chatbot was able to determine that I was the originator. We have been doing SEO to that content, adding backlinks. We also added an author page. I think it’s the combination of backlinks and the author page that made the chatbot see it as more authoritative. These are both SEO signals, of course. Business as usual?
See the screenshot below of a ChatGPT-4 search for waste collection routing KPIs. Also note that the chatbot referenced the term “smart,” which isn’t even mentioned on the website it cited as its source. AI fake facts.
