One thing I find interesting to think about is, if we take the claim that search engines and display ads will become less relevant due to direct LLM usage (which seems likely), it still leaves the question of where the LLMs themselves will find the information. Its still unclear exactly how datasets for training are obtained, but even after that, ChatGPT and now Claude will still use web search to find information. While that is obviously bad for advertising on search results, it doesnt necessarily mean things like SEO is irrelevant, it's just instead you now need to SEO so that the LLM includes your desired message in its answers, instead of SEOing to convert human visitors.
Either way, I fully agree that embracing AI is a potential double-edged sword for many products and companies.
If I extend this to MCP, something I'm intrigued to see is if we start seeing optimization for MCP tool names and descriptions. I've found that with MCP servers I often have to use specific keywords to ensure Claude selects the tools I want (e.g. ask for a 'weather forecast' vs. 'the weather' for Claude to invoke the 'get_forecast' tool). This feels like another area where people will start to try to optimize for visibility in the not-too-distant future.
One thing I find interesting to think about is, if we take the claim that search engines and display ads will become less relevant due to direct LLM usage (which seems likely), it still leaves the question of where the LLMs themselves will find the information. Its still unclear exactly how datasets for training are obtained, but even after that, ChatGPT and now Claude will still use web search to find information. While that is obviously bad for advertising on search results, it doesnt necessarily mean things like SEO is irrelevant, it's just instead you now need to SEO so that the LLM includes your desired message in its answers, instead of SEOing to convert human visitors.
Either way, I fully agree that embracing AI is a potential double-edged sword for many products and companies.
Definitely. I thought this article (https://www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/llm-optimization-generative-ai-outputs) was a great read on AI search if you're interested. There are small things you can do to increase your presence, but ultimately a lot of it is still just SEO as you said!
If I extend this to MCP, something I'm intrigued to see is if we start seeing optimization for MCP tool names and descriptions. I've found that with MCP servers I often have to use specific keywords to ensure Claude selects the tools I want (e.g. ask for a 'weather forecast' vs. 'the weather' for Claude to invoke the 'get_forecast' tool). This feels like another area where people will start to try to optimize for visibility in the not-too-distant future.