As it happens lately, things develop faster than usual, and in unexpected ways.

The concept outlined in this article came as a revelation. But not in its literal way, where basically, the article highlights the fundamental difference in user intent between chat-based interactions and classic search. Classic search engines return multiple answers ordered by relevance, while chatbots typically provide one or more specific answers, often tailored to the user’s query. This difference has implications for SEO strategies.

The revelation is more on two fronts:

First, the more people tend to use Chat AI interfaces, the more that effort will be shifted from traditional SEO to “Chat optimization”. The effort will go towards influencing Large Language Models (LLMs) to return responses that favor the particular product and/or service they are trying to push.

Second, and more important than the first one, is that, under these new developments, Marketers must include Chat interfaces as one of the “Personas” they market to. And in that sense, Chat interfaces take the place of traditional influencers, and the strategies are pretty much alike, providing “watering holes” where they can find the appropriate information, hopefully with enough differentiators, and facilitating access to subject matter experts and privileged content.

Under this new reality, the traditional approach of creating privileged behind-the-paywall assets for influencers will not work, unless marketers can somehow successfully “recruit” LLMs to join those programs. Otherwise, the only option is to make all that privileged content publicly, which completely breaks the prevalent model in the sales of highly complex technical solutions.