Hi Reader,

I have regularly "Googled" over my entire 2 decade-long professional life, but I haven’t in the past 3 years. This is when Perplexity was launched (Disclaimer: I'm a "Perplexity Fellow", but have been their fan much before being chosen for the program).

Like most PR agencies, we used to offer SEO services, but we have intentionally stopped onboarding new clients for it from 2025. In fact, just last week a client chose to partner elsewhere, because I essentially said:

Don't believe me? Here are some statistics:

• 10 years ago, Google returned 1 visitor for every 2 pages scraped
• 10 months ago, Google returned 1 visitor for every 6 pages scraped.
• Today, Google returns 1 visitor for every 18 pages scraped.
• And Google is just beginning to launch "AI mode".

The Rise Of "Agentic AI"

Instead of just pointing to a single webpage, AI agents can synthesize information from multiple sources to provide a comprehensive answer. This means that a page doesn’t necessarily need to be at the absolute top of Google’s traditional search results to be pulled into an AI-generated response. More stats from Kieran Flanagan:

• Open AI Search (at launch) returned 1 visitor for every 250 pages!
• It's now around 1 visitor for 1500 pages
• Claude returns 1 visitor for 60,000 pages!!!

Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE)

This is a 2-minute clip from a chat I had with a marketing leader, Dipti Aggarwal, on "Brain Box - The Leadership Podcast" way back in 2023. This is fundamentally altering how information is discovered and consumed.

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(Btw, Google is being forced to sell Chrome due to it's search monopoly.)

So, what is the future of SEO?

The future of SEO isn’t about abandoning the fundamentals, but rather about evolving them to cater to intelligent AI agents and the emergent Agentic Search paradigm. Here’s why you need to prioritize the E-E-A-T method:

• Experience: Showcase real-world experience through case studies, personal anecdotes, and practical examples.
• Expertise: Ensure your content is meticulously researched, factually accurate, and written by genuine experts in the field.
• Authoritativeness: Build your brand’s reputation and authority through consistent high-quality content, industry mentions, and thought leadership.
• Trustworthiness: Foster trust through transparent information, clear citations, and positive user reviews and testimonials. Get brand mentions and citations from reputable sources (hence PR)

There are a quick ways you can do this:

1. Start with concise summaries.
2. Always utilize headings, subheadings, bullet points, and numbered lists to break down complex topics and facilitate easy extraction of information
3. Embrace Structured Data and Schema Markup
4. Write for Humans: Focus on clear, concise language that is easy to understand.

The landscape of SEO is no longer about tricking algorithms but about genuinely serving user needs, understood and interpreted by increasingly intelligent AI. The future of online visibility belongs to those who adapt, embrace the nuances of AI, and prioritize true informational utility.

Since we leverage 18 AI tools every week, I'm thinking of including more AI discussions in these newsletters. But (as usual) you'll only get it, if you're interested!

If you want someone else to read this, just share it with them. You can reach me by just hitting "reply" to this email.

- Kaushik