We all know what it means to google something. You pop a few relevant words in a search box and in return get a list of blue links to the most relevant results. Maybe some quick explanations up top. Maybe some maps or sports scores or a video. But fundamentally, it’s just fetching information that’s already out there on the internet and showing it to you, in some sort of structured way.

But we are at an inflection point, and make no mistake, the future of search is already here, and it’s very impressive.

Sure, we will always want to use search engines to navigate the web and to discover new and interesting sources of information, and the way AI can put together a well-reasoned answer to just about any kind of question, drawing on real-time data from across the web, offers a better experience. That is especially true compared with what web search has become in recent years. If it’s not exactly broken, it’s at the very least increasingly cluttered and daunting to navigate. According to Liz Reid, Google’s head of search, “Our mission is organizing the world’s information. But actually, for many years what we did was organize web pages, which is not really the same thing as organizing the world’s information or making it truly useful and accessible to you.”

So, what does this mean for your web pages? Are they cannon fodder? Does AI see them merely as bits of data to be scrubbed and reassembled among data from billions of other web pages? Yes, but actually, using an SEO plugin is more important than ever as a source for AI summaries.

The shift to AI-powered search is not a replacement for plugins but an evolution of their role.

There is no list. Several SEO plugins, and advice from overpriced “SEO consultants,” will emphasize the importance of getting your site to the top of search engine results, but just forget about all that. It’s much more important to organize your content logically. Instead of sacrificing your message for the sake of a “green light” (the Yoast plugin metaphor), organize your web pages and posts in a way that your target audience will understand, without any loss to your essential message. AI will do the rest.

First, large language models (LLMs) are interested in finding information and organizing it, and we’ll just have to leave that to them. Second, LLM’s are interested in what to say and how to convey it conversationally. (That part is really amazing!) Aside from that, your web content belongs to you, and you should endeavor to keep it organized, articulate and informative for your visitors. After all, it’s your little corner, albeit a really little corner, of the internet, you’re responsible for it, and your web presence will be a small but very important contribution to a vast body of knowledge.

Let’s say that you’re on your browser, and you ask the question, “How do I draw a circle in Photoshop?” Google’s AI Overviews will answer (BTW, you hold down the shift key in the Ellipse tool), and you’ll also get a video included with the answer, several videos in fact. These videos haven’t been produced by an LLM, at least not yet. YouTube is the worlds second largest search engine with well over 20 billion videos, and an astounding 20 million uploaded daily. While busily forming an intelligent response for you, LLM’s will continue to rely on conventional search algorithms to find relevant videos. So, if you insist on being seen on your own terms, design and produce a video, describe it, tag it, don’t try to game the system, upload it, and good luck.