There is a viral video on Instagram about “The king of AEO”. This was, or is, an attempt by a bunch of people to be mentioned when someone asks Google “Who is the king of AEO?”. They are using press releases, LinkedIn posts and other tactics to win the AI overview.
This got me thinking.
Manipulation has always been a part of SEO. I can’t say I’ve never bought links, or schemed to get a great backlink to a client website.
But with SEO, it was about getting people to visit your website. Even if some form of manipulation was part of your strategy, you also worked on a good website, great UX, unique and valuable content, making the website faster, and so on.
A large part of what attracted me to SEO some 5 to 10 years ago was the idea of building something great. Always thinking: how can we make this page or website even better? What would be an even better experience for the user?
And sure, running TF-IDF and then adding a couple more relevant terms to your blog post was also an attempt at manipulation. It was also a craft: keep the experience good while adding the terms.
With GEO, you can influence, or manipulate, the AI overview or a ChatGPT answer even if you don’t have a website.
In the zero-click era, there is a big distinction between the manipulation and the craft. In other words, influencing the answers can become detached from making something worth visiting.
PS. The two videos that got me thinking: this YouTube short, and this one from Edward Sturm.