AI + SEO

Core guides and experiments on GEO, AEO, AI crawling, schema, and search visibility.

SEO in the Before Times (Pre-AI Search)

Before AI changed search, SEO followed a very different set of rules — and a very different goal.

When I first started doing SEO, it wasn’t about algorithms — it was about being found.

You could build an amazing website, but if no one knew it existed, there wasn’t much point.

Early on, the approach was simple. People put their website everywhere they could:

on stationery
in print ads
in TV commercials
in email signatures

That helped — and it still does.

But as the web grew, that approach stopped being enough.

At first, search engines weren’t very helpful.

The web was still being built. I like to think that’s part of why it was called “The web.” It really did feel like a spider web — everything was connected, but the connections didn’t feel very sturdy.

Visitors might find your site, but:

it didn’t always load properly
it wasn’t always very informative
and a lot of sites just didn’t work very well

It was a bit of a wild west time.

Personally, I found a lot of information through newsgroups. That might have been because I was a bit of a nerd and was looking for exactly the kind of discussions happening in those spaces — newsgroups, forums, and IRC channels.

Search engines weren’t the center of discovery yet. People found information through communities.

Power Macintosh 9600 computer showing early internet-era hardware setup — Early home internet setups — slow, noisy, and just starting to make the web usable.

I distinctly remember when Google showed up and everything changed.

Suddenly, websites were actually being indexed.

If you wanted to learn something — PHP, how to build a database, how to connect it all — the information was everywhere. People weren’t just talking about it, they were showing you exactly how to do it.

A lot of the internet was free.

The biggest cost wasn’t content — it was time. You were paying for access, often by the hour.

And it was slow.

A lot of people were still connecting through a phone line, listening to the modem dial and negotiate a connection. Once you heard that familiar handshake, you knew you were in.

It wasn’t perfect, but for the first time, it felt like you could actually find things.

Search engines eventually had to get better.

As the web grew, it became impossible to rely on directories, communities, or word of mouth alone. There was simply too much content.

Search engines became the gateway.

Instead of asking, “Where do I find this?” people started asking, “Can I search for this?” And that changed everything.

This is where SEO started to take shape.

Before AI, search engines worked in a much more literal way. They weren’t trying to fully understand meaning — they were trying to match patterns.

If you knew what signals they were looking for, you could influence the outcome.

And for a long time, that worked surprisingly well.

How SEO worked in the before times

SEO was more mechanical than it is today.

The focus was on:

matching keywords
building links
structuring pages in predictable ways

If you could align those elements correctly, you could rank.

What we optimized for

Keywords — matching exactly what people typed
Backlinks — the more sites linking to you, the better
On-page signals — titles, headers, and content placement
Technical structure — making sure search engines could crawl everything

It wasn’t perfect, but it was predictable.

Google kept getting better — and for a long time, SEO worked.

Search engines evolved. Google refined how it ranked pages, filtered out spam, and rewarded higher-quality content.

SEO matured along with it.

We learned how to:

build authority
structure content
improve technical performance
align pages with search intent

It wasn’t static, but it was understandable.

If you paid attention, tested, and adapted, you could still win.

Then AI started to change the experience.

At first, it was subtle.

Better query understanding. Smarter results. More relevant answers.

But eventually, something bigger happened.

Search stopped just pointing to answers — it started becoming the answer.

And that’s where things got confusing.

As of this writing in April 2026, it has been a bit of a wild ride.

A lot of people in SEO had to stop and ask:

What actually matters now?
What should we be optimizing for?
Are rankings even the goal anymore?

Because the rules didn’t just change — the outcome changed.

AI results started showing up everywhere.

Across every major search engine, AI-generated answers became part of the experience.

And that changed user behavior almost overnight.

People weren’t always clicking through anymore.

They were getting what they needed directly from the results.

That created a new problem: visibility without clicks.

You could still rank.

Your content could still be correct, useful, and technically sound.

But the user might never visit your site.

They would read the answer, make a decision, and move on.

Sometimes they would:

get in their car
pick up the phone
or choose a business

…without ever clicking a single link.

Think about something like a local search.

Someone has a plumbing issue.

They search.

AI summarizes:

who handles that exact problem
who has strong reviews
who is open right now

And that’s enough.

They call.

They never visit the website.

From a traditional SEO perspective, that’s a nightmare.

Because now:

clicks don’t tell the full story
traffic isn’t the only signal
and in some cases, it’s harder to prove impact

Even analytics started to feel less reliable.

You could do everything right and still struggle to show what happened.

So did all of this mean that having a website was a waste of time?

No.

It meant you had to be much more intentional about how you built and organized it.

You couldn’t just put up a page and expect it to perform.

You had to actually work at it.

Simple pages filled with generic claims like:

“we offer great prices on all your plumbing needs”
“call us today for a free estimate”

stopped carrying any real weight.

That kind of content became what it really was: unauthoritative fluff.

If AI couldn’t trust it, it wouldn’t use it.

What worked before was often about being seen.

What works now is about being understood.

SEO Isn’t Dead — But Your Strategy Might Be

SEO didn’t disappear.

The same core mechanics still exist:

search engines crawl content
pages are indexed
authority still matters

But the outcome has changed.

Users aren’t always clicking through a list of links anymore. They’re getting answers directly — summarized, rewritten, and combined from multiple sources.

That means ranking alone isn’t enough.

A page can rank and still never be seen.

What matters now is whether your content is:

understood
trusted
and used inside the answer

This is where modern SEO shifts:

from ranking pages to structuring answers (AEO)
from building links to building entities (GEO)
from optimizing pages to being referenced

SEO isn’t dead.

But if your strategy still assumes that ranking equals visibility, it’s already behind.