What if we were never supposed to manipulate search results?

The SEO industry has spent decades playing the same game: reverse-engineering Google’s algorithm and finding ways to bend it to our will. But what if we’ve been playing the wrong game all along?

Let’s talk about AI, search, and the uncomfortable truths we’ve been avoiding.

A few weeks ago, I went down a rabbit hole trying to understand how to influence AI-generated responses in tools like Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and ChatGPT. Like you, I wanted to know if it was possible.

Short answer: it’s not easy, quick, or cheap.

Long answer: it’s possible—but it’s a grind.

The deeper I dug, the more I realised how little I actually knew. It was like 2018 all over again when I first started SEO and discovered just how complex it really was.

I found myself at a crossroads:

• Dive headfirst into the science of AI and machine learning?
• Or keep my head in the sand and let the future pass me by?

I chose the former. And let me tell you—it’s humbling.

I thought my crash course in Python back in 2024 would give me a head start. Wrong. Writing code is one thing. Wrapping my head around the mathematical logic behind machine learning? That’s a whole other beast.

The uncomfortable truth about SEO

Most of us don’t understand the systems we’re trying to manipulate. For nearly two decades, we’ve sold services without fully grasping the engineering behind search. Be honest: do you really understand how search engines work?

We got by with shortcuts:

• Best practices.
• Backlink schemes.
• On-page tricks.

What we called “strategy” was often just manipulation dressed up as expertise. And now, with AI-assisted search changing the game, I can’t help but ask:

What if we were never supposed to manipulate search results in the first place?

What if some SEO specialties were never meant to exist?

What if this entire approach—the one we’ve all been building our careers on—was flawed from the start?

Google isn’t innocent—but what if AI changes the rules?

I know what you’re thinking: “Google’s pursuit of profit destroyed businesses—why should we trust AI to fix this?” And you’re not wrong. Google’s track record is far from perfect.

But what if AI-assisted search could finally deliver:

• Results free from undisclosed affiliate links?
• Answers without the endless back-and-forth of clicking through sources?
• Fair rewards for content creators and journalists?
• A system that can’t be gamed by backlinks?

I yearn for that future. Even if it means half my SEO playbook becomes obsolete.

The future is already here—are you ready for it?

AI is rewriting the rules of how content is created and served. And no, I’m not talking about the chaos we’ve seen so far:

• Bard’s embarrassing debut.
• Game of Thrones drama at OpenAI.
• The endless examples of inaccurate, biased, or downright cringe-worthy LLM outputs.

That’s noise. The signal is in the fundamentals:

• Natural language processing.
• Vector embeddings (dense vs. sparse).
• Document embeddings and cosine similarity.
• Retrieval-augmented generation and its real-world applications.

I’ve spent months diving into these concepts. Why? Because the future of search isn’t in manipulation—it’s in understanding.

My SEO origin story—and a lesson in humility

A few years ago, I went down another rabbit hole: schema markup. I was at Optus Smart Spaces, tackling technical SEO issues that crippled Google’s ability to crawl and index pages.

My big idea? Nested schema markup to help Google “understand” a page’s content before rendering the JavaScript. I was convinced it was a pillar of semantic search.

Looking back, I realise how arrogant I was. Schema wasn’t a magic bullet. It was a patch. And the deeper I go into AI, the more I see just how much of SEO has been about patching, not solving.

Eg, I don't even understand the math behind BM25, do you?

Final thoughts

AI is forcing us to confront some hard truths about SEO. Maybe we were never supposed to manipulate search results. Maybe the future of search lies in building brands that people actively seek out—not because they’re gamed into it, but because they genuinely add value.

This shift might feel uncomfortable, but it’s also an opportunity. The days of relying on backlinks and quick wins are fading. What comes next? A focus on building brand-driven search strategies that stand the test of time.

In the next edition of Journal of an Enterprise SEO, I’ll dive into how to build a brand through the lens of a search marketer.

Do you believe search can truly become unbiased and user-focused—or will it always favour those with the deepest pockets?

P.S. I’m launching a new newsletter: Pandas and LLaMAs.

This one’s all about my AI journey—breaking down complex topics, sharing insights, and exploring how AI is reshaping search and beyond. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed trying to understand natural language processing, embeddings, or retrieval-augmented generation, this is for you.

Keep an eye out—it’s dropping soon. Let’s learn AI together. ??