Don't chase the AI search chaos. Carolyn Outhwaite.

Key Takeaways

Don't have knee-jerk reactions to AI search rumors. If a tactic doesn't make sense, it probably won't last.
SEO is not dead. Top-of-funnel search is where awareness happens and where people first learn about you.
Today's awareness searches are tomorrow's pipeline, and next week's deal closings. Don't ignore the top of the funnel.
Helpful videos like product demos show up in Google AI Overviews. Brand and promo videos do not.
Stop using traffic as your main KPI. What matters now is how present you are in AI search tools.

How should you respond to AI search chaos?

Don't react too fast. That's Carolyn Outhwaite's core advice for anyone trying to stay visible online right now. Carolyn is a digital visibility expert who works across SEO, GEO, and AEO. Her whole approach is built to keep you from getting lost in the noise.

She points to video as the perfect example of the chaos. Video was the big thing for Google AI Overview results. Then Google supposedly devalued it. Then it was back. Then it was gone again.

"The best thing to do is to revert to best practices and what makes sense to your customers and what makes sense to you as well. Because if something doesn't make sense, chances are it's not going to last, or it's just a rumor." — Carolyn Outhwaite

There has been chaos for two years now. Everyone is watching what AI tools do and worrying about rankings and citations. But Carolyn says that's the wrong focus. It's not all about rankings and citations. It's about understanding your customers' search intent and then addressing their needs.

Is SEO dead?

SEO is not dead. Carolyn is direct about this. A lot of people stopped focusing on SEO because they think AI search replaced it. That's a mistake.

Here's the problem with ignoring it. Top-of-funnel searches are very often done in traditional search, and that's where people first learn about you. That's where awareness happens. If you let that go away, you'll still get business now, but it dries up later.

"Today's awareness searches are tomorrow's pipeline searches, and they're next week's deal closings." — Carolyn Outhwaite

So you can't ignore those people. You may need to focus more on the middle or bottom of the funnel right now. But cut off the top, and a year or two down the line your pipeline starts drying up because nobody new is discovering you.

How does search intent map to the funnel?

People search differently depending on where they are in the buyer journey. Carolyn breaks it down by funnel stage so you can match content to intent.

Top of funnel: broader searches. "What is" and "who is" questions. This is research and awareness.
Middle of funnel: business research and vendor research. They're still assessing you.
Bottom of funnel: they're making actual buyer decisions.

The job is to structure your content across all of those stages. Don't just address the buyer journey in general. Address the specific prompts people are likely to type into AI search, and know where each one lands in the funnel, so you cover every part of it.

This is also why specific answers win. If someone asks where the best place to buy bananas in Denver is, and you have a video that says it's Joe's, that's what people and AI are looking for. Carolyn confirmed that approach is exactly right.

What kind of video shows up in AI search?

Helpful videos win. Promotional ones don't. Carolyn says Google and other AI tools want to show videos that resolve an issue for someone, not videos promoting your company.

For B2B, the videos showing up best are ones that help a potential customer achieve or understand something. A product demo is a great example. What does your user interface look like if you're a software company? Are you helping people understand it? Are you addressing their pain points and resolving them?

What does not show up are brand videos and promo videos. There's a clear line between the two. So when you plan video content, ask what your customer searches for when they have a problem your product could solve, then make that.

How do videos get credit in AI search?

When a video shows up in an AI Overview, you usually get the credit. Carolyn says it typically shows your YouTube video, and it's attributed to you. Open an AI Overview result and you'll often see a video sitting right there, sometimes a couple of them.

The trickier part is zero-click results. These are the mentions where AI summarizes your content without sending a click. We used to give them little credit because we wanted our actual links to show. That's changed.

"If your brand turns up by name without a link, I wouldn't panic too much. It's kind of the new normal that we have to adapt to." — Carolyn Outhwaite

Zero-click mentions are good for awareness. The more people see your name, even without a click, the more you're front of mind when they start real research. Sometimes a citation links to your site, sometimes it just names you. Either way, it's worth having. That's also why traffic is no longer a great main KPI. What matters now is how present you are in AI search tools.

How do you avoid chasing every algorithm change?

Get an AI prompt tracking tool first. That's Carolyn's practical fix for moving smart instead of fast. The tool shows where you're showing up for your prompts, so you know what to actually act on and can create content against it.

Budget isn't a blocker. Enterprise teams will want a top-level tool, but there are plenty in the $30 to $70 a month range that work well for small and mid-sized businesses.

The reason this matters is that none of these tools have settled where they'll finally be. Google results have changed constantly for two years. People rushed to Reddit when it got quoted, then those results fell out. People rushed to add LLMs text files, then Google said they matter less. Carolyn's rule: keep doing the things you know are good best practices, because those make sense and always will. Don't run off and react to something you heard in a webinar, because a month from now it might all be different.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SEO dead now that AI search exists?

No, SEO is not dead. Carolyn Outhwaite says top-of-funnel searches are very often done in traditional search, and that's where people first learn about you. Ignore it and you'll keep getting business now, but your pipeline dries up a year or two later.

How should you respond to changes in Google AI Overviews?

Don't have a knee-jerk reaction. Carolyn's advice is to avoid acting on rumors and instead revert to best practices and what makes sense to your customers. If a tactic doesn't make sense, it probably won't last, so there's no point chasing it.

What kind of video shows up in AI search results?

Helpful videos that solve a problem, like product demos that explain your software or address pain points. Carolyn says brand videos and promotional videos do not show up. AI tools want to show content that resolves an issue for the viewer.

Do you get credit when your video appears in an AI Overview?

Usually yes. Carolyn says an AI Overview typically shows your YouTube video and attributes it to you. For text-based zero-click mentions, you sometimes get a link and sometimes just a named mention, which still helps with awareness.

How do you keep up with AI search without overreacting?

Use an AI prompt tracking tool to see where you show up, so you know what's worth acting on. Carolyn notes tools in the $30 to $70 a month range work for small and mid-sized businesses. Then create content against what the tracking shows, instead of reacting to rumors.

Full Interview Transcript

Dane: Hello everyone, my name is Dane Frederickson. I am a video expert in the B2B space and the founder of Digital Accomplice, and I'm on a mission to help B2B marketers boost their visibility, growth and pipeline with video. And today I'm joined by Carolyn Outhwaite, who is a SEO, GEO, AEO expert, getting found online. How how would you like to identify yourself?

Carolyn: Well, people say digital visibility these days. I guess it covers everything. So I'm good with that.

Dane: Yeah. Well that seems to be the issue of the day. AI has come in and stolen everyone's plan for like how they're gonna get found. how are you like addressing this like from a high level? Like what's what's top of mind for you about helping people be visible?

Carolyn: Okay. So I try to help people or encourage people not to get lost in the AI search chaos. Okay. And to avoid any knee-jerk reactions to rumors that are out there, and there are a lot of them, for example, with video, you know, sorry, video was the big thing for results on Google AI overview. And then Google supposedly devalued video and then it was back again, then it was gone again. And that's why you want to not have a knee-jerk reaction to that or act too quickly. The best thing to do is to revert to best practices and what makes sense to your customers and what makes sense to you as well. Because if something doesn't make sense, chances are it's not going to last, or it's just a rumor. So I would say look out for the chaos. Don't respond too quickly, but stay on top of it. And there has been chaos for two years now. everybody's been watching what AI search tools are doing and they're concerned about rankings and citations, but we have to remember it's not all about rankings and citations. It's about understanding your customers' intent, their search intent, and then addressing their needs.

Dane: Right. Yeah, I I can't claim that I'm like an expert at the SEO GEO, but you know, I think I know enough about it to to know that there's there's different parts to the process of the retrieval, like there's there's the indexing or whatever. And mean, can can you can you talk about like what do we need to know about doing things that are not a knee jerk reaction that are like sound and sensical ways to put content out there that kind of address that whole process? Does that make sense?

Carolyn: yeah, yeah, it kind of does. So first of all, let's just go back to indexing. So in the SE in the old SEO days, which are still there by the way, SEO is not dead. But let's look at search engines' traditional organic results. That was about getting your pages indexed, right? And so Google would keep this huge stash of your pages. And when somebody did a search, it would run around, look to see which page addressed that particular topic and deliver it. AI tools don't really look like they don't really work like that. Some of them search in in real time, actually, I believe. Chat GPT does that. And they don't index your entire page. What they do is they understand what you're about and they will call out snippets of content on your page. And in some cases, that content is a video. So it's important to make sure that the content of that video can be understood, if that makes sense.

Dane: Yeah, I think so. Though you know, the way that I have come to the understanding is like AI search is looking for specific answers to specific questions in that buyer journey. And you know, you've talked about intent and you know earlier in their process of searching, they're probably just trying to get a handle on what the thing is or like how it works or something. And then they get closer down the funnel to like you know, evaluating and their questions get a little bit more bottom of funnel. And so I I've been testing this now with my video content is trying to roll out some some content that's answering my buyers' questions very specifically, specific question answered by a very specific answer. And to me, you talk about do things that make sense. To me that makes sense is how if people look for, you know, where's the best place to buy bananas in Denver? If you had a video that says the best place to buy bananas in Denver is at Joe's, then that's probably what people and AI is looking for. Does that all track for you?

Carolyn: That's exact that that is exactly, yeah. So people will start off, you know, at the top of the funnel, right? And their research their searches will be broader and more like sort of what is qu what is questions and who are questions and things like that. And as they move further down the funnel, you're that's where you're gonna get more business research or vendor research questions happening. The middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel. So, middle of the funnel, they're still assessing you, bottom of the funnel, they're actually making buyer decisions. So you need a strategy for video. Video can often show up in Google AI overviews, as I said. It doesn't always show up in the AI search tools as much as I'd like it to, really. But that doesn't mean that it can't. I know that it sometimes shows up in ChatGPT. But the idea is to structure your content now across all those funnels, but not just address the buyer journey, but address the specific prompts that they're likely to be putting into search engines or AI search really, to address questions and know where they appear in that funnel so that you can make sure you've covered every part of the funnel. A lot of people are kind of not focusing on SEO because they think it's dead and because AI searches the new thing. But here's the problem: is that that's very often where your top-of-the-fun searches are done and where people first learn about you. That's where awareness happens. So today's people, today's awareness searches are tomorrow's pipeline searches, and they're next week's you know deal closings. So you can't you can't ignore those people because if you let that go away, you'll probably get a bunch of business now, but a year or two years down the line, it'll start drying up because you ignored the top of the funnel. So I wouldn't ignore it completely. You may need to focus more on the bottom now or the middle, but I wouldn't ignore the top.

Dane: Yeah. It and I'm I've been thinking this whole time since we've been talking about this idea, you warned about knee-jerk reactions, don't move too quickly. But that the little warning went off in my head. It's like, but we live in a really fast evolving marketplace. Don't we all need to move fast? And so when it comes to like video content and creating stuff to answer buyer questions, what does that look like between like moving fast and not moving fast? Like how do I know that I'm, you know, l doing that the right way?

Carolyn: Well, what you need to do is you need to get an AI prompt tracking tool, first of all. So that way you'll know what to move on. and you can get them across the board as far as budget goes. Okay. So for enterprise, obviously you're gonna want to look at a top-level tool, but there are many tools that are in the, you know, the $30 to $70 a month range that are great for small or mid mid-sizes. sorry, mid-sized businesses, they could give you idea of where you're showing up with your various prompts and you'll know what to act on then and you can create content against that. When I say don't have knee-jerk reactions, don't be, you know, people do these webinars and they read blogs and all that kind of stuff, and somebody comes up and says something like, video doesn't matter anymore. But because none of these tools have settled where they're finally going to be and they may not for a long time, there's no point reacting to that because a month from now that might all have changed. And most typically it changes fast in Google. So anybody who's been watching it, go watching Google results in the last two years, you'll see that their homepage changes constantly. you no longer hold pizza a certain position on the home page, first of all. A lot of other things are thrown in now. There could be Google search, sorry, not Google searches, LinkedIn results there, along with website results, along with videos. They now have AI overview at the top, which is showing up for more and more searches now. One of the things that was a knee-jerk reaction was that everybody saw that Reddit was being quoted in Google AI search results and in even on the home page in the traditional search results, the organic search. and everybody rushed over to Reddit and thought we've got to be in Reddit, we've got to be in Reddit. You kind of do, depending on your business, if your if your customers are searching there, you do have to be there. But then suddenly those results fell out of that. Okay, they were no longer there. You'll still see LinkedIn and YouTube, but you won't see much of Reddit anymore. And it's the same with people saying that, you know, videos are sort of a little out of fashion now, and then suddenly they're not anymore. they've done the same with LLMS text files. people rush to put those files on their website to help the to help the AI search engines understand them better. And now Google's saying, not so important anymore. Well maybe not important to Google, but they may be important to other search tools, specifically the AI ones. So that's what I mean by just don't don't react too fast. So things that you know are good practices, good best practices. Keep doing those things because they make sense and they always will. Okay. But don't do a webinar, for example, and then run off and instantly react on something that you heard, because a month from now it might all be different. And it's not only Google that's changing all the time. The other tools are evolving as well. I mean, remember that they're new, none of them have been around for more than a couple of years. And they're constantly trying to improve themselves. So what's true today may not be true tomorrow.

Dane: Yeah, I think that's that's making a lot more sense to me now about like, yeah, it's a good idea is a good idea, so just keep doing that. That's the the the same way to go. So

Carolyn: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Don't don't lose the good ideas, but build on them in in the new direction.

Dane: Right. So I've been characterizing the state of AI search right now as a as a land grab, especially like in the video space, is because I think B2B in general hasn't been able to do video correctly at scale, not to its full potential. And so I see this right now, I've been testing this myself and and I'm seeing like I I it's a small sample size, but I I saw a video talking about does video help you show up in AI search was in the the AI summary at the top position. So I was like, okay, this is working. My strategy is working. So like I think this is a land grab. I think we should all just go out and and go get that that visibility now and get trained in the future L L Ms. I mean, does that sound right to you? Or you would you characterize it sort of a similar way?

Carolyn: Well, there are certain types of videos that are turning up in in AI overview, for example. and you know, the the the one that the example that somebody that people always come up with is recipes, you know, recipes, put out video recipes, they're always going to come up there. but of course we're talking B2B, so those are not relevant. What is really showing up best there now is videos that help your potential customers achieve something or understand something. For example, a product demo, what does your user interface look like if you're a software company? And are you helping them understand that? What are their pain points? And are you helping them address those and resolve them for them? You know, what are they searching for when they have a problem that your product or service could solve? What is not showing up there are brand videos and promotional videos and things like that. So there is a distinction between those two types of videos. Google and other AI tools will want to show the helpful ones that are going to resolve issues for people, not the ones promoting your company.

Dane: Yeah. Okay, so as we start wrapping up here, I wanna get a better handle on this idea that I could make helpful video content all day long, but i if AI goes and like scrapes it and summarizes it but never mentions my name, then I I've basically, you know, wasted my money and my time like helping people without getting any credit, right? So like how do we How do we insulate ourselves from that? And I think the answer has something to do with the educational content late in the funnel where you're laying out comparisons between you and other vendors and saying who you're for, who you're not for, and helping them make that final buying decision. That's when your brand might be showing up later in the cycle. am I kind of getting that right or yeah?

Carolyn: Yeah. That is where it's going to show up, but it's probably not going to show up by by way of a video. It's probably going to show up by way of a blog or some content on your website. When it comes to your video showing up, it will usually show the video. So very often if you open the AI overview results, you'll see a video there. There you may even see a couple, depending on what the query is. And in that case, you do get a mention because it's going to show Typically it's going to show your your YouTube video and it will be attributed to you. The other results you're talking about are these zero-click results that are everywhere. So initially we didn't give much credit to zero click results because we all wanted our actual links to show up in search, but they've taken on a whole new importance because First of all, they're a good awareness thing. The more people get exposed to your name, even if they don't get to click through to your website, the more you're going to be front of mind for them when they do start doing their deeper research. So they're still really worthwhile having. And in the citations, they're not always no click results. Sometimes a citation will actually have a link to your website and other times it won't, but it may mention you by name. So if your brand turns up by name without a link, I wouldn't panic too much. It's kind of the new normal that we have to adapt to. And we have to understand that some things are just more for awareness and brand reinforcement than for actual clicks. There's not much point in in having traffic as a major KPI anymore. It's how how present you are in in AI search tools.

Dane: Okay. Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you so much for sharing your insights. This has been a really great conversation. and I'll see you online.

Carolyn: You're absolutely welcome. Thank you very much.

Dane: We are wrapped. Thank you.

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Dane Frederiksen CEO / Creative Producer www.digitalaccomplice.com · dane@digitalaccomplice.com