How do you avoid chasing AI search algorithm changes?

Stop reacting to every rumor and revert to best practices and what makes sense for your customers, because anything that doesn't make sense usually won't last.

Quick Answer

• Don't have a knee-jerk reaction to AI search rumors, most of them change within a month.
• Revert to best practices and what makes sense for your customers and for you.
• Focus on customer search intent, not just rankings and citations.

Why chasing the algorithm is a losing game

The smartest move in AI search is to slow down. SEO and GEO expert Carolyn Outhwaite has watched two straight years of chaos, and her advice is to not get lost in it. When a rumor says video is dead, or that you must rush to Reddit, the better response is to wait and watch.

Her reasoning is simple. None of these tools have settled where they will finally land, and they may not for a long time. So a change you react to today could be reversed a month from now. Video on Google AI Overviews is the perfect example.

"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." — Carolyn Outhwaite

Instead of chasing every shift, she says to anchor on two questions: does this make sense for your customers, and does it make sense to you? If the answer is no, it probably won't last anyway.

That means looking past rankings and citations. Those numbers feel urgent, but they are not the real target. The real target is understanding your customer's search intent and then addressing their needs. AI search engines pull snippets that answer specific questions, so content built around what your buyers actually ask will hold up no matter how the algorithm moves.

The rule is not to ignore the chaos. Stay on top of it, just don't respond too quickly. Good practices stay good. Build on them, don't abandon them every time a webinar speaker makes a bold claim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why shouldn't you react quickly to AI search changes?

Because the tools are still new and unsettled, so a change today can reverse within a month. Carolyn Outhwaite points to video on Google AI Overviews, which was devalued, then returned, then gone again. Reacting fast to that kind of swing wastes time.

What should you focus on instead of rankings and citations?

Focus on your customer's search intent and their actual needs. Rankings and citations get all the attention, but they are not the whole point. AI tools call out snippets that answer specific questions, so content built around real customer questions wins.

How do you know which AI search advice is worth acting on?

Ask whether it makes sense for your customers and for you. If something doesn't make sense, chances are it won't last or it's just a rumor. Best practices that have always worked are the safest bet.

Full Clip Transcript

So I try to help people or encourage people not to get lost in the AI search chaos. 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, 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 can't claim that I'm like an expert at the SEO, GEO, but I think I know enough about it to know that there's different parts to the process of the retrieval. Like there's the indexing or whatever. And can you talk about what do we need to know about doing things that are not a knee-jerk reaction, that are sound and sensical ways to put content out there that kind of address that whole process? Does that make sense?

Carolyn: Yeah, it kind of does. So first of all, let's go back to indexing. 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 work like that. Some of them search in real time, actually, I believe 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. The way that I have come to understanding is like, AI search is looking for specific answers to specific questions in that buyer journey. And you've talked about intent. Earlier in their process of searching, they're probably just trying to get a handle on what the thing is, or how it works or something. And then they get closer down the funnel to like evaluating, and their questions get a little bit more bottom of funnel. And so I've been testing this now with my video content, trying to roll out some content that's answering my buyer's questions, very specifically, specific question answered by a very specific answer. And to me, you talk about do things that make sense. To me, what makes sense is 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.

Full Interview Transcript

Dane: Hello everyone, my name is Dane Frederiksen. 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 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 how they're gonna get found. How are you addressing this from a high level? 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. 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, 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 can't claim that I'm like an expert at the SEO GEO, but I think I know enough about it to know that there's different parts to the process of the retrieval, like there's the indexing or whatever. And can you talk about what do we need to know about doing things that are not a knee-jerk reaction, that are 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. 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 work like that. Some of them search in real time, actually, I believe ChatGPT 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. 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've talked about intent. Earlier in their process of searching, they're probably just trying to get a handle on what the thing is or how it works or something. And then they get closer down the funnel to like evaluating, and their questions get a little bit more bottom of funnel. And so I've been testing this now with my video content, trying to roll out 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 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 is exactly, yeah. So people will start off at the top of the funnel, right? And their searches will be broader and more like what is questions and who are questions and things like that. And as they move further down the funnel, 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 search is the new thing. But here's the problem: that's very often where your top-of-the-funnel searches are done and where people first learn about you. That's where awareness happens. So today's awareness searches are tomorrow's pipeline searches, and they're next week's deal closings.

So 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. And 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 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 video content and creating stuff to answer buyer questions, what does that look like between moving fast and not moving fast? How do I know that I'm 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. So for enterprise, obviously you're gonna want to look at a top-level tool, but there are many tools that are in the $30 to $70 a month range that are great for small or 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 Google results in the last two years, you'll see that their homepage changes constantly. You no longer hold a certain position on the home page, first of all.

A lot of other things are thrown in now. There could be 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 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 customers are searching there, you do have to be there. But then suddenly those results fell out of that. 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 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 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 react too fast. So things that you know are good best practices, keep doing those things because they make sense and they always will. 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 making a lot more sense to me now about like, yeah, a good idea is a good idea, so just keep doing that. That's the same way to go.

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

Dane: Right. So I've been characterizing the state of AI search right now as a land grab, especially in the video space, 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 I'm seeing, it's a small sample size, but I saw a video talking about does video help you show up in AI search was in the AI summary at the top position. So I was like, okay, this is working. My strategy is working. So I think this is a land grab. I think we should all just go out and go get that visibility now and get trained in the future LLMs. Does that sound right to you? Or would you characterize it sort of a similar way?

Carolyn: Well, there are certain types of videos that are turning up in AI Overview, for example. And the example 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? 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 if AI goes and scrapes it and summarizes it but never mentions my name, then I've basically wasted my money and my time helping people without getting any credit, right? So 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?

Carolyn: Yeah. That is where it's going to show up, but it's probably not going to show up 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. 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 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 having traffic as a major KPI anymore. It's how present you are 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.