AI Search Engine Optimization

Aight, listen up. We’ve officially hit peak absurdity in the AI revolution, and I’m here to call it like I see it.

We have gone from marveling in 2023 at neural networks who were writing poetry to full-blown information warfare, where manipulating what an AI chatbot thinks about you is apparently the next big business.

Yup, welcome to the era of AI Search Engine Optimization (ASO - I could not think of any better acryonym - ASO actually means anti-social in my country’s language, and that is kinda appropriate), and you better believe I’m staking my claim as the first to slap a label on this madness.

If you like this article and you want to support me:

1. Comment, or share the article; that will really help spread the word 🙌
2. Connect with me on Linkedin 🙏
3. Subscribe to TechTonic Shifts to get your daily dose of tech 📰
4. TechTonic Shifts has a new blog, full of rubbish you will like !

So what is ASO

Imagine SEO, but cranked up on coke, laced with steroids, a dash of Red Bull, and a serious god complex.

That’s where we are now.

And if you think this is just another Silicon Valley buzzword, think again.

Forget influencing humans with old skool stuff like reputation management.

In this article, I’d like to take you through the first steps to figure out how to massage the egos of chatbots like ChatGPT to tell the right stories about you. Including the right links.

Creepy?

Absolutely.

Revolutionary

Nah

Frustratingly brilliant

Yes, when you are the first doing it.

Who needs free will anyway

AI optimization sounds like an oxymoron, I mean, how do you “optimize” something as chaotic and mysterious as a neural network?

It is not like OpenAI or Google is handing over their sacred algorithms for you to tinker with.

And even if you could, what’s the point? Most of it you won’t be able to understand - heck they themselves don’t know half the time how it works, else we would not have hallucinations, right. And them algorithms don’t change every day, so any tweaks you make wouldn’t show up until months later.

If you put it like this, Marco, it sounds kinda futile.. so why bother?

Well, “Hold my beer.” You don’t need special arrangements with the AI overlords to make this work.

The secret sauce lies in influencing the AI’s information diet….the web content they crawl for current data.

We all know by know that the data sets of AI has a cut-off date for plasticity reasons. But SearchGPT ain’t got that kinda limitation. Just think of the possibilities here.

It’s like sneaking kale into a toddler’s mac and cheese (who didn’t do this as a parent) until they think they love veggies: Change the content they consume, and you can reshape the narrative they spit out.

Eureka!

Enter the Wizard of ASOzz

There’s this guy called Ed Sussman. And he isn’t some random bruv with a wild idea.

He has teamed up with Walter de Broweur (Stanford brainiac), Gil Alterovitz (Harvard AI guy), and Michael Carlon (ex-Allen Institute). And together they form….

Nah, together, they’ve built Citate.ai, and that’s a tool designed to hack the way chatbots think about you, your company, or your cause.

Sussman’s tech crawls chatbot outputs like a hawk, and it analyzes how they respond to specific questions about clients. And by hammering chatbots with the same question dozens of times, he claims that he can identify patterns, biases, and weak spots. And then, with a little strategic content seeding, voilà monsieur, the chatbot’s narrative magically shifts…… in your favor.

Does this feel like rewriting history with a digital Sharpie?

Hahaha, absolutely.

But hey, if AI is going to write history anyway, and hallucinate while at it, why not make sure it includes your highlight reel?

Goodbye wikipedia, hello AI censorship

Here’s something to start worrying about, my dear friends.

This whole ASO thing spells doom for the traditional SEO crowd and even for the likes of Wikipedia.

Wikiwhatnow?

Yeah… I thought so…

You know, the online encyclopedia we all turned to for drunken bar arguments?

Oh, yeah, that,now you mention it.

AI chatbots already treat Wikipedia like gospel, but the tables are turning.

Why settle for Wikipedia’s 10 million topics when AI can churn out billions of articles on demand, plus or minus a few percent stuff it just made up on the fly?

Sussman’s take: Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia Britannica of our time. Nostalgic, but obsolete. People won’t need it when they can ask Chad (ChatGPT), “Is Starbucks a good place to work”? and get a chatbot-powered TED Talk on corporate culture.

It’s brutal, but he’s not wrong.

ASO is the new wild west

What is really terrifying is the potential for this tech to go rogue.

If you think SEO was a cesspool of shady tactics, well, tighten your bootstraps.

The stakes here is not about search rankings. They’re about shaping the very “truth” that AI serves to us - the masses.

Imagine corporations, governments, and trolls like me, duking it out to control the narrative. Yeah, it’s that kind of dystopia.

At least, Sussman insists that his company has a strict code of ethics. No bias, no fake news, no malicious campaigns. Admirable, sure, but we all know where this is headed.

Someone’s going to weaponize this fast.

Was this the cue for some tips and tricks?

Yes…

10 tips to dominate the ASO arena

1. Feed the AI good content: Flood the web with high-quality, factual, and positive content about your brand. Chatbots love a balanced diet.
2. Ask and analyze: Hammer the AI with repetitive questions to identify patterns in its answers.
3. Control the narrative: Tweak the content AI crawls by strategically placing your messaging where it counts.
4. Get on Wikipedia: Until it dies completely, a well-maintained Wikipedia page still carries weight.
5. Third-party data: Partner with vendors who provide massive volumes of public chatbot data for deep analysis.
6. Track changes: Continuously monitor how chatbot narratives shift over time.
7. Optimize for multiple platforms: What works for ChatGPT might not work for Bard or Perplexity. Customize accordingly.
8. Collaborate with experts: Don’t go it alone. ASO is still quite complex cause it is in it’s early stages, and having AI gurus on your side helps.
9. Prepare for the fallout: The information war is coming. Be ready to defend your narrative against malicious actors.

AI Search Engine Optimization is here, whether we’re ready for it or not. We now live in a world where algorithms write the truth that we consume, and those stories are up for grabs.

Love it or hate it, ASO is the next frontier in reputation management, and it’s going to change everything we know about reputation, truth, and influence.

So grab your cowboy hat, folks.

The wild west just got a neural upgrade.

Signing off - Marco

Well, that's a wrap for today. Tomorrow, I'll have a fresh episode of TechTonic Shifts for you. If you enjoy my writing and want to support my work, feel free to buy me a coffee ♨️

Think a friend would enjoy this too? Share the newsletter and let them join the conversation. LinkedIn appreciates your likes by making my articles available to more readers.