If you’re an organic search marketer, you know that the industry has been very disrupted over the past two years.
As a society, we continue to discuss short-term strategies instead of looking at a holistic strategy that is consistent with traditional marketing principles. Despite the depressing state of the world, we should stop focusing on outdated hacks and change our thinking to the first channel to be trusted.
The natural search funnel has changed from an acquisition journey to a trust journey. AI-generated responses didn’t create this change, but they accelerated it. Google has long been telling us to “create the best content,” and many of us – myself included – have missed what that really means.
The real metric of success: trust
For most of my career, biological searches have been straightforward. I can pull keywords for a domain and its competitors to create a gap report that prioritizes opportunities. I then map those keywords to expected rates and use a click-through rate (CTR) curve to estimate traffic opportunity.
While that technique can still be useful, it is greatly underestimated by the “zero click” and CTR drop seen across the web today. These changes in consumer behavior come from the evolving AI-driven environment in Google Search and the rapid adoption of AI platforms.
Many marketers responded by tracking the number of quotes or mentions in productive responses. While common sense, these are still metrics that don’t always seem to correlate with business results like referral traffic, conversions or other indirect signals.
Instead, brands should focus on control and trust. Search has changed from an awareness channel to a product trust channel. It is not enough to be seen. You should understand how much control you have over what is seen and whether the information provided about your brand, product or management is true.
Often, the old mandate of creating the best content has led marketers to produce bloated guides and high-quality content that lacks unique insights or a clear link to the product or solution to capture those clicks.
We see this in websites that create content they have no right to win. These websites continue to see declining performance, while brands that prioritize trust – placing on unique product details and proprietary information – win with visibility and narrative control that captures high-intent users mid- and bottom-of-the-funnel.
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Future risks of tracking brand trust
This change will accelerate over the next 24 months. The days of focusing only on 10 green links for Google are over. Search is now a fragmented experience and is often influenced by review sites and third-party publishers.
Check out Reddit. Both organic searches and generating results are common in Reddit threads. While I understand why AI companies use Reddit as a resource, it’s not a perfect solution.
Disinformation persists, and spam tactics are being developed to game the system. This makes owning your narrative and maintaining the same trust across platforms – not just your domain – extremely important.
In addition, native advertising will soon influence these results. Productive responses are currently effective because they feel meaningful and non-commercial. As ads focus more on these responses, they can change users’ perception.
Brands must strive to be cited as an organic solution within the integrated AI response rather than seen as an intrusive ad, with a low intent to maintain and build trust.
Building a strong brand
To build a strong brand, marketers must go beyond the required metrics. As productivity feedback often obscures the data we once relied on to strategize and determine performance, we must be more integrated with other teams across our organizations.
Brands should use third-party sites like Reddit or social media to understand the themes surrounding their products and customer service. By using marketing materials and customer service scripts, you can create assets that address real-world conflicts.
This information should be mapped to specific people and published wherever your audience resides, including third parties, PR and managed domains. Consistency and ubiquity create a strategic drain and limit AI’s assumptions about your product.
From the old ways to the new
Change is hard, but focusing on traffic as a primary KPI will no longer protect your brand from reputational risks. Brands must shift to building trust and earning the right to be present in high-intent searches.
A strategic approach focused on controlled, high-authority assets is the only way to succeed in the fragmented world of search.
