Are You There? Changing Organic Search Patterns

A lot changed in 2023.

One of those big changes was a major shift in organic search traffic. Two big forces gathered and impacted organic search last year: the rapid adoption of generative AI tools and Google’s changes to it algorithm, also known as the Helpful Content updates.

The result is that traditional tactics to attract organic web traffic seem like they aren’t as effective.

Put another way, it’s like there was a big shift in how to market/manage a website or property in 2023. Likely the full implications won’t be clear for some time. Certainly some sites are benefiting from the changes, and others are getting crushed.

If you’ve spent any time searching the web recently, you might have noticed a few things:

AI results dominate the top spots

Overtime, I think that AI will really improve search, but also make it necessary to structure websites and web content differently. I think that understanding search intent and quality content will still be important, but some old school SEO tactics like keyword stuffing or some of the strategic on-page stuff might be less valued.

How the use of AI in search eventually impacts content creation modes and methods still seems up-in-the-air. But there are some patterns emerging that might give some clues as to what the future might look like.

The new version of search results so far are coming in from two main buckets

One of the buckets seems to be sites with high domain authority, like the big box store equivalent of internet sites. If you own or manage a big site with legacy domain authority, then likely you are reaping some of the benefits of last year’s reshuffle.

But just like cities that have lost their character when small businesses with local flavor get pushed out by homogeneous, corporate chain stores and restaurants, the internet will be a way less interesting place if it’s only dominated by large legacy publishers.

Overtime, I think the current user experience will have to change to incorporate some variety, which leads to our next point.

The other bucket puts a heavy emphasis on results from forums, particularly Reddit

I’m guessing this is a way of compensating for AI-generated search results. Reddit is a forum full of people.

The site has built its reputation on being ruthless about not allowing bots or spammy posts, which means the site’s overall domain authority is really high and its a pretty safe bet that the responses are human-generated and authentic.

Reddit is also a really good place to get questions answered. One of the big goals of Google’s recent updates, according to posts and explainers issued by the company, is to reward sites that do a good job of answering search intent.

Getting an answer to a question from an actual human is a good search experience. What’s interesting is that other social media sites that are Q&A-based, like Quora, don’t seem to be featured as prominently as Reddit. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this over time.

Expertise and proof-of-humanity will be important factors in the future of search

The question, for me at least, is what does this look like?

Are we entering an age where influencers are more than entertainers and somehow become the new internet experts?

Or will other metrics like human review scores matter? Or will search results become even more dynamic and customizable so that we move away from the winner take all kind of mass media model?

Regardless, the inflection point of how the get and sustain web traffic raises some interesting questions about what comes next. It seems pretty clear that it’s time to create a new toolkit or some new methods of operating on the web.