Don’t chase the stick: rethinking search in the age of AI

When I was three, my brother had a stick. Not just any stick – a very good stick. I wanted it with the full commitment only a three-year-old can bring to something they have no practical use for.

There were a few issues. It was too big for me, it belonged to my brother, and the ground was uneven. Still, I chased it – and inevitably fell face-first into the mud. 

Once my dad had documented the crisis with a photo, my mum picked me up and explained that I did not really need the stick. It would slow me down. Besides, further down the path, there was a bush full of blackberries.

So I found a new thing to aim for. The berries were much better than the stick. 

I think about that story a lot in marketing. We are very good at getting fixated on the thing in front of us: the tactic, the metric, the platform, the shiny new acronym. For years, that thing was SEO. Now, increasingly, it is AI SEO, GEO, LLM optimisation, AI driven discovery – whatever term we choose to give it next. 

These shifts matter, but they also come with a risk: that we become so focused on the stick that we forget to ask whether it is actually going to help us move forward.

The rise of AI search is not a replacement story

Search is changing quickly, but not as neatly as some would like to suggest. AI is not simply replacing search. ChatGPT is not simply replacing Google. GEO is not simply replacing SEO.

People still search on Google, but they also search on TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, Amazon, ChatGPT, Perplexity and countless other places where answers, opinions and recommendations are formed. At the same time, Google itself is changing, with AI Overviews, Gemini and AI-enabled browsing blurring the boundaries between searching, asking, browsing and deciding.

So the question is not whether SEO is dead. It is whether our understanding of visibility is broad enough. For marketers, visibility now has to be earned across more places, in more formats, and at more stages of the decision-making process.

Your website still matters, but it is not the whole journey

For a long time, digital marketing trained us to think in journeys we could see: someone searched, clicked, visited a website and converted. It was never that clean, but it was tangible enough to report on.

That world has been fragmenting for some time. Privacy changes, GDPR, cookie restrictions and platform-level reporting limitations have all made attribution harder. AI adds another layer, because people can now compare providers, summarise reviews, shortlist suppliers and form opinions before they ever reach a brand-owned environment.

That does not mean your website no longer matters. It means its role is changing. It still needs to be fast, useful, credible and technically accessible, but trust is increasingly built elsewhere too: in AI-generated answers, citations, LinkedIn posts, third-party articles, reviews, comparison pages, podcasts and community discussions. 

The work is no longer just to optimise the point of arrival. It is to understand the whole environment in which decisions are being shaped.

The fundamentals matter more, not less

When a new channel or technology emerges, the instinct is often to look for a new checklist. Do we need an llms.txt file? Should we create markdown versions of key pages? How do we get cited in AI tools? What are the technical hacks?

Some of these questions are useful, some are premature, and some are distractions. The better question is whether we are giving people, search engines and AI systems clear reasons to trust us.

The organisations that perform well in AI-shaped discovery will not simply be the ones that chase every new optimisation tactic. They will be the ones with substance, clarity and credibility. That is not a departure from good marketing. It is a return to it.

Measurement will be uncomfortable for a while

Most marketers want to measure meaningful outcomes like return on investment, cost per acquisition, pipeline contribution and revenue impact. But if more of your audience forms an opinion about you without clicking through to your site, measurement becomes more complicated.

Visibility share, citations and AI answer presence can be useful indicators. They help marketing teams understand whether they are appearing in the right contexts and how they compare with competitors. But they are only signals, not outcomes.

The commercial challenge is not just to be cited. It is to be remembered, trusted and chosen. A brand can be visible without being credible, present without being persuasive, and mentioned without being the organisation someone actually wants to work with. So yes, we should measure what we can, but we should not confuse emerging indicators with commercial success.

What should marketers do now?

This is a moment for adaptation, not panic. It is not the time to abandon SEO, rebuild an entire strategy around unproven AI tactics, or chase every new recommendation that appears on LinkedIn.

The answer will not be the same for every organisation. For some, the priority will be technical search foundations. For others, it will be thought leadership, digital PR, content strategy, website structure, social visibility or stronger proof of impact. For many, it will be a combination. 

But the principle is the same: do not chase the stick just because everyone else is chasing it. Look up, reassess the path, and decide what is actually going to help you reach the people who matter.

If you want to understand how visible your brand is in AI search, register for early access to the exceptional™ AI Performance Analyser.