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Comment by foxfired | Hacker News Reader

I think there is a problem of incentive here. When we made our websites Search Engine Optimized, the incentive was for google to understand our content, and bring traffic our way. When you make your content optimized for LLM, it only improves their product, and you get nothing in return.

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I do dev work for a marketing dept of a large company and there is a lot of talk about optimizing for LLMs/AI. Chatgpt can drive sales in the same way a blog post indexed by Google can.

If a customer asks the AI what product can solve their problem and it replies with our product that is a huge win.

If your business is SEO spam with online ads, chatgpt might eat it. But if your business is selling some product, chatgpt might help you sell it.

Neat up until the "customer ask" is "What, in X space, is the worst product you can purchase?" Something you have no ability to manipulate.

>Something you have no ability to manipulate.

What makes you think this?

Because I built an LLM, I know how they work.

just add an arbiter layer on top for the possibility of advertising and modifying the output. not rocket science

Why would a customer ask that? If I'm looking for something, why would I waste time with the worst version of it? I'd just go straight for the best.

That is at most temporary. I expect within the next 5 year "partner products" and "LLM-optpmized content" will take the place of SEO.

The economic dynamics did not change and the methods will adapt.

Why wouldn't Google sell advertisers a prominent spot in the AI summary. That's their whole deal. Why wouldn't OpenAI do the same with (free) users.?

Because that’s not how LLMs work.

They have many ways to manipulate the LLM's results, for example they can use a lot of the same mechanisms that are used to block or filter out inappropriate material.

Given that there are entire forums devoted to successfully doing just that (easily) my point stands.

And what that means is the usefulness of LLms in recommending products is about to jump off a cliff.

This is what everybody should have expected.

I think it’s going to be even worse - companies are going to go to ChatGPT with lawyers and say you are making false/unfair claims about our product. We should be able to give it this copy with correct information to consume.

But software documentation is a prime example of when the incentives don't have any problems. I want my docs to be more accessible to LLMs, so more people use my software, so my software gets more mindshare, so I get more paying customers on my enterprise support plan.

Oh hey, I work at Mintlify! We shipped this as a default feature for all of our customers.

This isn't true. ChatGPT and Gemini link to sites in a similar way to how search engines have always done it. You can see the traffic show up in ahrefs or semrush.

I had a call with a new user for a SaaS product that I sell recently. During the call he mentioned that he found it by typing what he was looking for into Gemini, and it recommended my app. I don't do anything special for llms, and the public-facing part of the website has been neglected for longer than I like to admit, so I was delighted. I had never considered that AI could send new users to me rather than pull them away. It felt like I'd hacked the system somehow, skipped through all the SEO best practices of yesteryear and had this benevolent bullshit machine bestow a new user on me at the cost of nothing.

Exactly! It can actually be a positive thing, might as well make it easy for LLMs to read.

> benevolent bullshit machine bestow a new user on me at the cost of nothing

that's awesome. i love this line.

How many users do actually visit these links?

I usually do, as a data point.

I've found it's extremely important to, because you will get some results that are already AI slop optimized to show in LLM research searches.

Yes, they show a tiny link behind a collapsed menu that very few people bother clicking. For example, my blog has gone from being prominently taking first spot on Google for some queries. Now with AI overviews, there is a sharp drop in traffic. However, it still showed higher impressions then ever. This means I'm appearing in search, even in AI overview, it's just that very few people click.

As of last week, impressions have also dropped. Maybe people not clicking on my links anymore is the result?

Maybe it's about adding knowledge to LLMs, and not how many people read your website? I would be very happy if i had a simple way to get my insights, knowledge and best practices into the next version of an LLM so I have a way to improve it.

and like Google - but much, much worse - they bring back enough content to keep users in the chat interface; they never visit your site.

If you are selling advertising, then I agree. However, if you are selling a product to consumers then no. Ask an LLM "What is the best refrigerator on the market." You will get various answers like:

> The best refrigerator on the market varies based on individual needs, but top brands like LG and Samsung are highly recommended for their innovative features, reliability, and energy efficiency. For specific models, consider LG's Smart Standard-Depth MAX™ French Door Refrigerator or Samsung's smart refrigerators with internal cameras.

Optimizing your site for LLM means that you can direct their gestalt thinking towards your brand.

And neither of those two ultimately help the humans who are actually looking for something. You have a finite amount of time to spend on optimising for humans, or for search engines (and now LLMs), and unfortunately many chose the latter and it's just lead to plenty of spam in the search results.

Yes, SEO can bring traffic to your site, but if your visitors see nothing of value, they'll quickly leave.

You get to live in a world where other people are slightly more productive.

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