AI Tools – ChatGPT, Grok, Google Gemini, etc. – are being used to book holidays. Having your business recommended by one of the AI tools is better than a Google ranking.
Is SEO dead?
“No but it’s less important today”, said Graham Donoghue, CEO of Sykes Cottages. The holiday market is using AI – ChatGPT, GROK G Gemini – to search for and plan holidays. Having your company recommended by one of these tools is almost as important as appearing at the top of Search engine results, such as Google.
People are using an LLM like ChatGPT to go in and search for the top 10 things to do in a location. Business owners need to understand this and know what is going on.
Search Engine Optimisation is still important to the holiday market, but less so because some of the large platforms are changing the real estate for the first positioning on the Home page. Sponsored listings today are getting pushed down.
Business owners
……. need to make sure all your data is structured in the right way so that the AI tools can read your content in the right way:
- ensuring you are on multiple review platforms
- making sure you have good authoritative content that adds value and is unique.
SEO is still important however we need to understand how our websites are being crawled or being accessed by some of the bots that exist on AI.
Defence of our websites
It’s a challenge because of cyber. We want to open up our website and make it more crawlable but at the same time, we need to defend ourselves against bad actors. Important to understand how your website is being crawled or being accessed by bots that exist on AI.
AI tools can track
- what proportion of employees are using AI
- data from prompts
- see what prompts are being put into AI tools.
- see how people are using search within AI, searching within the AI models.
Are companies moving towards AI as quickly as their customers are?
We are seeing more of which services customer-focused chatbots are able to deliver, and with less friction. Experiences are getting better and better, which explains increased usage of AI tools by customers.
Are we investing enough in our businesses in AI technology to keep them safe?
AI research firm Evident, with a focus mainly in financial services, says that the businesses that are investing heavily in AI are the ones that are pulling ahead in getting fraud down. More investment also grows their market share and takes a lot of costs out of the back end of the business.
The data is showing that the gap between the leading banks and the lagging ones is growing fast.
Which countries are ahead?
North America is leading the charge because they have been investing in AI for a longer time and is more deeply deployed across business, pulling ahead in being able to take their costs out and grow their market share. The UK and European banks are behind the US by a couple of years. Concerning “because this is an existential race,” said said Alexandra Mousavizadeh, Chief Executive of Evident (and creator of The Responsibility100 Index and The Global AI Index).
Those that race ahead will challenge their rivals on growth, productivity, and financial performance—and those that fall behind risk irrelevance in a rapidly changing marketplace.
What’s holding us back?
It’s a mindset question because AI is a different technology.
We need to have an innovative mindset to make sure it is used across the entirety of the business and that requires investment. It requires long-term, top-down strategy, making sure that every line of business is using AI for every task and function. And if you don’t have that, you’re not going to transition to an AI-focused company, which has been a focus in the US for many years.
AI Talent
It also requires proximity to strong talent, and an environment that is supporting the commercialisation and deployment of AI where the US is ahead, and the UK is behind. Businesses have to attract and retain the brightest minds working in AI today, and develop and upskill the AI-focused company of tomorrow.
Big tech companies and Search
Tech companies have made billions over the years from advertising. We are now using Search in a different way with AI Bots.
“The companies that will continue to evolve and continue to garner the all-important advertising share are the ones that optimise the content on board,” said Alexandra Mousavizadeh.
Did you know that being polite to artificial intelligence can be expensive?
I’ll end this blog with a piece of AI news trivia.
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, said that saying please and thank you to your AI chatbots is “costing him big time.”
Altman responded to a user on X \ Twitter who was curious how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people showing good manners to their AI models.
Tens of millions of dollars well spent–you never know, was the CEO’s response.
Generative AI is widely seen as a heavy consumer of energy
……. particularly when it comes to training models.
Still and all, Kurtis Beavers, a director on the design team for Microsoft Copilot, said in a Microsoft WorkLab memo that using basic etiquette when interacting with AI helps generate respectful, collaborative outputs.
Beavers said in the memo that generative AI also mirrors the levels of professionalism, clarity and detail in the prompts you provide. Beavers added that being polite to your AI chatbot “not only ensures you get the same graciousness in return, but it also improves the AI’s responsiveness and performance.
Excellent and thought provoking piece Finola – thank you
Thanks for the feedback, Alastair, glad you enjoyed the read.