If you’ve been following along on this blog for long enough, you’ve noticed there hasn’t been much mentioned on the AI or Large Language Model fronts (outside of a few references to it in my Digital Spaces Breakdown and Connecting The Dots follow up from the past few weeks).

With more questions about it coming from my clients in recent months, I thought I’d take today to put together some thoughts for small businesses as AI has been (partially) disrupting some of the search spaces we’ve come to know. (Take a look at this post for more thoughts on shielding your digital marketing efforts in times of disruption).

On AI

If you are active almost anywhere online these days, you likely have found yourself encountering AI in some flavor: whether through Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Twitter/X’s Grok or Facebook’s Meta AI — these are applications that are powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), a text-based form of generative AI.

These apps allow you to interact and ask questions in a more conversational setting – the responses you receive back are generated in a more natural language, like someone is chatting directly with you (you’ve likely encountered this for customer service on some websites).

This differs greatly from a traditional search interface, where you enter a keyword or phrase into a search engine and it responds with a list of relevant web pages, business listings, ads and other search features.

As you can likely imagine, the change in response types (from a list of resources to a more synthesized, conversational response) might change how your customers/clients may discover your small business through these interfaces.

The answer?

Yes… and no.

Behind the scenes for the past few years, I’ve been quietly testing a few of these platforms to understand and compare the differences some folks may experience.

As a caveat before proceeding, the sample sizes of what I’ve been testing are quite small so keep this in mind (we are in the small business world, after all), and that AI generated responses vary quite a bit between sessions (this means the same prompt/keyword can yield a very different response each time you test).

While there are definite differences between what you’ll see in a generated response from an AI platform/app, many of these platforms still rely on search platforms (or the same resources they use) to form (at least partially) the backbone of their responses.

The result is that for most of the small batch tests, many of my long-time clients (who have stayed proactive with their digital marketing through the years) are still present in AI-based conversations that are relevant for their small businesses.

While the route or path customers may take to discover your small business may change, it’s apparent that AI & search are two sides of the same coin:

Ultimately they both want to present the most relevant content, from the most relevant web pages, on the most relevant websites from the most relevant businesses – at the most relevant time – for their users.

How they present and choose relevant content may be different (that could be a blog by itself), but ultimately the end game is still the same.

A Focus On Alignment, Relevance, Balance – And Your Customers: The Fundamentals Of Search

It’s very obvious that the basics of search have proven to be very helpful in the age of AI for many of the reasons stated above.

Focusing on increasing – and maintaining – relevance, staying balanced with your digital efforts and maintaining alignment with your customers/clients is something that works well in search and should carry over very well to the more AI-driven interfaces moving forward.

As always, staying relevant and consistent with a balanced game plan can sometimes take nuance and more time than you might have, so don’t be afraid to get a little help as you push forward this year (and beyond).

A Small Side Note: What I’m Not Using AI For

AI’s reach goes beyond search as you’re probably aware.

While I’ve tested most of these early on, I still have yet to implement them permanently in my digital systems (mainly due to the hallucination issues many of them are facing – which may never go away).

It’s really hard not to see the potential & usefulness of these platforms (and I may do a larger deep dive later this year), but one thing that I will not use AI for: creative work (idea creation, writing, designing, photography/video/media, etc.).

The capabilities are there (and constantly improving), but creative work should always stay human to stay authentic & genuine (in fact, I emphasize this with my content management services) — and created with the same genuine care that the small business world is known for.

The heart of the small business world are humans – and human-created creative work is still of a much higher quality, in my honest opinion (this and a few other reasons I won’t get into today).

Cautious Optimism

After 16 years in working in the digital world – mostly in search – one thing that’s always the same is that change is constant.

While AI presents some new challenges on the digital front for many small businesses, I believe there will be plenty of opportunities for them by simply sticking with the evergreen guiding principle of marketing:

Keep your customers/clients (and their needs) at the heart of everything you do, and it’s hard to go wrong.