Insights from Scott Purcell, Co-Founder of Man of Many
Scott Purcell, Co-Founder, Man of Many
Recent revelations from Time and Axios regarding the monetization of visibility within AI search illuminate a pressing dilemma in today’s GEO industry—distinguishing genuine value from what may simply be outdated strategies disguised as innovation. Brands must reassess their approach in light of these developments.
Last week, Press Gazette reported that Time and Axios have initiated the sale of their visibility within AI-generated responses as an advertising commodity.
Axios is in discussions with collaborators, articulating “why we’re prominently featured in LLMs” while charging for this exposure.
Time’s Chief Operations Officer elaborated that the organization is developing a machine-readable version of their site exclusively for AI backend engagements, brazenly acknowledging that they are creating “a pure data product that will not be publicly disseminated, designed solely for marketing to AI systems”.
The phrase “marketing to the bots” encapsulates their entire strategy, albeit a misguided one. The notable aspect here is the urgent demand that has emerged. The moment Time introduced this concept, brands responded with an immediate plea: “That’s our concern; assist us.”
Marketing executives can undoubtedly relate to this widening chasm; consumers are increasingly consulting AI assistants for purchasing advice, while most brands remain oblivious to their visibility—or lack thereof—in these dialogues.
This palpable anxiety is set to significantly affect budget allocations, raising the critical issue of whether these funds will be utilized wisely or squandered.
A key point often overlooked by those promoting such services is that the technology essentially functions as a mere toggle switch.
Activating a simplified Markdown format of your articles for AI crawlers is achievable through Cloudflare’s AI Crawl Control, a process we implemented at Man of Many last June.
Employing content negotiation, verified AI crawlers receive Markdown, while human users and standard search engines view the same HTML content.
This straightforward adaptation can be accomplished by anyone with a Cloudflare account within a few hours. Thus, claiming this ability as a competitive edge is fundamentally flawed; it is merely infrastructure.
However, the more concerning trajectory involves what Time is boasting: delivering content exclusively to machines. This practice, which serves different material to crawlers than to human viewers, is known as cloaking—a term that has existed in digital marketing for over twenty years.
Google has consistently penalized this behavior since the early 2000s, yet it seems to be overlooked by many current discussions. There exists a clear distinction, often ignored, between permissible content negotiation and clandestine intent.
While providing the same article in multiple formats is acceptable, creating a bot-exclusive marketing payload devoid of human readership is inherently deceptive and violates Google’s spam policies and content integrity guidelines.
John Mueller of Google stated unequivocally: “Why would they want to see a page that no user encounters?” A silence was the response when we posed a cloaking inquiry to our Google contact, pointing back to Google’s emphasis on user-focused practices.
Alarmingly, brands utilizing popular WordPress SEO plugins may unwittingly generate parallel machine-exclusive versions of their sites, thus potentially engaging in cloaking without any explicit intent.
This situation leads us to a facet of the industry that tests my patience. There now exists a burgeoning market for Generative Engine Optimization, labeled as an indispensable contemporary strategy for brand survivability.
The terminology may sound impressively complex, especially when presented in lavish settings, but when one examines the outcomes, the reality is stark.
Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages implementing schema markup, revealing a 4.6 percent decline in AI Overview citations.
Moreover, SE Ranking evaluated llms.txt across approximately 300,000 domains, finding no correlation with citations, confirming Mueller’s assertion that Google does not access the file.
Lily Ray monitored over 220 sites generating AI content and discovered that 54 percent experienced a traffic decline of 30 percent or greater, with 22 percent suffering reductions of 75 percent or worse.
As she aptly noted, “the packaging may be novel, but the underlying patterns remain the same.” Additionally, SparkToro conducted 2,961 prompts with a pool of 600 volunteers, concluding that there was less than a one-in-one-hundred probability of generating identical brand lists from repeated prompts, leading Rand Fishkin to declare, “any tool suggesting a ranking position in AI is fundamentally flawed.”
The strategies being vigorously marketed today are often merely rehashed tactics that previously resulted in extensive damage to sites following the 2024 Helpful Content Update. The interface may be new; however, the underlying deception remains unchanged.
Herein lies a definitive perspective, articulated directly by Google. In its guidance regarding the AI search landscape, Google VP Brendon Kraham asserts that “generative AI features are built directly atop our fundamental ranking frameworks.”
According to him, a competitive edge stems from “authenticity and expertise.” Kraham unequivocally urges brands to abandon efforts aimed at “optimizing content for bots,” emphasizing the necessity of focusing on user engagement.
Effective SEO is synonymous with effective GEO; the attributes that secure a citation in an AI response mirror those that previously garnered a ranking in traditional search results: authentic expertise, firsthand experiences, identifiable authorship, and unique viewpoints unattainable by automated models.
There is no distinct game to manipulate; rather, the objective is to excel within the original framework. This remains crucial, especially as emerging data reveals that Peec AI’s analysis of 500,000 prompts indicates that Google’s AI Overviews now manifest in approximately 86 percent of searches, escalating to 88.5 percent for commercial, bottom-funnel inquiries, engaging around 2.5 billion users monthly—surpassing the combined usage of ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Consequently, brands must question how to navigate the landscape when consumers increasingly consult machines for purchasing decisions, and shortcuts may ultimately lead to traps.
An analysis by AirOps evaluated 21,311 brand mentions across various platforms like GPT-5, Claude, and Perplexity, revealing that 85 percent stemmed from third-party sources rather than the brands themselves.
Notably, listicles and editorial summaries accounted for approximately 90 percent of these mentions. This reality warrants careful consideration for anyone in sales. The key to AI visibility is predominantly through the endorsement of external parties, not merely one’s own domain.
A brand mentioned in trusted editorial sources now functions as the new backlink, which cannot be manufactured; it must be earned through legitimate merits and subsequently recognized by credible publications already trusted by AI systems.
This phenomenon serves as an unexpected boon for those committed to genuine work. At Man of Many, we rigorously test our recommendations, ensure that our editors are credited, and publish unique viewpoints unattainable through content farms.
When Parallel Web Systems unveiled Index, a platform measuring AI engagement with publisher content, we emerged as the leader across various metrics—impressions, citations, value, and, critically, uniqueness, which assesses how irreplaceable our contributions are.
AI systems do not reward those who expend effort to optimize solely for AI; they commend those offering distinctive, irreplicable insights.
Encouragingly, this is no longer a speculative theory but an observable reality. We now receive over 1.3 million AI-crawler requests weekly at Man of Many, as bots actively engage with and learn from our content.
This machine attention is translating into tangible benefits; our referral traffic from AI-driven assistants has surged by 38 percent year on year, with ChatGPT being responsible for three out of every four of these visitors.
The model comprehends our content, cites it, and drives users back to us. This is the operational ecosystem working efficiently, validated by the only metrics that matter.
Thus, the lesson for any brand confronting the issues of AI visibility is clear. There are no shortcuts to achieving this visibility through markdown tactics on personal domains, especially when 85 percent of AI-generated brand mentions arise from third-party sources.
Success flows through collaboration with reputable publishers. Such partnerships are not only beneficial but now demonstrably rewarding.
Proceed with activating your functionalities. We did. Serve a refined version of your journalistic contributions to bots; it is straightforward, transparent, and facilitates citations.
Yet, be wary of what is being marketed to you when an offer to “market to machines” arises. It represents a detour around the most valuable asset—authenticity.
Google’s explicit cautions have shown that shortcuts do not yield success. Those brands and publishers who thrive in the era of AI search are those that consistently engage in substantive work.
True authority, recognized and earned, is the key to success in this transforming landscape. The critical inquiry remains: are you embracing this fundamental truth?
Source link: Adnews.com.au.
