Stop Chasing AI Visibility Scores: Mick Selman & Aaron Towlson, Intrigue Media

Yeah, so what's kind of funny is that ultimately, yes, we're writing for robots and for people.

We tend to stick to Google's guidelines just because they're still the head of all of those search results, like primarily searches are going through there.

and their process for monitoring whether or not its piece of content is going to be optimized for the robot so that they'll present it as if it's optimized for people.

So it's kind of like a weird jumble of things, but ultimately it can be categorized into something that Google calls EEAT.

And it's a framework that it uses to judge the quality of content.

So that's experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

And it's not like a real metric in terms of you can't find a number on it in the analytics or anything like that.

But it's basically just sort of almost a checklist to frame your content around.

And there are different specific pieces that fall into that in terms of...

But are you including your author on a publication? And does that author there then have a page? Does it link to a LinkedIn or something like that that has all of this information so that Google can connect these pieces and understand that you are an authority talking about this piece of information? Because that's going to be stronger than something that pops up out of nowhere.

Yeah, I think a lot of the, you know, mystery that you sort of explained there, Rob, stems from this idea.

And, you know, Mick really touched on it there that it's really complicated that like Google's doing some really big, mysterious stuff behind the scenes, which it is obviously in some ways it's building these algorithms.

But at the end of the day, I think Google is at its core trying to help people answer the questions that they want answered.

it's like it comes down to that that's all it's trying to do so if you can do that in a really good way to folks who are actually relevant to your business you're actually doing the services providing the information that they're looking for you have experience in that you need to get that out there and you'll probably do a decent job of it as long as you set things up in a certain way sure there are details but ultimately it comes down to that and sometimes it feels and google is a bit like the oscars in this way like we sort of know how it works but no one really knows why anyone wins anything uh And why it took so long for Leo to get one.

Yeah, exactly.

So there is some of that mystery to it that Google intentionally has there so that people can't copy them, obviously.

But ultimately, it is just trying to get people the answers to the questions that they're asking.

And that's what it comes down to, doing that the best.

Yeah.

So let's break that down a bit because there's a bunch of AI slop out there now, right? Like the rate of content production has just exponentially jumped into a you know, crazy world.

And anybody can write a blog post for landscape in seconds.

It might suck, but it would be, it's written.

And so kind of going back to your point before, Mick, about, you know, does the author have a page? You know, maybe they have a degree in horticulture.

Are they referenced as, you know, is that degree mentioned in the page or even in the author note so that, you know, these tools can be like, okay, this is a source of expertise, not just AI slop.

But can you just talk a little bit about what this is doing to people and like what to avoid and maybe what to look for when leveraging a tool like an AI tool for content writing?

Yeah, so what's kind of funny is that ultimately, yes, we're writing for robots and for people.

We tend to stick to Google's guidelines just because they're still the head of all of those search results, like primarily searches are going through there.

and their process for monitoring whether or not its piece of content is going to be optimized for the robot so that they'll present it as if it's optimized for people.

So it's kind of like a weird jumble of things, but ultimately it can be categorized into something that Google calls EEAT.

And it's a framework that it uses to judge the quality of content.

So that's experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

And it's not like a real metric in terms of you can't find a number on it in the analytics or anything like that.

But it's basically just sort of almost a checklist to frame your content around.

And there are different specific pieces that fall into that in terms of...

But are you including your author on a publication? And does that author there then have a page? Does it link to a LinkedIn or something like that that has all of this information so that Google can connect these pieces and understand that you are an authority talking about this piece of information? Because that's going to be stronger than something that pops up out of nowhere.

Yeah, I think a lot of the, you know, mystery that you sort of explained there, Rob, stems from this idea.

And, you know, Mick really touched on it there that it's really complicated that like Google's doing some really big, mysterious stuff behind the scenes, which it is obviously in some ways it's building these algorithms.

But at the end of the day, I think Google is at its core trying to help people answer the questions that they want answered.

it's like it comes down to that that's all it's trying to do so if you can do that in a really good way to folks who are actually relevant to your business you're actually doing the services providing the information that they're looking for you have experience in that you need to get that out there and you'll probably do a decent job of it as long as you set things up in a certain way sure there are details but ultimately it comes down to that and sometimes it feels and google is a bit like the oscars in this way like we sort of know how it works but no one really knows why anyone wins anything uh And why it took so long for Leo to get one.

Yeah, exactly.

So there is some of that mystery to it that Google intentionally has there so that people can't copy them, obviously.

But ultimately, it is just trying to get people the answers to the questions that they're asking.

And that's what it comes down to, doing that the best.

Yeah.

So let's break that down a bit because there's a bunch of AI slop out there now, right? Like the rate of content production has just exponentially jumped into a you know, crazy world.

And anybody can write a blog post for landscape in seconds.

It might suck, but it would be, it's written.

And so kind of going back to your point before, Mick, about, you know, does the author have a page? You know, maybe they have a degree in horticulture.

Are they referenced as, you know, is that degree mentioned in the page or even in the author note so that, you know, these tools can be like, okay, this is a source of expertise, not just AI slop.

But can you just talk a little bit about what this is doing to people and like what to avoid and maybe what to look for when leveraging a tool like an AI tool for content writing?