The trust economy is making a comeback.
For the past few decades, content marketing seemed like a cheat code.
If you published enough content with the right keywords, and "built some backlinks", then you could climb your way into relevance whether you deserved it or not.
But that run is coming to an end.
I say sayonara.
Or as my 4 year old daughter would say, "So long, sucka!" (We're working on it 😒)
I call it a win if "bestcheapusedcars.com" doesn't get more visibility than a trusted car dealership that's actually earned its place through years of service.
See, AI search is doing something keyword-based search couldn't.
It's synthesizing what a large body of information (relevant to the user) across the web actually says about you.
It's looking at local info, reviews, comparisons, walkthroughs, forum threads, YouTube videos, etc., and it's forming a picture of who's genuinely trusted in a category.
AI is cold-blooded...
Research found that when a brand publishes a "best in the category" listicle and puts itself at the top, then it gets cited in Google's AI Overview, that same brand is left out of the actual recommendation 69% of the time.
So the AI quotes your page…and then tells the buyer to go with a competitor you listed.
You can't hide from bad business or optimize your way out of it anymore. The solution is going to be to change the way people talk about you.
It's reputation.
This is how business has always been done.
For thousands of years, business worked like this. If people spoke well of you, you got more work.
We just had a 20-30 year hiccup in digital marketing where people gamed the system.
But as machines get smarter, I think they're pulling us back to the way things have always actually worked.
People who build real reputations by delivering on promises and doing good work are about to find that reputation is an investment worth making.