I recalled how Silverstein somewhat stunningly talked about Google as artificial intelligence, which he called “search pets” for humans in the future state of Google AI.
It was an early view into the company’s mindset that what they were doing wasn’t just “search.” They saw their mission as that of AI in the service of people, even in its earliest incarnations.
This talk has stayed with me every day since, and I have often spoken of search engines as AI in the subsequent two decades.
Grehan quickly reminded me that he was the guy interviewing Silverstein and we both had an Oprah “full circle moment,” and also a good laugh.
But again, Google is and has always been about generative artificial intelligence. And those who “optimize” have actually been “training” search engines all along.
In my own work, I have fully shifted in how I explain SEO concepts not as “optimization”, but rather “training a search engine to better perform with our digital content.”
In discussions with people within the range of complete newbies to seasoned professionals, the complex aspects of getting the most visibility for content are more easily understood when discussed as “training”.
The use of “training” also allows for a more reasonable shift in thinking about what is needed for success.
SEO is no longer wholly performance-based and tied to dollar-in-dollar-back expectations; it is now more holistic, the sum of both direct and indirect actions that lead to the ultimate comprehensive goal.
A basic reframing of ‘optimization’ to ‘training’
What does it mean to “train” a search engine, in the context of what is now considered “optimization”? As an example, here are a few very basic ways to recalibrate our thinking:
Keywords: Trains a search engine to know what our content is about linguistically.
Content: Depth, length, reading level, topics, subtopics and mixed media all help train a search engine for a level of trust that is high enough to appear at the top of list-generated results in the appropriate context.
Internal links: Trains the engine on internal relationships to content within a website or domain and adds additional relationship context.
External links: Trains a search engine about external relationships from other trusted websites, which in turn imparts a level of trust to the website for results generation.
Schema: Trains a search engine to understand a further level of semantics.
All of these areas above can be noted or discarded by the engines, but they are still being trained nonetheless.
If non-relevant techniques are being utilized, whether in linking, content, relevancy or other elements, then the search engine is still being trained – either knowingly or unknowingly by the website or asset owner.
However, their offering meets the threshold of the feared spam label, which can diminish results from “less than desirable” to outright invisibility. It is an undesirable training threshold that should be primarily avoided.
The pain for your content visibility in unintended spam training becomes a matter of degree – from the annoying “catching a cold,” as ex-Googler Matt Cutts described it, to “never going to perform as well as other websites,” to an outright ban, poisoning a domain to a permanent digital death, as far as the engine is concerned.
Dig deeper: LLM optimization: Can you influence generative AI outputs?
Training a search engine: If a tree falls in the forest with no human to perceive it, does it make a sound?
In my 30 years of experience in search, both as a user and in my job, I have never seen a top result – in even a low-competitive environment – that existed in a vacuum, devoid of any type of content or linguistic training or lacking an external trusted link of some kind.
Show me one example of this, and I will then be able to explain to you definitively whether or not a tree falling in a forest, devoid of human perception, actually makes a sound.
Whether these training concepts are intended or unintended, the generative results are – and have always been – a result of training the search engine.
The limitations of ‘search engine training’ as an industry term
While the term “search engine training” is a more linguistically accurate representation of what is done in this process in the context of generative AI, it does have its obvious limitations.
In short, it could be easily confused with some other type of educational training, even though that perception would also be linguistically inaccurate.
“Training” for a search engine is too broad and meaningless in the context of its potential educational component.
I’m not here to try to recoin the phrase, but rather point out a single word that will help you help others better understand what is needed for success and to have better expectations for what that type of success entails.
If there is a better way of expressing it, that’s great.
“Search engine training” is not a sexy phrase, though there are many cunning linguists in this industry who can probably come up with something better.
But for me, “optimization” is no longer the right term and “training” a search engine speaks to a symphony of elements required to get the results we are looking for.
The industry is still trying to define our new world of search and AI training for digital assets, trying out terms like AIO, GEO and the like. I still haven’t seen one that resonates with me.
“Search training”? “Search intelligence training”?
Personally, this is for someone else to figure out and, hopefully, this article will further promote that discussion to the tens of people who care.
Without your content, search engines and AI won’t exist
I am not so naïve as to think that this whole concept might be offensive to the major search engines in that they may be so susceptible as to be “trained,” and that is certainly not my intention.
But here is one last simple truth for you that I have stated for many, many years:
Without your content, search engines and generative AI do not exist.
In a world where “free speech” is supposedly sacred, you have every right to train a search engine or GPT about your content as you wish.
Your results might vary in how you exercise your right to train, as it is the engine’s right to clean things up as they see fit.
But train them in the language they speak and stay relevant, and the results may just be harmonious.
Dig deeper: How AI will affect the future of search
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