Search marketing agency forecasts 'The Great Citation War' as brands fight for AI visibility

In an ever-changing digital landscape, fast adaptation is the key to maintaining relevance and staying competitive. AI visibility is fast-becoming the key to all digital visibility, as users increasingly search for information via answer engines, while fewer and fewer traditional searches result in clicks. It’s more important than ever to look to the future of the industry, but there are lessons to be learned from looking backwards.

As London agency Maratopia warns of a ‘Great Citation War,’ it’s crucial to examine the early SEO wars that shaped the current state of the industry, and discover what we can learn from them.

Out with the old...

As early practitioners mastered the simplest tricks of the search trade, Google’s algorithms have evolved to filter and assess the quality of the results it presents. Early iterations of SEO simply required ‘keyword densities/uses/etc.’ That means if you were trying to rank for ‘men’s white running shoes,’ the key was to feature that keyword on your page as much as you possibly can.

Google was the first search engine to measure site quality by use of links, seeing those citations as an editorial stamp of approval that signified the content it linked to was of high quality and useful to users searching these topics. As a result of this, link-building became its own trade utilised by unscrupulous opportunists to place spam links en masse, and in turn, Google unleashed updates like Panda and Penguin to penalise sites going for these low-quality links.

This shifted the emphasis to what we now call EEAT, Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust. EEAT principles meant your site needed quality content that was informative and reflected all of the above. It also meant your links should come from sites similar (or higher) in EEAT ranking to demonstrate the authority of your brand within your industry.

... and in with the new

AI has furthered this challenge. That’s why sites are now fighting harder than ever to become go-to sources - not for users, but for answer engines and generative AI search results that interpret and synthesise information for users.

One of the biggest challenges AI has already faced is veracity. That’s why brands’ aims should now be recognised as reliable.

Question and answer formats, schema markup - best practice hasn’t shifted radically, but the target has shifted slightly as AEO and GEO turn to pleasing the crawl bots once again. In an era where fewer than 60% of Google searches result in a click, some experts allege that on-page experience is now less relevant than ever.

The long-term evolution of AI search and The Great Citation War

So what can we learn from the evolution of search? Predictably, the metrics used for ranking will evolve to be more specific, more concise, and eventually come full circle. How users perceive your site may not be reflected in how they interact with it, but how other respected sources online view and cite your own.

So comes the great citation war - the fight to be the most trusted source in your industry and be perceived. Could PR then be the investment of the future?

Who will be affected?

AI-driven searches will impact across industries. But amongst those most vulnerable to the shift towards answer engines and citation-based visibility will be those whose business relies on informational queries.

YMYL (Your Money Your Life) industries such as health and finance have always found search challenging as Google has notoriously been strict on the way it presents this information. So the future of AI will present unique challenges for these sectors as generative search results will prioritise those sources which are authoritative and trustworthy.

Travel and hospitality will also be affected as users' searches grow more specific - 'What is the best sports bar in Leeds?', for example, or 'Where is the best matcha latte in London?'. For these businesses, winning the citation war means being recognised online as the best in your area on comparison sites, review sites and in local publications.

What should I do?

Maratopia’s Steve Harvey-Franklin said: “With many trending towards this style of digital marketing, mass publication, independent statistics and research, and ultimately, valuable information is the key to getting noticed across your industry. Your business’s experience is about to become your most valuable weapon in the fight for visibility.”

About Maratopia

Maratopia takes a forward-thinking, results driven approach to campaigns for brands across industries. With services including search, generative and answer engine optimisation, as well as web design and development, paid search campaigns and more, they aim to create tailored strategies that adapt.