Ranked's Plan For AI Search

Hi! I'm Harry, the Founder & CEO of Ranked.

Ranked is coming up to 10 years old! We've been Ranked with a .ai domain the entire time. Back in the day, people thought we were a bit crazy for talking about machine learning, NLP and AI being the future. It has been great to see the industry flourish over the last few years.

Search is quickly changing. Google has had a monopoly that hasn't been challenged before. For the first time in a while, it looks like there are emerging competitors that will cause disruption in the space.

At Ranked, we need to plan ahead of this to deliver results for you. We have always stayed ahead of the curve on white hat, genuine SEO practices when updates come to the SEO industry, this time is no different.

Potential Competitors to Google

There are a few emerging search competitors to keep an eye on:

• SearchGPT by OpenAI
• Perplexity
• Apple Spotlight
• Bing

The main two that are trending are SearchGPT and Perplexity. SearchGPT is in beta, while Perplexity is a fully launched, scaled product. Apple Spotlight added natural language queries (NLQ) a few months ago and with Apple Intelligence being released in a few months, it could potentially be an alternative to Google for Apple users.

Bing has tried to compete with Google for a long time and is still seen as the 2nd most important search engine aside from Google. We expect this to shift over the next year.

Ranked Service Updates

Over the last year, we have upgraded our service deliverables to prepare our clients for AI search far in advance. We've already shipped:

• Priority indexing
• Edgeless ODN (Optimization Delivery Network)
• Increased word count per article
• UX focused optimization
• Faster indexing on our outreach

We are adjusting our deliverables to be more compatible with natural language processing (NLP). This adaptation is crucial to ensure your content is effectively indexed in the evolving search landscape. While NLP is currently utilized mainly by enterprises for bulk data processing, it is poised to become increasingly important as consumers embrace AI search engines.

Major players like Google's Gemini model and platforms like Perplexity use NLP and natural language queries (NLQs) to find, sort, and index content—including local business information, blogs, products, statistics, and reviews. Adhering to standardized structures will enhance indexing efficiency. We've tailored our services accordingly to maximize your content's visibility as AI search engines gain traction.

Additionally, we've upgraded our Optimization Delivery Network (available for free to Ranked clients) to include active webpage monitoring and indexing. This enhancement ensures your new pages are indexed promptly and alerts us to any changes on your website.

Looking ahead, we're preparing for AI-generated summaries and overviews in search results. While some SEO software is beta-testing rank tracking for these features, we believe it's premature to focus on this just yet. Once these features are fully released, we'll prioritize strategies to position our clients prominently in these areas, which appear at the top of search results and are critical for visibility.

What Should Ranked Clients Do?

If you haven't already, we recommend:

• Getting our ODN installed on your website. It's free!
• Look into priority indexing. This isn't 100% required to succeed, we are good without it.
• Focus on delivering a great user experience on your website.
• Be open to change. Although it's likely that Google will keep a majority of the search engine market share for years to come, it's worth preparing for any fast moving changes by upcoming competitors.

Please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] if you have any questions. We look forward to delivering measurable, long term results for the future of search. :)