The rise of generative AI search can be both a blessing and a curse for advertisers.
On the upside, AI search engines form a new channel for brands to connect with consumers, potentially without increasing their ad budget. But AEO or GEO (as this sequel to SEO is often called) also requires a new understanding of how chatbots work and how brands and products will be represented by these AI intermediaries.
There is “no single data source” that can determine exactly how well a page performs across different forms of search, said Alex Halliday, CEO of AirOps, a generative AI platform that helps brands improve their search visibility and strengthen their content.
AirOps’ newest product, Page360, is designed to help brands update content based on how their media or products appear in traditional search, AI search and online community forums, such as Reddit, Pinterest or Quora (which inform AI models).
The product name is a nod to the tool’s purpose: giving advertisers a full, 360-degree view of their performance.
Out with the old …
Appearing in AI searches has become an “urgent priority” for brands, said Halliday, since more and more people are using AI for shopping advice, particularly when it comes to high intent and high consideration purchases.
But best practices for showing up in search are constantly evolving – not to mention the fact that new data or trends within an industry should also inform a brand’s content.
When there is “so much new stuff coming out all the time,” it’s incredibly challenging to figure out what content updates to prioritize, said Swapna Dhamdhere, content marketing lead at contract management company Ironclad.
Ironclad is using Page360 to revamp hundreds of pages of old content to better suit AI agents’ preferences (i.e., clarity, brevity and citations) and revise outdated information, Dhamdhere said. “Everything needs to be refreshed,” she said, “and there’s only one of me.”
Page360 tracks a page’s traditional Google search rankings in addition to what AI queries generate responses that cite that page.
AirOps’ previous products focused primarily on helping advertisers show up in AI search. With Page360, said Halliday, the goal is to expand beyond just AI search and help advertisers answer the question, “What is the relationship between my content, Google Search and AI search?”
… In with the new
Page360 features several AI personas, which collect AI search data by auto-prompting different AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, et al.) with common questions about a brand or that might return the brand in their response. AirOps combines the data collected by the AI personas with an advertiser’s first-party Google Search ad data and information from web server logs that show what pages the chatbot has cited. From there, advertisers can determine what changes they want to make to existing content and develop ideas for new media moving forward.
The analytics “guide our content calendar and give us a direction,” said Dhamdhere. The data provides more detailed insights, she said, like realizing that prospective customers may be more interested in contract metrics vs. contract types.
“Traditionally, we’d have to go across, like, five different platforms” to understand the full picture of Ironclad’s audience engagement, said Dhamdhere, from the prompts they’re using to the topics they care about to their preferred search engine or chatbot.
The Page360 workflow imports Ironclad’s old content from WordPress into its content management system. The system uses keywords to determine the overarching subject matter and searches the web (along with Ironclad’s internal reports) for relevant, up-to-date research on the topic – in this case, contract law. Page 360 then generates a new brief, rewrites the content and pushes the new media to Ironclad’s CMS.
There are human review checkpoints throughout the process, Dhamdhere said. And once the final version is approved, it’s pushed onto the site.
Dhamdhere certainly doesn’t feel like she’s missing out by handing off the task. SEO content can be “so boring,” she said. It’s “not fun to write,” she added, but having updated content is crucial, especially as new forms of search gain traction.
By offboarding tedious tasks to agentic tools, Dhamdhere said, she and her team can instead “focus on real editorial fun.”
