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The AI SEO Trap
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The digital marketing game is changing before our eyes. AI-powered search engines like Google's new AI mode and Gemini aren't just adding to traditional search—they're transforming how users discover information by generating comprehensive summaries before showing a single link. This shift fundamentally changes the SEO landscape for businesses everywhere.
We dive deep into a controversial new tactic making waves online: using cheap press release services to manipulate AI search results. For as little as $5, some claim you can distribute positive information about your brand that AI will prominently feature when potential customers search for you. While examining a viral demonstration of this technique, we unpack why this approach bears a striking resemblance to the link farming tactics of early SEO—strategies that initially worked but eventually led to severe penalties when search algorithms evolved.
What makes this particularly fascinating is how AI systems select their trusted sources. We explore which platforms—from news outlets like Reuters to educational sites like Coursera and even user-generated forums like Reddit—are currently considered authoritative by different AI systems across various topic categories. Understanding this selection process reveals why legitimate PR strategies with quality content placement will become increasingly crucial for digital visibility. Rather than pursuing short-term hacks, businesses will need to develop genuine relationships with reputable publishers and create truly valuable content that authoritative sources want to feature. Though the tools change, the principles remain: provide value, build trust, and focus on sustainable, ethical practices that align with how people and now machines understand quality.
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Introduction to AI Search Results
Speaker 1So this video is really interesting. I wanted to see your perspective because it has to do with SEO and AI and how Gemini and other search engines are now just using AI as kind of the top result right Like. It will give you a synopsis of what AI says about your question before it even gets to links below it, and then it will also add links.
Speaker 2So this is all about that and how to get ai to to well, and I don't know if you've seen this on your, when you go to google, does it say try the ai mode have you have you seen that no, it's popping up now. Oh really. So now it's kind of like google's ai search engine. Oh okay, they're that, they're rolling out to people.
Speaker 1Well, because I've downloaded Gemini on my phone and I just use it as a search engine. Now, yeah, I don't even go to Chrome nearly as much, unless it's a specific site I already know or something. But if it's an actual question or I'm looking up something, I just use Gemini and it's way. I like it way more.
Speaker 2I think it does a better job. Let's talk more about that after we see this. I'm interested to see what this video is, but yeah, I think there's going to be some interesting things that we can talk about afterwards.
The $5 Press Release Hack
Speaker 3Apparently, this is the new playbook for shortening sales cycles. Write a positive press release about your brand. Use a cheap press release distribution service like Fiverr or SEOclerks. When prospects search your brand, an AI overview is generated saying the good things you wrote in the press release. This guy just did this. He made up a company, spent $5 distributing a press release. The AI overview was generated saying the nice things about the fictional company he wrote in the release. When prospects are searching your company, seeing if you're legit, things like this move the needle a ton and that's why I don't know about that.
Speaker 1Yeah, why are you skeptical? It may work now.
Speaker 2Yeah, this was Especially because they didn't show the the company name.
Speaker 1They blocked it out no, it said but, but chartcom, oh, did it.
Speaker 2yeah, yeah oh, I thought it blocked it out. In like the no, I said yeah.
Speaker 1Overview it said it did here watch, let me stop. It says according to oh, bachartcom. So bachartcom is the press release. That's where the press release is, yeah and so that barchartcom right.
Speaker 2According to barchartcom. Oh yeah, bachartcom. Bachartcom so yeah, they block out. The yes blank is generally considered reputable SEO agent, so we didn't see the whole process.
Speaker 1Yeah right.
Speaker 2This is just a story, For all we know. They could have actually typed in a legit business.
Speaker 1Like an actual marketing service business.
Link Farming and AI Manipulation
Speaker 2Yeah, so usually what happens in the AI world is people will find a way to to manipulate the search engines and it'll work for a short period of time until the search engines catch on and say, hey, we're not going to use this as a good ranking factor anymore. So these services will pop up and and the thing that I that kind of gives a little bit of validity to this is the more I've learned about AI SEO. I've seen that it's not pulling like a lot of the AI overviews and things like that. They're pulling from really reputable sources, and so this whole concept of PR is going to be super, super important. You want to get your website on really reputable sites, which is going to be very difficult.
Speaker 1So what would some examples be for reputable sites?
Speaker 2Oh gosh, very difficult, you know. So what would some examples be for reputable sites? Oh gosh, you know I say it and like those, just have like slipped my mind. Um, I think we did an episode earlier on it and like, oh gosh, what are some of those? The big, the big, like news sites?
Speaker 1um, hold on so you just want more links from legit sources, and you're afraid that the press release that he's using is probably not a legit source. What it is is it's some sort of just very like link, uh, link farming, basically exactly.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, just like those link farms a while ago, to where it's like, hey, pay us, pay us some money and we will make sure that all of these websites that we own will link to your site. And so, like all of a sudden, you get thousands of links to your website and it starts ranking really well and it works for a little bit, yeah, but then over time Google's like, hey, these are not legit sites. Yeah right, yeah, but then over time google's like, hey, these are not legit sites. Yeah right, all all of these websites have links from the exact same site and they're completely unrelated websites yeah, yeah you know and so like.
Speaker 2Eventually, then you, you got penalized. Yeah, the people who did those things to try to manipulate google search results got penalized, and you ranked even worse than you did before. And so like I can see more things like this happening in the future, to where you're going to have kind of spammy pr sites that say, hey, well, I mean it's, yeah, it's the new link farming.
Speaker 1Yeah, right, right, that's really all it is. So they're gonna. They're gonna try to basically trick ai just to answer what you would like, at least for a short period of time, which to be fair, if you have bad news or press about your company. And for the short period of time because our news cycles are so quick nowadays where 24 hours or 48 hours something else is going on. Last week was Coldplay and that whole thing. This week will be something completely different and no one will remember the cold play thing like it changes that quick. So if you can trick ai for a week, it might be worth it. Like, if you have really bad pr for something and people searching it can't find it because you're doing this other press release stuff, and this guy used in the video supposedly used five bucks to do it. Right, you could put a lot more money into it and save face for a week to where now it goes away because everybody's moved on to the next thing.
Speaker 1I mean probably worth it, to be honest.
Speaker 2Yeah, usually when you see those types of videos, they're just clickbait.
Speaker 1Yeah, you think that there's no validity to it at all.
Reputable Sources for AI Information
Speaker 2I think there's validity to it in that PR is going to play a very important role in the future of SEO with AI. So I just pulled up a bunch of different websites that AI might pull from, and it's different based on the category, right. So education you have. Like they're saying coursera, or sorry, claude uses coursera. Session lab scrum alliance I don't know. I've never heard of chat gpt wikipedia team bonding ubrics, gemini wikipedia, coursera, udemy, which I mean. Some of those are like gated, you know they have gated content where you have to pay to access them.
Speaker 1So I don't know how it's using those.
Speaker 2Let's see, let's look up Reuters, reuters, reuters.
Speaker 1Reuters, bachart and Reuters. We're on a roll today.
Speaker 2It must be early, or something Nerd Wallet, federal Reserve Bankrate. This is kind of like the finance yeah insurance industries. You know some of these big ones, like the ap news. Yeah, I'm just kind of scrolling through youtube fcc, cora root, like I know.
Speaker 1I've seen reddit some of the ai um it's just interesting, yeah, that it uses reddit, because it's just the reddit's just a forum right and right, right now. Yeah, it can be adjusted by the users.
Speaker 2Yeah, and so I I think some of like the big news outlets, like even though, like there's been a lot of like skepticism, uh, on on like news. Yeah, they're still gonna rank higher good quality they are, but um but. So we're going to have to do more of this stuff and there will be some legit players and there will be some bad players. If they're charging five bucks to get distributed across.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's most likely a scam or like a link farm type thing In order to get really listed like, you're going to have to come up with direct relationships and create good quality content to be able to get people to want to post on their legit websites.
Future of PR and SEO
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Episode Closing and Call-to-Action
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