by Dave Nelsen
An unprecedented opportunity, really? No, you shouldn’t buy the headline. What I’m about to tell you has happened before, but only once.
Google debuted in 1998, and some people figured out how it worked before the rest of us did. Today, we call this knowledge “search engine optimization” (SEO). Those early movers in the late nineties and early aughts got FAR MORE than their fair share of Internet traffic, or more accurately, their businesses did… for years!
The opportunity to discover and implement something that important for your business, before your competitors do, is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. (You to self: “Dave, you idiot! Why are you documenting this in an open publication?”)
Before I tell you about what we might call “chatbot optimization” (CBO), let me explain how I came upon this revelation.
On July 5 last year, I was trying to move some files from an external hard drive onto my Mac. The problem was that the Seagate hard drive had started life with my Lenovo PC and was in Microsoft’s NTFS format. (You to self: “Dave, you idiot! Everyone knows that PCs and Macs don’t play nicely.”)
After hitting my head against the wall for too much time, it occurred to me: I’ve got AppleCare+! Call Apple tech support. They’re awesome! So, I did.
About an hour into the support call, my friendly and helpful AppleCare+ rep was as lost as I was, but she said it first: “Dave, you idiot. This is a Microsoft problem, and I work for Apple!” She didn’t really say the first part, just the second part. Then, “Bye.” And I was on my own again.
That’s when I thought about ChatGPT. Humans are specialists. We all know a lot about one thing. We’re all an inch wide and a mile deep. If I had to grow my own food, I’d starve in a week. But we can communicate and cooperate across time and distance and that’s what’s made us successful as a species. But try to find a person who knows a lot about both MacOS and Windows…
Artificial intelligence can know a lot about a lot, for example, about both MacOS and Windows. I fired up ChatGPT and explained my problem.
Side note: When working with a human, keep it simple; maybe a few key points and not too much detail. It’s easy to overwhelm anybody with too much information. AI is not like that. It works best when we are ridiculously specific. That’s an important piece of advice: “With AI, be ridiculously specific.”
In explaining my issue to ChatGPT, I told it everything I told my friendly AppleCare+ rep, and a whole lot more. I mentioned the specific Seagate drive model number, the specific version of Windows, running on the specific model of Lenovo PC, and such. I even mentioned that my Mac was running on Apple silicon rather than Intel silicon. The chance that any of these details matter was very close to zero (don’t risk confusing a human). But the chance wasn’t actually zero (give AI every opportunity to figure it out).
ChatGPT explained why I was having the problem and told me to go to Paragon-Software.com and buy their NTFS drivers for Mac for $20 (plus tax), download and install the drivers, and try accessing the external drive again, and promised that it would work. And so, I did, and it DID!
Sometime later, I started considering that something other than Google or Amazon had directed my “buyer behavior.” I wondered, “Are their other people who sell NFTS drivers for Mac?” Absolutely! Googling “NTFS drivers for Mac” produces two sponsored results above Paragon’s organic listing, specifically EaseUS and iBoysoft.
Why did the chatbot recommend Paragon? I want to be Paragon. (You to self: “Dave, you idiot! NO, I WANT TO BE PARAGON!”)
It’s 1998 all over again! The people who figure out CBO before the rest of us (I just made up the term ChatBot Optimization) will likely get far more than their fair share of bot-directed Internet traffic for years to come.
Put simply, who’s your digital audience now, Google+humans or chatbots? The obvious answer is both, but our websites are currently built only for one (Google+humans).
An ideal webpage designed for Google+humans is “not too many words” because “nobody reads anymore.” Not so fast. The chatbots love to read… mountains of text!
Most of us are in the process of discovering that chatbot answers are better than traditional search answers. Next time you Google something, you’re likely to see the so-called Gemini “AI Overview” (AKA chatbot answer) above the traditional Google search results. Even Google has figured out that chatbot answers are better than traditional search answers.
It’s time to discover the secrets of CBO before the competition does… and then to expand our websites with new pages designed for the bots: Mountains of text, partitioned in a way that does not turn off our remaining human visitors.
I’ll leave you with a crazy thought: Is it possible that in the future, the chatbots will answer all questions directly and as our agents, will purchase directly, etc.)? Maybe our websites will have no human visitors, and we won’t need traditional websites at all. Most of us did business without websites before 1994, the year Netscape Navigator debuted. Maybe the past is our future.
(You to self: “Those are really important ideas, Dave. Maybe you’re not such an idiot after all.”)