Back in 2016 while on holiday with my cousin in Paris, she faced the familiar conundrum of not knowing what to wear for the day. She chuckled as she thought out loud, “I wish Siri could answer that!”. Then the same thought came to both our minds and we blurted out together, “let’s actually ASK Siri and see!” Then she picked up her iPhone and said, “Hey Siri, can you tell me what I should wear today?” We both laughed expecting Siri to be completely lost and say, “I am sorry, I don’t understand the question”. But no. That’s not what happened. Siri responded quite intelligently to a rather silly question. It told us the temperature outside along with the weather forecast for the day. Because it makes sense to dress as per the weather. It was 2016 and such things still blew us away. Today, in December 2024, we are used to asking voice assistants all kinds of things in regular conversational tones and getting fairly satisfactory answers, a fair number of times.
Whether we adapt to technology or not, technology continues to adapt to us. Technology likes to be the bigger person. Score for AI. As we humans have started to search for information in newer ways, search machinery is updating itself to serve us in newer ways, accordingly.
Conventionally we type keywords on Google to then browse through the search results to find what we are looking for. Now, along with this, we are increasingly simply asking our voice assistants for things, just like we ask a human friend. E.g. instead of searching for “filter coffee recipe” we ask, “Can I have a nice cup of filter coffee right now?”. And the voice assistant will most likely respond with the recipe. These are ‘ask’ engines’. Google is a ‘search’ engine.
If you are one of those people who are yet to get a hang of how SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) works, it’s alright. We can try to catch the next bus. But, first a small recap of what SEO is. Search Engine Optimisation is a system that content-providers can manipulate to make their own content show-up on the top of the SERP (search engine results page). It requires us to identify and use keywords that people use when searching related topics. The next bus is the new and improved – AEO (Ask Engine Optimisation).
AEO is like SEO, but for voice assistants. AEO optimises web content to provide direct answers to queries made to voice assistants. In other words, AEO focuses on optimising the ‘quality of content’ and how well it serves questions asked, rather than quantity of content based on keywords typed.
As marketers and content creators, what this means for us is that we need to reframe content for AEO – shift focus from keywords to context and intent. And also, that we will need to technically optimise websites and online content for voice search. As seekers of assistance, this makes us even more pampered with easier access to answers in ever more precise, relevant and understanding ways and soon in many more languages beyond English.
Going forward it will be common to consider how people speak, not just how they type. Attention will need to be given to conversations. The task behind Ask Optimisation becomes to go deeper than scanning keywords people use on search engines and start understanding the quest behind the questions. As brand builders we need to aim at not just providing the right answers but being a reliable source of information over time to build trust in the value we bring to askers.
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