Compare · SEO and AI
Is this just SEO with a new name?
No, but it builds on the same foundation. Google ranks pages. AI reads a couple of sources and writes one answer with a few names. The difference decides what you should spend your time on.
Google ranks. AI answers.
A Google search gives you a list. Ten links, maybe a map and a box at the top, and you choose what to open. A search engine’s job is to sort pages. It doesn’t decide who’s best, it sorts and lets you read.
An AI engine does something else. It reads a few sources it trusts, and writes one answer. If a guest in Munich asks where to stay for three nights in Nordfjord, they don’t get ten links. They get a few names in a couple of sentences. If you’re not one of them, you don’t exist in that answer, and there’s no second place to climb from.
That’s why you can rank high on Google and still not be recommended. The engine may have read the destination company’s page and a travel blog, and taken the names from there. Your page was good enough to rank, but it wasn’t one of the sources the engine chose to read.
Side by side
The difference, row by row
| Question | AI answer | |
|---|---|---|
| The format | A list of ten links. You choose which one to open. | One answer with a few names. The rest aren’t in it. |
| The spot | Being in seventh place still gets clicks. | There’s no seventh place. You’re in the answer or you’re not. |
| What decides | Relevance, links and the technical quality of your own site. | Whether the same facts about you are in several places the engine trusts. |
| The sources | Your own site competes against other sites. | Your site, the destination company, booking sites and profiles are read together. |
| The language | One keyword gives one results list per country. | The same question in German and Dutch can give different names. |
| The measurement | Position and clicks. | Mentions and citations: are you named, and was your site read. |
What carries over, and what’s new
The foundation is shared. A page that’s fast, readable, properly marked up and up to date is as useful to an AI engine as it is to Google. If you’ve tidied up the technical side, you’ve lost nothing. What you’ve done for SEO is still worth something.
What’s new is that the engine doesn’t read you on your own. It checks whether the same facts about you are in several places it trusts: the Google profile, the destination company, the booking sites, your own site, ideally in the market the guest is asking from. If the opening hours differ between two of them, or you’re missing from one of them entirely, the engine can pick someone else. That’s why we call the first lane Foundation, and start there before a single new page gets written.
The second new thing is the market. In SEO you follow the keyword. In an AI answer the market is the unit, and the language is a property of the market. The same question in German and in Dutch can give completely different names, because the engine reads different sources in the two markets. That’s not a translation job. It’s a new measurement.
What you measure instead of position
We count two things per answer. Mention: was your name mentioned. Citation: was your own site used as a source. The second is what we follow over time, because it shows whether the engine actually reads your site. Both are in the Authority map, per pillar and per market, and each cell points to a task.
In short
SEO is still the foundation, but it’s no longer the whole job, and your position on Google doesn’t tell you whether you get recommended.
Further
More about the measurement and the words.
- How our measurement works
- The glossary (Norwegian) Mention, citation, source mix and Authority map, each explained. In Norwegian for now.
- The comparison pages How we stand against other tools.
What does AI say when someone asks about your place?
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