Artificial intelligence and the death of domain authority

Google’s Search has been with us for more than twenty-five years, and whilst the sophistication and breadth of Search has grown tremendously, its core principals have remained largely the same from almost the very outset. But all of that is changing rapidly as Google transitions from an ‘algorithm-with-some-AI’ search to ‘full-AI’.

What does this mean? And how does it impact reputation management?

That a modern reputation is manifest and mediated primarily within Search is no secret. When we want to learn about something we invariably go to Search, which presents us with aggregated results that allow and enable us to form an impression.

AI-powered search can ‘trust’ and also ‘verify’

Those results are aggregated by algorithms that, in a testament to a quality of the Search product, also know their own limits. The search algorithms are programmed to give greater weighting to negative content (which is less likely to be spin from a PR or marketeer) and the EAT algorithm prefers quality. But these are marginal signifiers.

Fundamentally, the core of Search is still built upon the early Google principles of domain authority: the ‘score’ out of 100 (‘DA’) that a site has accrued based on the collective volume and quality of the content it links to and is linked from (with a bonus for ‘mutual’ linking) — each weighted by the DA of those linking websites.

This explanation of DA is somewhat an oversimplification for the purposes of brevity, but the idea stands. What this meant in practice is that the algorithm placed its trust very heavily on content crawled from legacy news websites, who have huge DA.

This veiled the underlying change that was happening as media became democratised and the role of the legacy media, whilst not by any means no longer significant, became just one factor, rather than the only factor, in determining a reputation.

When Search placed trust and value in high DA legacy media content when curating results, PR firms could continue to pursue ‘reputation’ strategies based on legacy media coverage, and on the surface, reputation management ‘PR’ was unchanged.

But AI changes all of this. And is changing it right now.

An AI search has the ability to not just to ‘trust’ but also to ‘verify’. And this ‘trust buy verify’ approach is revolutionary for reputation management.

If a major news website with high DA includes a claim relevant to an individual’s reputation, then an AI-search will no longer guarantee it a spot at the top of results.

Rather, AI-search will ‘read’ the claim, and will instantaneously analyse every relevant data point in the digital realm to ‘verify’ whether a claim has substance — or not. Claims with no substance will attain no ranking in search even when on a high DA website.

It is also worth referencing what a ‘data point’ is. Lying behind search is sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) that allows an algorithm to interpret meaning. How for example search knows that one is searching for a person and not a table.

AI-powered NLP introduces a level of comprehension and understanding of meaning that goes further than ever before. AI search can ‘read’ every video, analyse every image and interpret meaning and subtext and intent better than human brains.

So when search is able to verify the attributes of a reputation based on all data and across all medias, it follows that search no longer needs to rely on high DA sites (big news sites) in the way it once did. High DA sites stay relevant but are no longer definitive.

A new era of substance and transparency

This is actually a positive thing for the search user, as well as for the myriad of KYC and AML and databases that scrape data from the likes of Google. AI-powered search that can ‘trust but verify’ offers a new era of transparency where truth is no longer ‘spun’ or mediated by dominant news sites, but by substantive content and data points.

This is also highly relevant to a world of democratised media, where a journalist with a powerful social media or Substack following can yield the same influence as a major news organisation; or a YouTube podcaster can attract bigger audience than TV news.

For reputation management the change is significant. Strategies focused primarily on legacy media engagement (let’s call this ‘old PR’) are becoming obsolete. Reputation instead requires defining the attributes of a person and substantiating them online.

‘Substantiating’ profile attributes must be done with consistency and quality across unlimited media forms and types. It requires creativity and flair as well as an understanding of the structured data that powers NLP. It often means becoming a prodigious content producer and participant in lots of third-party content.

Moreover the ‘dashboard’ of search is also about to go through the biggest change since the invent of Google. The notion today that Search curates and presents pages of URLs for a user to browse through to then for an impression will soon be redundant.

AI-powered NLP combined with AI-search means that in the very near future, Search will do the ‘clicking’ through on behalf of users, and instead of curating lists of URLs, will simply display answers and information on-page within Search.

This means that the majority of Search users will no longer even need to click on results but will form their impression based on the curation of content that AI determines within Search itself. This further emphasises the need for reputation managers to ensure that the true position is accurately curated in content and data.

Clients should not be daunted by this change. It represents a bigger opportunity than it does a threat. The risk is that individuals who do not engage in proactive reputation management yield to third parties the curation of the true position. Indeed, for many UHNWI families and Single Family Offices, ‘reputation’ is their biggest unmanaged risk.

The opportunity is to lean into this new world of reputation and engage in the often creative and engaging opportunities to share stories and to build substance and truth across medias. This is limitlessly valuable in a world where reputation is becoming a key vector in determining private, commercial, investment and philanthropy outcomes.

In this brave new world, the opportunities lie in reputation management strategies that are forward looking. Not in clinging to the legacy strategies of the past.

For support with any of the items raised in this blog post please contact the Michael Macfarlane Associates team: http://www.mmassocs.com

This blog was first published at: https://mmassocs.com/2024/12/ai-search-end-of-domain-authority/