Instead of tweaking keywords for Google's (GOOG, Financial) algorithm, brands now have to think about chatbots—like ChatGPT or Perplexity—scraping and delivering their info directly. That's where a bunch of scrappy startups come in.
Take Athena, spun out by an ex-Googler with $2.2 million in seed money to figure out exactly how different AI models find and use your website's content. Or Profound, which has raked in over $20 million tracking how bots relay brand details, and Scrunch AI, which just raised $4 million and helped one client boost sign-ups by 9% from AI referrals.
We're talking about a “zero-click internet,” where bots do all the clicking so real humans don't even have to visit your page. It sounds wild, but it's happening: Google's rolling out AI Overviews and conversational answers that push links way down the page.
The upshot? If you want to stay visible, you've got to optimize not just for people, but for the bots they're using. Sure, the market for these AI-tuning tools is tiny compared to the $90 billion SEO world, but early adopters are already seeing real lifts—and as chat interfaces become the norm, this could easily be the next big thing in digital marketing.
