Stuart Forrest, Head of Audience Development at Bauer Media UK, and Germany, takes a clear-eyed look at the state of SEO in the era of AI Overviews.
Bauer Media Group, which publishes dozens of consumer brands across the UK and Germany, has a front-row seat to what the rise of AI-generated summaries is doing to publishers’ organic traffic. Stuart Forrest, who leads audience and SEO strategy across the group’s British and German markets, reports radically divergent trajectories depending on the title: some brands grew by double digits last year, while others fell by similar margins. In his view, the era in which a publication could comfortably sustain itself by ranking third or fourth on a given topic is over. As clicks become scarcer across the publishing sector as a whole, those available are being snapped up by the players who have genuinely invested in becoming the best in their vertical; not merely the least bad.
David Sallinen. Large-scale studies suggest only a modest decline in SEO traffic, yet we hear publishers reporting a much sharper drop in reality. Why this gap between aggregate data and the on-the-ground reality inside newsrooms?
Stuart Forrest. We aren’t explicitly a news organisation for the most part. We’re a specialist publisher where news is part of the content mix.
We see uneven impacts. Some brands genuinely grew by double digit percentages last year, while others saw similar declines.
What defined the former was often improvements across the board from previously sub-optimal strategies and tactics. Looking at the growth I wouldn’t say that we’ve seen a domain that’s doing everything right.
The domains that saw decline were not always because of AIO. A bigger challenge is that there’s a lot more competition for SERP from other content types as well as publishers. Where we haven’t invested sufficiently in being the best in a vertical, we’re seeing bigger declines. There was once a healthy business in being 3rd, 4th, even 5th. Now we’re seeing a smaller overall volume of clicks for publishing as a sector, and these accrue more to the winners.
DS. Which types of content do you clearly see entering a “late-cycle” phase with the rise of AI Overviews and which formats or editorial approaches still genuinely earn the click despite summaries?
SF. Broadly [the hits are for] content that is high on information, but low on context or additive value. So for us things like auto specification data, where the click is arguably unnecessary, have been hit. Whereas genuinely rich buying guides, that help a user to decide which car to buy, even though they use that same data, are doing better.
So for us the value is in adding context, and in content which is less readily synthesised.
The final category is “high consequence of inaccuracy” for the user. Where they have less trust in the LLM response, they’ll continue on to the publisher.
DS. If organic search is no longer a growth channel but a mature one, what editorial priorities and audience capabilities should publishers focus on to manage it effectively?
SF. For us I think it means:
– Being far more careful in prioritising resource where it is effective, rather than hoping it might become effective.
– Using AI workflows to make content creation more efficient. That is explicitly NOT in actually writing, but in the research and optimisation.
– Having strong and replicable systems for how we do things, so that [internally] we’re learning from our successes and mistakes and adapting to that.
That last point is perhaps more relevant for multi domain publishers than single players.
DS. You mentioned that there used to be a viable business in being 3rd, 4th or 5th best in a vertical, and that this is no longer the case. From your experience, what are the concrete signals that tell a publisher whether a vertical is still “winnable” or is now beyond hope?
SF. We look at the composition of the SERP for the most part. Everyone talks about AIO, but there’s also substantial competition from Reddit, from YouTube features, from content marketing efforts from merchants or manufacturers in a sector.
So what previously might have been mostly competition from other publishers or content creators is now far more diverse. Which typically means just one “slot” for a publisher in the top 10 links, not 5 or 6.
DS. When you talk about “adding context” and “high consequence of inaccuracy”, what does that look like in practice at the content level? Are there specific editorial patterns or signals you’ve seen that consistently outperform purely informational content?
SF. One one level it’s the difference between a simple informational query and something requiring opinion, with nuance.
However we see a strong correlation between the cost of the decision, either financially or via some other sort of risk (e.g health) and the willingness of users to click and continue their research.
So if someone wants to find out the boot space of a Renault 5, they’ll take it from the AIO. If they want to find out if they should buy this or a rival, or how much they should pay per month, that’s the sort of thing they are less willing to accept a synthesized answer for.
À propos d’Upgrade Media : Upgrade Media est une agence créative, de conseils en stratégie, un centre de formation et de réflexion sur la transformation des médias.
◾️ Nous travaillons pour les médias et les entreprises communicantes, afin d’accélérer leurs transformations numériques, faire évoluer leurs organisations, leurs produits print et numériques, et aussi développer l’agilité des équipes.
◾️ Découvrez Upgrade Media et son Think Tank, à l’origine de l’événement Médias Pionniers, un rendez-vous incontournable pour explorer la transformation des médias par l’innovation, les échanges internationaux et les initiatives concrètes portées par les acteurs du changement.
◾️ Nous espérons que cet article et nos autres contenus vous inspireront !
Restez informé·e de toutes nos actualités en vous inscrivant à notre Newsletter par e-mail ou via Linkedin.
Merci pour votre lecture.
- ‘Journalism is approaching its historical extinction.’ Andrey Mir’s announcement on AI, the media and truth
- Bauer Media: how the specialist publishing giant is adapting to the age of AI summaries
- Paulo Celso Pereira: “The race for pageviews is killing the media”
- Sermitsiaq, the publisher that turned AI into a competitive advantage
- Bondi Beach: 8 ways to handle information on social media
