Common AI Tool Myths — Busted
I recently had a conversation with someone who shared some bold claims about AI and SEO that stopped me in my tracks. The person was confident — very confident — in what they were saying, but their understanding was quite misinformed.
And to be honest, I don’t blame them. The rise of AI tools has been so fast and dramatic that even the most seasoned marketers are still figuring out how it all fits into their strategies. But when confident guesses turn into “facts,” we end up with misinformation, wasted time, energy, and budget.
So, let’s clear up a few myths we’ve heard lately, with the help of some actual stats.
Myth #1: AI assistant tools have replaced Google as the #1 search engine.
We’ve now heard this one multiple times. While AI assistants like ChatGPT are growing quickly, there is no evidence that they’ve surpassed Google as the most-used search engine.
Here’s what we do know:
- In July 2025, Google.com logged 84.5 billion visits compared to 5.7 billion for chatgpt.com [Source: SimilarWeb’s Top 100 Websites in the World report]
- Only one-third of adults say they’ve ever used an AI chatbot [Source: Pew Research Center’s “How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence“]
It’s also worth noting that people use AI assistants for more than just searches, so comparing AI assistants to search engines is sort of like comparing apples to zebras. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, the most common uses for AI assistants include:
- editing written content (52% of users use AI chatbots for this purpose)
- drafting reports and other documents (47%)
- summarizing information from meetings or documents (40%)
- brainstorming (35%)
- data analysis/coding (27%),
- creating or editing images/videos (21%)
In short: While AI tools are certainly changing how people gather information, they haven’t replaced classic search engines — yet.
Myth #2: You can train AI tools by prompting your brand name repeatedly.
The logic I heard went something like this: “If I start typing my brand name into AI tools more regularly alongside related keywords and search queries, I can train it to associate my brand with those topics and eventually show up more in responses.”
Let’s clear this up: repeating your brand name in prompts won’t re-train the global model or change what other users see. Although prompts do shape your current session immediately, your individual chat session does not immediately impact how the model performs for anyone else.
While AI tools do, in fact, use users’ prompt data to train and improve model performance (unless you opt out), prompting the tool with your own brand name over and over will not have enough lasting impact on the tool’s global usage or influence the model in any meaningful way to make this tactic worthwhile. [Source: OpenAI “How your data is used to improve model performance”]
Myth #3: You must explicitly allow LLMs to crawl your site.
This one is at least founded in some truth, but it’s worth clearing up. There’s nothing extra you need to add for AI assistants to read your site’s content. By default, most robots.txt files — a website file that instructs which URLs crawlers can access on your site — are set to allow LLMs and other compliant bots to access your site’s content by default.
The part that’s founded in truth here is twofold:
- There is an emerging movement to standardize the use of an llms.txt file to help LLMs better navigate your site’s content. While it doesn’t hurt to add this file to your site, it’s not required. [Source: llmstxt.org]
- You can explicitly block different bot types (for example, search and citation bots vs. training bots) in your robots.txt file.
How Do you Increase Brand Visibility on LLMs?
Can you influence your brand’s visibility in LLMs? Yes, but not by spam-prompting your brand name over and over again. The best thing you can do is make your content valuable, easy-to-find, and easy to cite. The good news is that generative engine optimization (GEO) largely overlap with modern SEO practices. Win-win.
Here are some strategic steps to increase your brand’s visibility on AI tools:
Make Sure AI Search Crawlers Can Access Your Content
- Don’t block LLM crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot in your robots.txt file. [Source: OpenAI “Search Product Discovery” and Perplexity’s “Perplexity Crawlers“]
- Ensure key content isn’t gated behind JavaScript or AJAX scripts in a way bots can’t render.
- Add structured data to make your content easier for search engines and AI tools to interpret.
Make Your Content LLM Friendly
- Follow Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) principles. [Source: “Copilot in Bing: Our approach to Responsible AI”]
- Create original, valuable, robust content.
- Show evidence, including citing your sources.
- Include recency signals, such as “Last Updated” timestamps.
- Publish original data, statistics, or methodologies.
- Improve content clarity. [Source: Bing Webmaster Guidelines “Help Bing understand your pages”]
- Write in clear, scannable paragraphs.
- Use clear headings and subheadings.
- Use lists, tables, and bullet points.
- Add Q&A blocks and checklists.
- Define the topic and get to the point early.
- Use semantic and transition words, like “Step 1”, “Next,”, and “The key takeaway is…”
Improve Technical Website Hygiene
- Minimize the use of dynamic content, such as JavaScript or AJAX, which can block or gate LLM-friendly content.
- Ensure fast page load speeds.
- Use clean, clear, descriptive internal links and sitemaps.
Earn Credible Citations Off-Site
- Publish credible, well-structured content on reputable websites.
- Earn citations on high-authority platforms and industry publications.
- Contribute to the kind of authoritative content that’s likely to show up in the next training round of these tools.
But let’s be clear: none of this “trains” the AI models directly. These tactics are about increasing your discoverability, not rewriting the rules or finding a hack or workaround to how the models work.
So What Should Marketers Focus On?
Instead of trying to “game” AI tools, focus on activities that improve visibility in both traditional search and generative search engines alike, such as:
- Creating high-quality, useful content that earns links and recognition.
- Improving your site’s technical health so it performs well in search and on AI tools.
- Earning more brand visibility through reputable
Understanding how AI tools present information so you can adapt your content strategy, but don’t abandon traditional SEO fundamentals.
Misinformation spreads fast, especially in fast-moving fields like AI and generative search optimization. I’m not here to shame anyone for being curious, but I am here to advocate for better understanding, smarter strategies, and fewer wasted marketing dollars chasing myths.
If you’ve heard other AI + SEO myths recently or want to dispute any of the arguments we laid out above, we’d love to hear them!
