In the past few years the magic of artificial intelligence has taken off though too often people believe in the smoke and mirrors (like a Houdini effect) and by using magic (AI today) everything will be solved with a wand, but that’s not the case.

Looking at SEO as one slice of the pie, today we’re seeing a big influx of tools and hypothetical solutions aimed at using AI to fix problems, however there’s no actual/practical implementation taking place, which is very similar to the social media space (and future post to look out for).

For example, you can run reports in 3 of the top SEO tools around keyword ranking, content/website analysis, etc. and get 3 different results/suggestions – meanwhile all are claiming to be integrating AI yet nothing is normalized when comparing results.

Why? Because there’s no standardized approach to understanding and weighing what Google and other search engines are going to do next and that’s for a reason: They don’t want anyone knowing the inner workings of the algorithms and therefore how to game them to get on top. And a handful of teams like us continue to understand the big picture and what’s around the next turn.

The most important objective of this post is for you to not sip the magic drink and instead think through everything before making decisions that will impact your business. The pitch that AI will solve all of your problems and you’ll make millions of dollars tomorrow is flawed in many ways unless you intimately know what you’re getting into and 99% of companies don’t come close.

Very few people/companies truly know AI and we’re fortunate enough to have an issued utility patent on the use of AI as it applies to SEO, social media and a wide variety of other data points, including clients we guide ranging from hedge funds to global brands that are being bombarded with magical AI solutions that will “solve all of their problems.” If it was only that easy.