I was musing the modern web strategist’s dilemma of block the bot or play the game……(everybody play the game🎶)
It’s the quandry that as authors of content and authorative sources move ever further to fastidiously optimise their content for the age of LLMs, they simultaneously lose human traffic to the AI bots.
You’re chasing the clicks, to please the people not the bots, or are you?
Do we as custodians of websites, known no less as webmasters in another age, pay homage to the Deus ex Machina and welcome their rapacious hunger to crawl our content and revel in their bypass in the hope our brand is cited in their boldy confident assertions to people habitually querying AI chatbots ever more disillusioned by traditional search?
Or do we block the AI bots by our judicious use of robots.txt, pursue the people and champion ever precious human interactions above all else?
I won’t waste energy at this point to argue if it’s AIO or GEO or if in reality, it remains SEO at it’s purest. (Spoiler: it’s SEO)
Two albums, that I am a proud vinyl owner of, spring to mind.
And that of the other band, Queen, that also shaped my youth.
The album’s inner sleeve gatefold was, err, of a different era: #NSFW ?
These days, what stands out most about the album Jazz are the lyrics from the track I named this blog post after.
Reflect on those lyrics through the lens of a web admin strategist facing the AI dilemma.
When your resistance is low
The successor to Jazz was The Game released in 1980, an album that included Play The Game.
Bot jamais vu.
Open up your mind and let me step inside.
Play The Game, Queen 1980
Rest your weary head and let your heart decide.
Another One Bites The Dust
With AI token fees running away and a rollercoaster of expectations and results in play, are we in the midst of an AI bubble?
How do you think I’m gonna get along
Another One Bites The Dust, Queen 1980
Without you, when you’re gone?
You took me for everything that I had
And kicked me out on my own
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?