by Dr. W. Lewis Johnson and Geoffrey Rich
In a recent provocative blog post, Steven Goldstein, an internationally recognized executive and leader in scaling and refining audio ventures across podcasting, argued that internet search is becoming obsolete. Instead, listeners increasingly rely on AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews to generate answers to their questions. This is a big problem for podcasters who rely on search engine optimization (SEO) to direct listeners to their content. As Goldstein noted: “For podcasters trying to get discovered, this changes everything.”
The reality is that search has never been particularly good at surfacing content from large content libraries, so we are not sad to see its demise. Yet answer generators have their own set of problems. They tend to generate wrong answers; even worse, listeners may read the answer and never click through to the podcast content. As a recent report by Similarweb documents, since Google launched AI Overviews the overall percentage of zero-click searches has steadily increased, to 69%.
Goldstein recommends that podcasters undertake Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) to prepare their podcast libraries for AI answer generators. This involves structuring content, publishing clean transcripts, adding segments, summaries, and FAQs. These are important steps to take, but they can be a lot of work to implement for content that has already been published. Plus, they don’t actually help with content discovery if listeners never click through to the content.
We have implemented a new AI-powered technology, called content navigation, that is specifically designed to encourage content discovery. We have applied it successfully to the Dr. Laura Schlessinger program, an established show with thousands of podcasts and videos. We created and deployed an AI assistant named Stacy that helps listeners find content relevant to their problems and interests.
Here is how content navigation works. First, generative AI transcribes and summarizes the podcasts and videos. The summaries focus more on the problem or dilemma that Dr. Laura is talking about, and less on details of Dr. Laura’s recommendations to encourage listening. This process is fully automatic. Stacy, the AI assistant, then uses these summaries to help listeners find content that is most relevant to their problem. Stacy asks probing questions to understand clearly what the listener’s problem is, so that she can provide the most relevant recommendations. This is similar to Dr. Laura’s approach on the air, where she probes listeners to clarify their problems before offering solutions.
In a separate blog post we analyze the shortcomings of conventional SEO and general-purpose AI tools for content discovery. Analysis of conversations with Stacy shows she avoids the pitfalls of these other approaches. She helps most listeners find relevant content, and listeners are more encouraged to listen to the recommended Dr. Laura content, not less.
Alelo can help other podcasters adopt content navigation and integrate their own AI assistant into their offering. The automated summarization technology can help with AEO. The technology is particularly helpful for podcasters who have an extensive library of evergreen content and who focus on advice and problem solving.
