Superlines is the best LLM search monitoring tool

Interview with the speaker of Parrot Baltic B2B conference Matias Vahtola (Sympa, Finland).

What is the main difference between SEO and AEO/GEO? 

Well, it is a shift in consumer behavior. Early adopters prefer LLM search to Google search. That is what we need to understand.

Google used to be almost a monopoly, at least in the Nordics. So we need to adapt to the fact that Google is still very, very strong and will remain a very relevant channel for most of us.

But there is definitely a big shift coming. We believe it is very important to understand that shift and be part of it.

So it is also about adapting the content, understanding how to adapt the content, and how to navigate this new world of AI search. 

When it comes to the different AI platforms, we do not optimize differently for, let’s say, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude.

We treat them as LLMs, so we optimize for LLMs.

The first concrete step is to shift away from keyword-first content to maybe question-first content. What are buyers actually asking in AI? How does the prompt differ from a keyword search?

That is what we have been focusing on. That is the fundamental shift in the beginning. I think nailing that is important first.

How to stand out when anyone can produce a piece of content every minute?

Yes, anybody can now produce endless amounts of content, even high-quality content.

The fact is that the distribution of content becomes even more crucial. It will become harder and harder for search engines and AI to distinguish between machine-produced content and human-produced content, because the tools are getting so good.

The basic principles of SEO are still valid. Many people actually see AEO or GEO as an extension of good SEO. So in that sense, this is not a completely new thing.

Google has always valued high-quality content. That is not different now.

But yes, the game is getting harder, and we have many more players entering the game. So it is certainly very competitive.

And ungating content has been a topic in B2B for a long time - it’s important to give LLMs access to your content now.

We have ungated most of our guides, e-books and webinars that we put online. And we did that already before the emergence of LLMs.

Because in B2B, we do not really want to capture low-intent leads anymore. Somebody just comes to the website and downloads a guide or an e-book, but they are not ready to buy.

So we openly share. We had already been openly sharing most of our content before LLMs.

In that sense, I do not see this as directly related to the emergence of AI search. I see it more as a trend in B2B that has been going on for a longer time.

What about formats? Do you see a change there? Some time ago there was a lot of hype around video. 

Speaking from a B2B context, I would say yes, text and images are what we tend to produce and go with.

Prompting is still done by text. At least in Europe, ChatGPT has a voice function, of course, and that works well in English. You can prompt and get answers in English by voice.

But for instance, ChatGPT has roughly 70 to 80 percent market share in the Nordics, at least, so it is still number one.

And they are not heavy on video. We do not really see video results in the AI search and LLM sphere yet. That is why maybe most of us still focus on text and images.

From an AI search perspective, I am not focusing so much on video.

What LLM search monitoring tools are you using?

We are using a tool called Superlines, and we are quite happy with it.

It is a good tool for monitoring. It also provides a lot of good ideas on how to optimize the website and how to create content that caters to the prompts that are relevant for us.

I will talk about this in the presentation as well, about these AI search monitoring tools.

We have tested Searchable, HubSpot’s AEO, and Superlines. So we have experience with many tools.

There are others as well, like Big AI and Profound.

The price range is interesting, because some of them are very cheap and some of them are very expensive.

It is a new category, and I believe it is trying to replace the old SEO tools, such as SEMrush and Ahrefs.

But these Google tools, like Ahrefs and SEMrush, are they losing their position if they are not good for LLM monitoring?

Well, they were built in an age where LLMs did not exist.

So they have a legacy problem.

SEMrush is a good example. I guess they are trying to solve the AEO issue as well. They do, of course, have AI search capabilities built in.

But they have so much in that platform nowadays that, for us at least, it is too much. And they are upselling everything. So it is not really nice what they are doing.