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IF YOUR SEO STRATEGY STILL REVOLVES AROUND RANKING FOR A FEW KEYWORDS ON GOOGLE AND PRAYING FOR CLICKS, WE’VE GOT BAD NEWS: IT’S 2025, AND THE RULES HAVE CHANGED.
Search no longer starts and definitely doesn’t end on Google. People are discovering products, brands, and answers across TikTok, Reddit, AI tools like ChatGPT, YouTube, voice assistants, forums, marketplaces, and even comment sections. Welcome to Search and Discovery.
This isn’t a trend. It’s the new reality of how people find things online. And if your brand doesn’t show up where real discovery is happening, you’re invisible.
THE OLD RULES NO LONGER APPLY
Let’s be honest: SEO used to be a nice, neat playbook.
Pick some keywords. Write some blogs. Buy a few links. Climb the rankings. Bask in the traffic.
Now?
A user might start their search journey on TikTok (“best running shoes 2025”), validate what they see on Reddit, check YouTube for reviews, ask ChatGPT for a summary, and only then maybe click a link to a brand’s website. That’s if the AI hasn’t already answered the question using someone else’s content. Possibly yours. With no credit.
If you’re still focused solely on ranking a blog post, you’re playing checkers while the rest of the internet is playing 5D chess with an AI co-pilot.

FROM ‘SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION’ TO ‘SEARCH AND DISCOVERY OPTIMISATION’
Let’s dissect the acronym. In “SEO”, the “S” was always obvious. The “O” is what everyone obsessed over. But it’s the “E” Engine that’s now pulling all the weight.
Because it’s no longer about a search engine.
It’s about being findable in every engine. And every platform is an engine now.
ChatGPT?
It’s summarising content into direct answers.
TikTok?
It’s the Gen Z Google.
Reddit?
It’s where decisions are validated.
YouTube?
It’s product research.
Perplexity?
Already scraping your content and feeding it to users.
Amazon?
The only engine that matters for people who are ready to buy.
It’s not enough to know where people are searching, you need to understand how discovery actually works now. And what role your brand plays in that mess.
Spoiler: You can’t buy your way into all of it. But you can earn your way in with smart, structured content and platform-specific strategies.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY
You’re not just writing for humans.
You’re writing for LLMs. For TikTok’s algo. For Google’s SGE. For someone asking Siri a vague question while brushing their teeth.
So what now?
Content structure matters
Think summaries, clarity, headings, and data points. Machines love patterns.
Forget the blog-first mindset.
Your discovery strategy should include short-form video, community engagement, expert quotes, data analysis, and content that can be repurposed into AI summaries.
Think ‘brand mentions’, not just links.
The more your brand is referenced in public, well-structured, authoritative content across multiple sources, the more likely it’ll show up in AI-generated responses.
SO… HOW DO YOU SHOW UP EVERYWHERE?
This is where most SEO agencies start mumbling about “omnichannel” and then change the subject. Not us.
Here’s how the team at TIDAL thinks about it:
Reverse engineer AI outputs.
Ask ChatGPT questions your customers ask. Then see which brands are mentioned. If it’s not yours, figure out why.
Optimise for where your audience hangs out.
Reddit, TikTok, niche forums, YouTube, marketplaces. Not just Google.
Own the narratives.
Publish insights, data, commentary then seed them in the places where they’ll be picked up, quoted, and scraped by the machines.
Build content ecosystems, not silos.
The blog should talk to the video which talks to the podcast which got quoted on Reddit and indexed by Perplexity. It all loops back.
Want to go deeper into this? Our Search and Discovery service breaks it all down.

TIDAL’S TAKE: THIS ISN’T OPTIONAL ANYMORE
You don’t need to be everywhere.
But your brand’s footprint should show up in everywhere that matters. That’s the distinction. And the difference between leading your category or being forgotten by the next generation of buyers.
This isn’t just a content strategy. It’s visibility insurance for your brand.
READY TO SHOW UP WHERE IT COUNTS?
If you’re still treating SEO like it’s 2016, we should talk.
Contact us if you want to understand how your brand shows up across the entire search ecosystem and what to do if it doesn’t.