Part 1: Barnacle SEO in the AI Era: Will Scott on Leveraging AI for Search & ChatGPT Visibility

00:00 – Introduction & Will Scott joins 01:00 – “GEO” vs SEO: Terminology wars 03:00 – VC influence & OpenAI funding push 05:00 – Media narratives & New York Magazine article 07:00 – Google’s “high quality click” PR spin 09:00 – The rise of ads over organic results 12:00 – Will’s tourism SEO example: 2,700px below the fold 13:30 – SEMrush/Dattos data: Drop in searches per user 14:45 – Generational shifts in search behavior 17:00 – Users like AI summaries, not just blue links 19:00 – Barnacle SEO defined in the AI era 21:30 – Where AI pulls from: Wikipedia, YouTube, LinkedIn 23:00 – Yelp & TripAdvisor’s role in Barnacle SEO 24:00 – Listicles & comparison content in AI results 27:00 – Spam, Reddit, and the new content farms 29:00 – Tools to identify AI-favored sources 31:00 – Will’s automated SEO discovery workflow In Part One of this episode of The Near Memo, we welcome Will Scott—longtime SEO expert and the originator of the term “Barnacle SEO”—to discuss how SEO is evolving in the age of AI. We debate “GEO” as a term, break down how search behavior is shifting, analyze Google’s PR spin, and explore how AI overviews and chat interfaces are reshaping content strategy. From Reddit spam to content automation and YouTube barnacling, this is a deep dive into where search is headed.