As an agency, we’re incredibly excited about the advancements around AI and the opportunities it represents. We have a strong heritage in innovation, creating successful SaaS tools including Answerthepublic.com and CoverageBook, and AI feels like a chance to level up even further on our innovation journey.
Right now, we’re focused on using AI in two ways:
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
It’s becoming increasingly important for clients to appear in Google’s AI Overviews and the search results that are generated when people turn to LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity instead of traditional search engines. This new kind of SEO is called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). Brands that start this journey now will benefit hugely – and we can help.
AI for Quality, Innovation & Efficiency
AI is opening up a world of opportunity for us and our clients. It’s helping us to deliver a higher quality of work by enabling us to reach new insights, data aggregations and ideas that were not possible before. It’s freeing up our teams’ time so that they can focus on working on high-value deliverables for clients and not getting bogged down with low-skill, repetitive jobs, but more importantly – and way more excitingly – building custom GPTs and other AI assistants is enabling innovation at a pace we’ve never been able to work to, previously.
No matter what we’re doing around AI, we believe in using it (and all technology) responsibly and ethically. As such, we’ve developed a manifesto to make clear our stance on AI usage:
Used right, AI is a competitive advantage
As with most significant technological advancements, AI has brought about a lot of criticism, skepticism and overwhelm. However, we believe it has potential to drive huge advantages for our clients – and that those who delay making use of AI are setting themselves up for challenges in the near future.
AI-generated outputs always needs a human review
We know that AI can hallucinate and that AI-generated content is not always correct, useful or engaging for readers. As such, there have been plenty of instances of Google handing out penalties to sites that have published a large quantity of AI-generated, poor quality content at scale. We will always review AI outputs and will never publish AI-generated content that’s not been reviewed and edited by one of our team, on client sites or our own site.
Owned-data must be protected when using AI
Data security is key. We pay for Pro licences with all LLMs that we use and ensure that any first-party data, owned by Propellernet or our clients, used in AI workspaces is not used to train AI models.
GEO and visibility in Google’s AIOs and AI Search Engines is likely to grow in value
Propellernet’s AI use centres around using AI for Efficiency & Innovation but also AI Search Optimisation and helping our clients to drive visibility when consumers search in AI spaces. We’re testing, experimenting and learning how to drive that less traditional SEO visibility all the time, with a keen eye on the rate at which consumers turn to AI for search over, or alongside, Google and other traditional search engines.
Well known brands that demonstrate positive user experience will win in the AI age
When LLMs see certain brands cropping up in their data more frequently and with consistent references to specific topics or areas of expertise, they’re more likely to surface those brands and the way they’re commonly referenced in their own results. So, alongside solid, useful content, brand-focused digital PR is crucial for visbility in the age of AI.
"Propellernet were ahead of the curve with AI. Together we've used it to develop personas and creating ad messaging, with further exciting projects lined up. Their expertise has been invaluable."
