Dan Petrovic takes a clear stance against industry panic with his formula: "SEO + AI = Still SEO." This seemingly contradictory equation actually illuminates a fundamental truth about our evolving profession. The most critical insight is that AI isn't eliminating the need for SEO expertise; rather, it's creating new dimensions of optimization work.

In traditional SEO, Click-Through Rate (CTR) reigned supreme as the metric measuring how attractive a search result appeared to users. However, Petrovic argues that the game's rules have fundamentally changed, introducing a paradigm shift toward what he calls "Selection Rate Optimisation."

It might be surprising to learn that the interactions many of us have with tools like ChatGPT or Gemini aren't actually real dialogues in the traditional sense. Petrovic reveals a critical technical detail about how this process works that fundamentally changes how we should approach AI interactions.

This insight offers a powerful strategic hack for increasing efficiency in your AI interactions. Petrovic notes that when solving a problem and finding a good intermediate solution, he goes back to the beginning of the conversation, updates the relevant prompt with this new solution, and continues from there. This approach cleans unnecessary and incorrect steps from the context, allowing the model to progress more effectively toward the desired outcome.

Petrovic emphasizes a strategic shift in the design philosophy of next-generation AI models that will have profound implications for content creators and SEO professionals. Future models will be equipped with less built-in "world knowledge" but will focus more on "tool use" capabilities—the ability to access external information sources when needed.

The fundamental reason for this architectural approach is efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Rather than embedding all knowledge within the model itself, future AI will be designed to be intelligent enough to know when and how to seek information from authoritative external sources. This situation, far from diminishing the importance of organic search and quality content, actually reinforces it.

Petrovic's vision for the next five years introduces what he calls the "agentic era"—a fundamental shift in how we interact with digital services and information. In this emerging paradigm, personal AI agents will act autonomously on our behalf, fundamentally changing the role of traditional web interfaces.

For example, when your AI agent needs to book an appointment or purchase a product, it will communicate directly with the service provider's agent to complete the task invisibly, without requiring you to visit a website or open a mobile app. These traditional interfaces will become an "option" rather than a necessity—something you might choose to use for verification or exploration, but not required for completion of most tasks.

Understanding the shift from click-through optimization to selection rate optimization requires concrete strategies that content creators can implement today. The transition to AI-mediated search demands a fundamental rethinking of how we structure, present, and validate our content.

Understanding this technical pipeline is crucial for effective optimization. Each stage presents opportunities and requirements for content creators. The crawling and indexing stages still require traditional technical SEO best practices—fast loading times, clean code, proper sitemaps, and accessible content structure.

However, the retrieval and selection stages introduce new considerations. AI models evaluate content based on semantic relevance rather than just keyword matching. They assess the logical structure of arguments, the credibility of sources cited, and the comprehensiveness of coverage. The synthesis stage means your content might be combined with information from other sources, so clarity and quotability become increasingly important.

As we move toward Petrovic's vision of the agentic era, businesses must prepare for a fundamental shift in how transactions and interactions occur. The agent-to-agent economy will require new optimization strategies, new metrics for success, and new ways of thinking about customer relationships.

The shift to agent-mediated commerce doesn't mean abandoning traditional marketing and SEO principles. Rather, it means extending them to a new audience: AI agents acting on behalf of human users. These agents will evaluate your offerings based on structured data, reviews, pricing, availability, and compatibility with user preferences—all factors that must be optimized and clearly communicated.