Browser Wars Are Coming To AI Search: An AMA With Mark-Williams Cook

Yeah, for sure. When Reddit started dominating visibility, first in Google and then in LLMs, I saw many people saying, “We need to be posting there.” That always makes me cringe a bit, because most of those efforts tend to go poorly. I’ve been a Redditor for 19 years, and I’ve seen how that usually plays out.

With clients, we always start by identifying where their audience already spends time. There’s no point launching a Discord if your customers aren’t there. But when you get it right, community marketing becomes an engine for everything else, aligning with where search is headed.

Historically, search has been drifting away from webmaster-controlled spaces for years. PageRank was one shift, and AI is another. Now, it’s more about what the broader internet is saying about you, such as your sentiment, visibility, and reputation, than about your site.

Communities help shape that narrative. If your product is good, a community often forms anyway. However, investing in, growing, and managing it gives you influence. It’s a smart hedge, because even if search disappeared tomorrow, a strong community would still be incredibly valuable.

10. Are there any search skills or tools SEOs should start learning now to get ahead in 2026?

Here are a few things to focus on:

Learn how large language models work

SEOs often focus on tactics, usually due to pressure from managers or stakeholders. That’s understandable, but knowing how a language model works, how pretraining happens, how text is generated, and what influences it offers a competitive advantage.

When you understand the technology, you can combine your LLM and marketing knowledge to develop your own strategies, rather than relying on recycled advice.

It also provides protection; understanding the system helps you avoid tactics that may seem effective in the short term but are risky in the long term. Most clients want sustainable success, not short spikes followed by penalties.

Follow thought leaders

Follow thought leaders like Dawn Anderson and Britney Muller. Both were central to the SEO world and then transitioned into fields like information retrieval and machine learning. That technical perspective is incredibly valuable and will become more important in the future.

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