Eric Siu argues SEO is regaining importance as AI models like GPT-5 rely on search engines and retrieval-augmented approaches for current information. OpenAI's design choices around efficiency and cost make grounding in real-time data essential, putting search back at the center.
SEO is back. This is a tweet from Aleta Solis. So Aleta's amazing SEO and Dejan SEO said GPT-5 just made SEO irreplaceable. So a couple bullet points here. OpenAI just made an executive decision to focus on raw intelligence and leave the rest to search engines. Now, number 2, without grounding— so grounding is grounding it on maybe pulling the data from Bing or pulling the data from Google. So without grounding, this model is virtually useless. It's designed to be the brain on top of tools and information it's provided with. Number 3, this means SEO has never been more relevant than The last point here is OpenAI appears to be designing models that think and reason well, but don't attempt to internally store all world knowledge, instead leveraging retrieval-augmented methods such as tools, search plugins, large context to pull in fresh information as needed. And this approach is motivated by efficiency, cost, and performance considerations, as evidenced by recent statements, research, and product releases. Because they're burning so much money on these tokens, they have to figure out efficient ways to do this. So that's why I said SEO is back.
