Chapter 36 — Exercises

Work these in order; they climb from recall to real judgment under uncertainty. You will need a web browser, access to at least one AI answer engine, and ideally a site whose traffic you can inspect. Everything here uses free tools. Items marked with a dagger (†) have full worked solutions in Appendix — Answers to Selected Exercises; odd-numbered items are worked there too. Attempt every item before you look.

The spirit of the chapter, kept close: the question is never "is SEO dead?" It is "which of my traffic is actually exposed, which principles survive, and what do I own that no algorithm can take?"

A. Recall and vocabulary

Exercise 36.1 — Define, in your own words, four terms this chapter owns: AI Overviews, SGE, zero-click search, and answer engine. Then explain the relationship between the first two.

Exercise 36.2 † — Explain retrieval (retrieval-augmented generation) in two sentences, and use it to answer: why is "AI Overviews are built instead of the ranked web" wrong?

Exercise 36.3 — Define generative engine optimization (GEO) and LLM citation. Explain why the chapter says GEO is "mostly SEO with the citation as the new prize."

Exercise 36.4 — Define traffic diversification. Name the channel the chapter calls "the most owned there is," and say what "owned" means here.

B. Applied reasoning

Exercise 36.5 — The chapter says the AI answer is "eating the traffic that was worth the least." Explain the logic that connects query intent to both AI-answer exposure and commercial value.

Exercise 36.6 † — Rank these five queries from most-exposed to least-exposed to AI answers, and justify the order: "what is a heat pump," "book ac tune-up," "heat pump vs furnace cost," "rivertown home services," "emergency plumber near me."

Exercise 36.7 — "Being cited by an AI is just as good as getting the click." Correct this statement to the chapter's standard, and name what a citation does still buy you.

Exercise 36.8 — Explain why the chapter treats branded and direct traffic as the safest harbor, using the mechanism from the "How Search Sees It" box in §36.5 (not just "because people know you").

Exercise 36.9 † — The chapter argues uncertainty is "an argument for robustness, not paralysis." Explain the difference between optimizing for one predicted future and building for robustness across many, with a concrete example of each.

Exercise 36.10 — Restate the chapter's central claim about principles versus tactics, and give one tactic from an earlier chapter that might change with AI search and one principle that will not.

C. Diagnose the situation

Exercise 36.11 — A publisher's flagship guide still ranks #1 for a big informational term, but its organic clicks have fallen over the last year while impressions held steady. Diagnose the most likely cause and name two moves the chapter recommends. Is this a "ranking failure"?

Exercise 36.12 † — A local roofer panics: "AI is going to destroy my traffic." Their top queries are "roof repair [city]," "emergency roof leak near me," and "roofing company [city]." Diagnose their actual exposure and deliver the honest verdict.

Exercise 36.13 — A site's traffic is 80% informational blog reads (how-to and definitional) and 20% transactional. A competitor's is the reverse. Which site is more exposed to the AI transition, and what should each prioritize?

Exercise 36.14 — Someone shows you a "GEO audit" from a vendor promising, for \$2,000, a "proven method to guarantee your content is chosen by AI." Diagnose what is wrong with the offer using the chapter's evidence tiers, and say what a legitimate version of that audit would actually contain.

D. On your own site (use a free tool)

Exercise 36.15 † — Take the single most valuable question a customer asks before buying from you. Ask it to two or three AI answer engines and search it on Google. Record: did each answer? Who did it cite? Was the answer correct and complete, or did it miss something only you know? Write one sentence on the biggest gap you found.

Exercise 36.16 — Pick five of your important target queries and classify each by intent (Chapter 3), then search each and note whether an AI Overview appears. Tally how much of your target traffic is informational/high-exposure versus transactional-or-local/low-exposure. What does the ratio tell you about your risk?

Exercise 36.17 — Audit your owned channels. Do you have an email list? How large, and when did you last use it? Do you actively collect reviews? Write down the single biggest gap between the traffic you rent and the audience you own.

Exercise 36.18 † — Find one informational page on your site that an AI Overview now answers. Identify the follow-up question a real searcher still has that the summary skips — the information-gain opportunity — and draft the one paragraph you would add to own that follow-up.

E. Read the report / interpret / rewrite

Exercise 36.19 — Interpret this report.

FIGURE E36.1 — "Two queries, one business"                          [constructed teaching example]
  QUERY A: "how does a tankless water heater work" → full AI Overview on top; organic links below; no local
           pack. Clicks to the #1 page down over the year; impressions flat.
  QUERY B: "tankless water heater installation [city]" → local pack with call buttons dominates; thin/no AI
           Overview; clicks and calls steady.

For each query, state the exposure, the likely trend, and the single most sensible strategic response.

Exercise 36.20 — Rewrite the job, not the page. Here is an informational page's stated purpose (constructed): "This guide targets 'how long does a furnace last' to capture 12,000 informational visits a month." Rewrite the purpose statement so the page's job fits an AI-answer world, per §36.3–36.5.

Exercise 36.21 † — Research / analysis. Choose one high-value transactional or local query and one high-volume informational query in your field. For each, note the SERP's AI-answer presence and estimate (in words, not fake numbers) how resilient its clicks are. Explain which one you would fund first and why.

Exercise 36.22 — A colleague drafts a client email: "Great news — AI Overviews are just a fad and won't affect our rankings, so no changes needed." Rewrite it into an honest, non-panicked update that reflects this chapter (real change, uneven exposure, the diversification response).

F. Myths, ethics, and judgment

Exercise 36.23 — Spot the myth. "AI Overviews mean SEO is dead." Give the three concrete reasons the chapter offers for why this is too simple.

Exercise 36.24 † — Spot the myth. "There's a secret GEO technique that makes the AI pick you." Explain why this echoes the "guaranteed #1 rankings" snake oil of early SEO, and state what is actually evidence-supported about being cited.

Exercise 36.25 — Judgment under uncertainty. List three things about the five-year future of search that the chapter says we genuinely do not know. Then explain why "we don't know" is a more professional answer than a confident forecast.

Exercise 36.26 — Ethics / candor. You are asked to sell a client a "guaranteed AI-citation package." Explain why you would refuse, connecting it to the book's standing rule against guaranteeing rankings (Chapter 11 guardrails, and the posture since Chapter 1).

Exercise 36.27 — Explain the "Google needs a thriving web to crawl" argument from §36.6. Why does it make the bleakest "Google will take all the traffic" scenarios possibly self-limiting — and why is that a reason for cautious hope rather than complacency?

G. The Strategy File (Rivertown Home Services)

Exercise 36.28 † — Build Rivertown's exposure diagnosis (like Figure 36.3): list its three traffic types (branded, local/transactional, informational blog), rate each one's AI-answer exposure, and state the one-line implication for the plan. Why is the verdict reassuring for a business like Rivertown?

Exercise 36.29 — The Delgados have never built an email list. Write the case for why email is Rivertown's single biggest owned-asset opportunity, and describe two seasonal email touches a home-services company should send.

Exercise 36.30 — Rivertown's informational blog posts (technician-reviewed, from Chapter 13) are the most AI-exposed part of its traffic. Rather than deleting them, describe the three new jobs §36.5 assigns that content — and why keeping it is still worthwhile even if its click volume falls.

Exercise 36.31 † — Extend the Strategy File: explain how Rivertown's Google Business Profile reviews (Chapter 25) function as a moat an AI answer cannot copy. Why can an answer engine describe "a good HVAC company" but not replace Rivertown's reviews?

Exercise 36.32 — Rivertown's owner asks: "So should we stop doing SEO and just run ads?" Give the honest, two-part answer this chapter demands (what the exposure analysis says about their SEO, and why ads are not diversification).

Where these go next. Keep your answers to 36.16, 36.17, 36.28, 36.29, and 36.31 — they extend your running Strategy File (Appendix C's worksheet) with the diversification layer. The future-proofing plan you sketch here is the last major component you will fold into the complete strategy when you assemble it for your own site alongside Rivertown's in Chapter 40.