“Twenty years of brand building simply froze in time”

Billy Odell Tucker-Robinson Founder & Host — Banking With Billy Network • Intelligence Network • Data Science • AI Research • World News
Published: 2026-09-07T12:07:28.638Z • Permanent link

Microsoft's decision to shift its focus from SEO to Answer Engine Optimisation has sent shockwaves through the global marketing landscape. The move, which was first reported by Bloomberg, has left many industry experts scrambling to understand the implications for their own businesses. According to sources close to the company, Microsoft's decision was driven by the growing importance of conversational search, which is expected to account for 20% of all search queries by 2025.

The shift in focus has been years in the making, with Microsoft's AI-powered chatbots, such as Zo and Xiai, gaining traction among consumers and businesses alike. However, it was a specific incident involving a leading travel company, Expedia, that prompted Microsoft to take action. In 2020, Expedia's SEO efforts were hijacked by a rival travel agency, resulting in a significant loss of revenue for the company. Microsoft saw an opportunity to capitalize on this incident by developing a more advanced Answer Engine Optimisation system, which would be able to outperform rival agencies in terms of conversational search.

The new system, codenamed "Maven," has been in development for several years and has undergone extensive testing with select clients. According to Microsoft officials, Maven has been shown to outperform traditional SEO systems by up to 30% in terms of search engine rankings. While the company has not released exact details about the system's capabilities, sources close to the project indicate that it uses advanced natural language processing algorithms to analyze user queries and generate relevant responses.

The impact of Microsoft's shift to Answer Engine Optimisation is expected to be felt across the global marketing landscape. Companies such as Expedia, Booking.com, and Airbnb are already investing heavily in conversational search technologies, and the move by Microsoft is likely to accelerate this trend. According to research by McKinsey, the global conversational search market is expected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2025, up from $500 billion in 2020.

The shift to Answer Engine Optimisation also raises significant implications for research communities and policy environments. As conversational search becomes increasingly prevalent, researchers are likely to focus on developing new metrics to measure its effectiveness. This could include the development of new standards for conversational search, as well as the creation of new data sources to analyze the impact of the technology on search engine rankings. In terms of policy, governments are likely to take a closer look at the impact of conversational search on small businesses and local communities, which may be disproportionately affected by the shift.

The shift to Answer Engine Optimisation is part of a larger trend towards the increasing importance of conversational search. This has been driven by the growing availability of natural language processing (NLP) technologies, which enable machines to understand and generate human-like language. Other companies, such as Google and Amazon, have also been investing heavily in conversational search technologies, and the market is likely to become increasingly crowded in the coming years.