✦Gary Vaynerchuk on an SEO podcast
The person known for content marketing and social media turned up as a guest on an SEO podcast. That alone was enough to get my attention. It was Edward Sturm's show, and what Vaynerchuk said there was this: the competition in AI search is intense, and in his view the winner is already decided.
Statements like that make you anxious. They did for me at first, and still do occasionally. Listen to the whole conversation though and it stops being a reason to hurry and becomes a reason to choose a direction. Episode eight of my podcast walks through that conversation with my own read attached.
✦Nothing disappears, layers accumulate
Sturm asked first. If people put questions straight to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, does that not drain the small, tightly targeted niche blogs?
Vaynerchuk's answer was not the expected one. That process did not start now. Outside Korea, people used to search on Google and land on a blog to find information, and that attention shifted to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok a long time ago. Blogs did not lose ground only because of the AI boom.
So he described it this way. There is the internet, search layered on top of it, social media layered on that, and AI arriving on top now. Nothing gets removed. Layers keep accumulating.
Press this and my new posts show up more often in your Google results.
✦Bench players and mixed martial arts
An analogy came up. Put a bench player from today's NBA on the court in the league's early years. Bench player or not, they would probably dominate, because they are playing with everything the sport has accumulated since already absorbed.
I laid mixed martial arts over the top of that. UFC fighters mostly have one base each. Wrestling, judo, jiu jitsu, boxing. On top of the core skill they have spent years on, they add another and eventually become a mixed martial artist.
Vaynerchuk made the same point. Someone who has done SEO for a long time picks up the new current of AI search faster. It stacks on the fundamentals. It does not erase them.
✦Why Gemini
Sturm raised this first. Gemini is the only AI that can read YouTube captions, so the vast body of video content on YouTube is available to it.
Vaynerchuk agreed and added the ecosystem argument. People around the world live tied to Gmail and Google Calendar, with Google Search and YouTube alongside. Claude and ChatGPT have excellent technology but started from bare ground, while Gemini has an ecosystem stacked on top of the technology, so the starting lines are different. Hence the phrase, guaranteed winner.
One thing worth flagging. This is an opinion, and an observation from a moment in time. How each model handles YouTube content keeps changing from service to service. So rather than carrying away Gemini won as a conclusion, carry away the reasoning, which lasts longer. The reasoning is accumulated data and established user habit.
Which entrance is your brand standing in?
Whether you are being found through your website, YouTube, or LinkedIn is something you can measure rather than guess. Send me your site and target market, and I'll tell you whether I can help.
Send me a note✦The entrances keep multiplying
The most practical part for me was this. Sturm pointed out that content posted to YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok now shows up in Google results and gets cited in AI answers. ChatGPT searches the web when it answers, so it picks up content from multiple channels.
I tried it. Searching Gary Vaynerchuk's name on Google returned Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and Substack. Apart from one website, all of it was other channels, including a video posted a few hours earlier.
I have seen the same picture in my own work. On a dermatology project aimed at international patients, the results page was not just the clinic's website. There was information listed on industry platforms, Reddit, review sites, Gangnam Unni, Instagram, and YouTube.
Which leads to the conclusion. Entrances do not disappear, they keep getting added. What matters each time is having a structure where every channel carries the same message and can be trusted. Whichever route someone arrives by, the same information should be waiting.
✦Is Korea behind
Outside Korea, Google takes essentially all of search, so building a website around search has been the obvious thing to do for a long time. Korea went differently. There was a powerful portal in Naver, and comparatively less attention went into building sites for search engines. Some businesses ran a Naver blog and no website at all.
I still have to explain and argue for the necessity with clients. Why a website is needed, why it has to be optimized.
Is that a disadvantage? I read it the other way. Less experience means less competition. Start building properly now and there are good positions to take first.
If you are entering Korea from outside, that is the practical takeaway. The gap you are looking at is an opening, not a barrier.
✦What to take from it
Summed up, a new channel appearing is not a reason to rush after it. Which channel you concentrate on, how you keep publishing there, and how the channels connect to each other matter more.
At the end of episode eight I said I would focus on SEO and explain why in the next one. That reasoning is in the note on SEO and GEO, which covers what separates SEO, GEO, and AEO and why SEO still comes first.
The experiment where I actually built up my own name in search results is written out screen by screen in the note on name search.
How I work is on the services page, and the other episodes are in the episode list.
Sources and notes
- Edward Sturm, GaryVee: Gemini Is the Only Guaranteed Winner in AI Search, with Gary Vaynerchuk. Watch it
- The Insung Song SEO Podcast, EP 08, published 14 July 2026. Recorded in Korean. Watch it
The original video is credited exactly as it appears in the EP 08 description. The remarks by Gary Vaynerchuk and Edward Sturm come from that conversation and are their opinions rather than verified facts. How any AI service handles YouTube content keeps changing, so check it against the current state before acting on it. The dermatology project is work I ran myself.
✦Common questions
On Edward Sturm's SEO podcast he said Gemini is the only guaranteed winner in AI search, for two reasons. It can use the video content accumulated on YouTube, and user habits are already locked in through Gmail, Calendar, and Google Search. This is his opinion rather than a verified fact.
His view was that nothing disappears, things stack. The internet, then search on top of it, then social media, and now AI arriving above that. Blogs lost influence partly because attention moved to YouTube and social, not only because of AI.
Entrances keep being added, so chasing all of them is not realistic. Decide where the customers you want actually look, publish there consistently, and connect the channels so they carry the same message. What helps is that any route in leads to the same information.
It is true that building sites around search engines took longer to become standard practice here, because of the portal centered ecosystem. That also means there is less competition. Starting properly now still leaves positions available to take.
I help companies grow in search, mostly on Google, in Korea and across borders. Since 2021, the field has taught me to look at content and structure together rather than chasing one technical fix.
