From Keywords to Prompts: How Search Changed

For a long time, people searched in short fragments: "running shoes flat feet," "best SEO tool," "plumber London." Search engines got good at decoding those fragments into intent. But search behavior has shifted. People now type full sentences and natural questions into Google, and entire paragraphs into AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

A keyword is a short phrase targeting a search engine. A prompt is a fuller, more conversational request targeting an AI - something like "I run a small B2B SaaS company and I want to improve how often we get mentioned by AI tools. Where do I start?" Behind that one prompt is a cluster of topics the AI has to understand before it can answer.

This does not make keyword research obsolete. It adds a new layer. You still need to know what short phrases drive Google traffic, and you now also need to think about what longer questions and prompts your audience types into AI tools - and whether your content is structured to answer them.