Why AI overviews are changing how we think about keywords
The keyword-centric approach to SEO is being challenged by systems that understand intent, context, and source authority.
Keywords were always a proxy. They stood in for what a person actually wanted. Synthesis-first systems are starting to model that intent directly.
From match to meaning
For twenty years, keyword research doubled as intent research. If you could find the phrase, you could infer the job. That inference is getting weaker as answer engines model intent directly from context, session history, and prior turns of the conversation.
The consequence: two pages that target the same keyword can perform very differently in answer surfaces depending on how well each one resolves the underlying job.
What replaces the keyword
Entities and jobs replace keywords as the primary planning unit. An entity is the thing being discussed; a job is what the user wants done with it. Together they describe the coverage a page needs to earn a citation.
Practically, this changes the brief. Instead of a phrase and a search volume, the brief lists the entities to cover, the decisions the reader is trying to make, and the sources the piece will out-cite.