We know AI is everywhere right now, and if you’re trying to make smart decisions for your organization, there are a lot of factors at play. It depends on your organization, your users, what they’re looking for, and the world of AI itself, where services and language models are constantly shifting.
We’ve seen that shift ourselves, and to provide our clients with the expertise they need, we’re excited to introduce a new dedicated role: Drew McQuarrie, Paper Leaf’s Emerging Technology Strategist. Drew has been with Paper Leaf for the last 7 years, working as a Developer and then Development Manager most recently. In this new role, Drew evaluates emerging tools and technologies, advises clients on where AI fits (and where it doesn’t) in their digital strategy, and helps our internal teams stay current as the landscape shifts. It’s a natural fit given his years in development at Paper Leaf.
So of course, we put him to work right away! We sat down with Drew to walk through the top questions clients have about AI — here’s what he had to say.
1. How will AI affect my website traffic?
Drew: You’ll probably see less traffic. AI tools are changing how people find information. Instead of clicking through a list of search results, people are increasingly getting answers directly from AI-generated responses. So in a lot of cases, fewer people are making it to your website the old-fashioned way.
That doesn’t mean your website matters less. It just means the way people find it, and the way they get answers from it, has shifted. Today, the challenge is making sure your organization is being surfaced, referenced, and trusted by AI tools in the first place. That’s where GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, comes in (see the next question for more on this). It’s about helping your content show up in AI-driven experiences, not just traditional search results.
2. Speaking of, what is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?
Drew: The short version is that SEO is about your website ranking well in traditional search engines like Google in order to get clicks and site visits, while GEO is about becoming part of the answer itself by helping AI tools understand, trust, and reference your content through tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
SEO is still important. That hasn’t gone away. But the way people search is changing, which means the way organizations need to think about discoverability is changing too.
The question now is: is your organization surfacing in the answers people are getting from large language models (LLMs)?
That’s really what GEO is trying to address. It also overlaps with a bigger content and governance conversation. If AI tools are summarizing your organization, you want the information they’re pulling from to be clear, current, and aligned with your brand.
3. Can’t AI just build my website?
Drew: Sort of. But not in the way people usually mean when they ask that.
AI can absolutely help with website development. We use it. It can speed certain things up. But if you’re asking whether AI can take a nuanced, custom digital problem and solve it on its own from start to finish, the answer right now is no.
The comparison I use is that AI is a bit like a junior developer. It has access to a ton of information, it can do useful work, and it can move quickly. But it still needs direction. More importantly, it needs a review and a person with experience to do that review. That is the part that people don’t usually think of. Reading and reviewing code takes a similar level of expertise as writing it. You still need someone who understands what’s happening, what could go wrong, whether it’s secure, whether it actually supports the business rules behind the project, and whether it’s going to work properly in the real world. AI is wonderful at accessing information, but it’s still poor at understanding how information relates to each other, and how that affects a business and its objectives.
One area where AI is especially helpful is debugging. It can scan a large codebase and help pinpoint issues much faster than a person working through things one piece at a time. That’s a real advantage. But it doesn’t replace the need for expertise. It just changes how that expertise is being applied.
That’s why custom work still needs experienced people involved. AI is a tool. A very useful one. It’s great at certain things. But it still needs someone who knows how to use it well, and how to verify what it creates, in order for it to be most effective.
4. Do I need AI on my website or app?
Drew: Not necessarily. This is one of the biggest misconceptions right now. A lot of organizations feel like they need to do something with AI because everyone is talking about it. But that’s not really the right starting point.
The better question is: what problem are you trying to solve?
If AI helps solve that problem in a meaningful way, great. Then it’s worth exploring. But if you’re just adding AI because it feels like the thing to do, that usually doesn’t lead anywhere useful.
There’s no point putting wings on a car if what you need isn’t to fly.
That’s really the conversation we like to have with clients. What’s the challenge? Where is the friction? What are your users actually struggling with? Once you understand that, you can figure out whether AI is the right fit, and if it is, what kind of solution actually makes sense.
5. What can AI actually do on a website?
Drew: Quite a bit, depending on what your users need.
One example is an AI assistant that helps people find products, navigate information, or get support. That’s probably the use case most people think of first, and in the right context it can be really valuable.
Another strong use case is smarter search. AI can do a much better job understanding intent, context, and even poorly phrased or misspelled queries. Remember the old days of if you miss-spelled a word in Google it didn’t know what you meant? Because I sure do! That is all vastly improved today. Users can find what they need more easily, even if they don’t use exactly the right language.
It can also support personalization. In some cases, AI can help tailor experiences based on previous behaviour, preferences, or patterns. That can make digital experiences feel more useful and more relevant.
The important thing is that these aren’t one-size-fits-all features. What makes sense for an e-commerce experience is different from what makes sense for a post-secondary institution, a government organization, or a large nonprofit. So again, it comes back to the problem you’re solving and what will actually create value for your audience.
Final thoughts
There’s a lot of hype, a lot of opportunity, and a lot of pressure to move quickly. We get it, and that’s exactly why Paper Leaf has created a dedicated resource focused on AI and emerging technologies in Drew. We know the problem is nuanced, and the solution is probably nuanced too. Most organizations will need a mix of expertise, strategy, and technology to solve the right problem in the right way.
We’re already working with clients to think through how AI is affecting their digital presence, where it can create value, and what a thoughtful approach looks like for the future. This space is changing quickly, and it will keep changing, and we’re constantly looking at how this is evolving over time.
If you want to go even deeper on this, Drew recently sat down with Peter Bishop from ZGM, our parent company, to talk about GEO, what it is, how to think about it, and what the future of it might look like. You can watch the conversation here.
If you’re asking questions about traffic, search, user experience, content, governance, or whether AI belongs in your website or app at all, you’re not alone. These are the same conversations many organizations are having right now. If you have questions about how AI is changing your digital landscape, we want to talk them through with you. Let’s Chat!