In the fight for visibility in an AI-powered search era, USA Today Co. is betting that speed can still beat the machines. After using AI-assisted, pre-written “shell files” to help boost traffic to Winter Olympics coverage, it’s rolling out the same strategy for this summer’s FIFA World Cup 2026.
The race to win Google search now starts before AI can get there. USA Today Co. is pre-writing articles — with the help of AI to pull related content from its archive — so it can be ready with breaking news stories the moment they happen.
“We’re trying not to be as reliant on SEO strategy. Pre-writes are huge… We do brainstorm sessions on anticipatory content, and try to pre-write as much as we can, and then time it for as soon as something happens,” said Alicia DelGallo, USA Today Sports editorial director. “Because by the time everyone else or Google search trends spike, and then Google’s like, ‘This is worth an AI Overview,’ we already had it. We got the spike on the way up instead of the way down.”
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