As Google continues to roll out trials of Generative AI search, marketers are looking for signals about how the changes will affect the way they connect with prospects and customers via search engines. But we believe that at a very high level, your SEO strategy doesn’t really need to change as a result of search engines investing in and rolling out features based on generative AI and large-language models.
Google has been working on answering searchers’ informational queries right on the search results page (SERP) with a growing variety of featured snippets for years. And this could be a fairly big contributor to that trend, further increasing the prevalence of zero-click searches (searches where the user doesn’t click on a result, so doesn’t leave Google.com). Google wants to retain the user as much as possible, because, of course, it is fundamentally an advertising company and it makes more money if visitors stay on its sites. To be fair to Google, for some types of searches this is also better user experience.
Our point of view is that it is still better to have your name attached to or included with a result, even if it does not result in a visit to your site. That will still be true with generative AI to an extent, though a generated response is an amalgamation of many inputs, so there may be less opportunity for attribution, depending on the query and the implementation. As of right now, it appears that Google does want to include links to sources, so that’s very good news.
The most interesting aspect of all this to me is the impact on the search landscape as a whole. Google has had an apparent monopoly on search for a long time, but that is likely to change. I say “apparent” because in reality, Amazon, TripAdvisor, Spotify, etc. all act as specialized search engines. With ChatGPT and other large-language models for hire, the barrier to entry is a lot lower. If you wanted to, you could take a few Coursera courses and spend a few hundred dollars on API fees and build your own niche search engine based on a hobby or interest in less than six months. I’m already starting to use generative-AI-based tools that have nothing to do with Google in my everyday life. E.g. Github Copilot, Notion AI, and Dall-e 2 – each one of these serve a need that I would have addressed with Google before. So, among other things, I recommend keeping an eye on how people are changing the ways they look for and find information in your industry.
In addition, here are a few direct recommendations:
In short, we believe that a well-functioning website with well-written content that adds value for your audience and incorporates your brand differentiation will continue to be a strong way to connect with your prospects and customers. But as it has been since the dawn of search engines, the details of how we do that will continue to evolve.
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