AI is killing Google search: Is your business next?

Google Search is based on life support, with Australian companies supporting Artageddon, an artificial intelligence.

It may seem extreme to compare the collapse of online search to the end. However, there was a funeral of some sort recently at the Winx stand in Randwick.

Book Image: Inbound Marketing: Attract, engage and please customers onlineGoogle Search Traffic is shown to be ritually baked on a barbecue, as it is 70% dived thanks to AI.

Hubspot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah wrote a book in 2014 that is considered the Bible of a company seeking online growth. The pair drew technology to portray customer traffic from giants like Google, and have built a marketing software empire now worth USD 2.87 billion.

However, Hubspot CEO Yamini Rangan tells Australians that AI isn't just changing the rules. It's completely “rewrite the playbook.”

Chatbots are replacing Google searches. People can get information directly from AI tools such as ChatGpt with Heartbeat and “zero clicks.” As a result, the traffic that marketers and businesses have relied on for the past 20 years has plummeted.

Google, which manages around 94% of Australia's search market, is even disrupting itself. We started an AI overview late last year and worked to compete directly with ChatGPT. These AI-generated summaries appear at the top of Google searches, transforming how people can search and find information, and disable the need to click on links to other websites.

How AI Overviews Search

“About AI has changed how you go to the market,” Langan said.

“Ten years ago, it was a lot about searching for information. Customers may search and reach the top 10 blue links within Google.

“It's completely destroyed. In fact, Google has announced that its AI overview has reduced search traffic by 20-70%. That confusion is expected to continue.”

Then there's the issue of trust. The machine continues to wrestlew with the truth or the false. For example, according to Google's AI summary, Christine Holgate was Linfox's CEO and when he actually helloed rival logistics company team Global Express.

Other AI summaries can be more harmful, such as suggesting that users “eat at least one small rock per day.” This was based on a satirical article, but AI is not very good at understanding irony and exaggeration.

Still, more and more people are relying on AI overviews for information searches rather than clicking on links, causing what is branded as the news publisher “AI Armageddon.” According to Simarweb, traffic from HuffPost's desktop and mobile sites has halved in the past three years. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is experiencing a similar decline.

Business Insider cut more than 20% of its workforce last month, with CEO Barbara Peng saying “extreme traffic drops out of control.” It's all happening in the US as tech companies first launch new AI capabilities. In other words, Australia is about to face a similar onslaught.

But Langan says there are still times when businesses can adapt. She said Hubspot itself made a full U-turn in 2022 when Openai unleashed ChatGpt and was praised as the beginning of the Generative AI era.

“We decided early from a product perspective. The decision was, “Is this a separate AI feature that you bill individually as an SKU (stock retention unit) or as a product, or is it just building it on a platform?” Rangan says.

“And our decision was to incorporate it into every hub and every platform. So there's no bolt-on, no additional kind of SKU, no products. That's because we said very early on, 'This is a colour TV moment.'

How to attract attention with large language models

HubSpot is currently building businesses from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to take advantage of AI shifts, and building a suite of tools to help other businesses generate different forms of marketing content and be discovered by large language models and summaries generated in AI.

Rangan said that appearing in Google's AI overview is completely different from SEO, which relies on keywords and source reputations to reach the top of Google's Blue Link search results.

But in the larger language model, Langan said it was about “the number of repetitions of brands and brand authority across a variety of sources.”

That's what helps LLM find you. The playbook is completely different and that's what's exciting because it's a repetition of what you're trying to do. ”

What this means is that your business needs to find a way to create content, whether it's an article, video, or podcast written in a forum where you may have customers. Content should still be king and unique to stand out.

“The first part is to start with a few channels from a diversification perspective. If you're primarily relying on Google, the best place to start is YouTube. Instagram, Tiktok, depending on where your customer's persona is,” says Rangan.

HubSpot software allows people to spread content across different channels. For example, you can receive a blog post and turn it into a Tiktok video or a LinkedIn post.

Get closer to customers

This is very important. Because in an age of large-scale language models, it's not just about driving audiences and customers growth, but also about attracting people to your website.

“The whole content marketing strategy needs to be changed because you need to be where your customers are,” says Langan.

“And this is another place where AI really helps because understanding the intent of customers, buyers, and being able to map information to where YouTube, Insta, Reddit exists can drive conversions.”

So how does AI help you understand the customer's intentions? The solution looks backwards to move forward. Are you confused?

AI is essentially about deriving insights from a wealth of data. For companies, customers can leverage queries to support staff, online forums and other channels to better understand and create content that will facilitate the problem. After that, when the company does it right, it can start predicting the needs of its customers.

The National Australian Bank jumped early on to this and created what it called the “customer brain.” It features 200 machine learning models and has earned 36 billion data points so far, covering everything from transactions to how customers use the NAB banking app.

“Brain” is designed to organize daily banking issues before they arise, delivering to the right customers.

Construction Software Company Canibuild employs a similar strategy. Before AI, customer resolution rates were 20-30%, with 24 hours of service hours. Currently, the resolution rate is 70%, releasing sales staff to prioritize speaking with qualified buyers.

Tim Fung, founder and CEO of AirTasker, previously told the Masted that he spent $51 million on media partnerships, including F1 sponsorships over the past year to get closer to customers, rather than relying on Google.

“When AI came to the forefront, there's a lot of pressure on many of these digital performance marketing channels like Google. Google was a go-to place to promote, but now that game is completely different,” says Fung.

“Brands are increasingly looking for a way to tell their stories rather than relying on Google.”

Is AI making more mistakes?

But with AI Elly Strang, the global content marketing lead for brand tracking business tracksuits, he says the technology is not designed to replace human faces and inputs.

“You say we did a webinar and say we want to redistribute it into blog posts, social posts, etc.

“In the age of AI, brands are the most powerful differentiators, and it's everything from something like the tone of your voice to great creativity and curating resources that are right for your audience. So my team focuses their efforts on it and makes us stand out more than the more automated ones.”

Another reason why humans are important is that Openai's own research suggests that despite the technology being more refined, the speed of hallucinations, or AI is exacerbating the creation of answers.

Ms. Langan warned, agreeing that delegating a task to technology will result in a general slop.

“Many people start with AI and say, 'Write an article.' It's not possible yet, as it gives you a super general answer that won't earn you trust with your audience.

“The first thing to do is start with the human voice, the human strategy, the human intuition, the human perspective. Starting from there, and using AI to augment your thought process and story are incredibly valuable. Many people miss that step.”

Langan says this is how she prepares for the company's revenue call and speech.

She supplies AI tools such as ChatGpt and Claude's past call transcripts and podcasts, appearing in LinkedIn posts to help her understand the tone of her voice better.

“It helps to refine my story and thoughts. I obviously don't share any public information, but I use all of that information to start building a thought process. And I did it for the revenue script.

This article first appeared in Australia as AI kills Google searches. Is your business the following?