5 Ways A New AI Search Engine Will Impact Your Online Business

In this op-ed, Jack Telford, SEO group business director at media agency Zenith, continues his previous article on generative AI, stating: B&T And how it can affect your digital business.

In January I wrote about how a newly launched phenomenon called Chat GPT could change the world of online content. Since then, it has become impossible to ignore the high-profile stream of AI predictions that has oscillated from panacea to apocalypse.

Additionally, search giants Google and Bing have both announced that generative AI is, or will soon be, enhancing their core search experience. So, with the world still largely intact, what better time to talk about how these AI-powered search engines will impact our online businesses?

Organic search is still the number one driver of traffic on the Internet. Radically changing this format can change the performance of your website. Below, I’ve listed what I think are the five most likely impacts of AI search engines, outlining how imaginative digital his marketers can adapt to this changing search landscape. .

may have less traffic

In recent years, search engines have increasingly used internal knowledge graphs or featured snippets to answer searches directly on the results page. This means that the click-through rate of the website is lower because the user no longer needs to visit the website to get the answer. Generative AI accelerates this trend by expanding the range of queries that search engines can answer themselves.

This is not a new challenge – web publishers have been dealing with an increase in zero-click searches for years – but it exacerbates an existing dilemma. If you want to grow or maintain your web traffic in the future, you may need to diversify your content and target areas where results are less likely to be generated. Paid ads also show AI search snippets, which can be another way to increase visibility.

If your customers don’t recognize you, you’re going to lose money. It won’t be long before search engines can generate relevant content on their results pages via AI, just like humans do. Why would a user click on a web result in such a case?

The short answer is that people want information from brands they trust. Sites that establish themselves as leaders within their category can significantly exceed their expected click-through rates. As sites become harder to click, building topical brand awareness through the various media channels available can make or break your success.

The shopping graph becomes important

In our documentation of the generated search experience, Google has carefully emphasized the role the shopping graph plays in generated search results. Unlike ChatGPT, Google’s new AI constantly updates the inventory of product data in search results.

Products with rich, detailed, and authoritative information online are more likely to appear in search results. It’s important to keep your Merchant Center listings up-to-date and optimize other product signals like images and reviews across the web.

We need to rethink funnel targeting

Generative AI redefines search results across intents. Traditionally, using SEO content to target information searches (to attract research audiences) was effective, while paid search targeted brand and product queries more heavily.

If generative AI results cover information search, advertisers may need to invest more in paid search to maintain visibility. Conversely, when AI results stick to commercial search, we need to permeate the generated results to earn citation links.

Humanized content stands out

Generative AI systems search the Internet for content, verifying correct answers from various sources for each search. They cannot produce anything truly original, nor can they rely on lived experience to give a humane perspective on a topic.

If your content strategy resembles the one employed by generative AI, it will be difficult to stand out. If you can come up with something completely different, full of EEAT signals, you’re more likely to perform well in search.

We have also witnessed attempts by Australian regulators to work with giants such as Google and Facebook to protect the interests of publishers, where AI platforms unfairly benefit while publishers suffer losses. It is important to note that much more can happen.

It’s too early to say exactly how and how broadly generative AI will impact the web, but it could wreak havoc on performance once fully integrated. Nonetheless, it’s comforting to know that billions of users want to access relevant web content, and that a search engine’s core business is still displaying it.

Extensive changes to search affect the tactics we use for success, but we can’t disrupt the principles for building our strategy. Website owners have dealt with several major changes to search engines and their ranking factors over the past decade. Consistently, the winners are the brands with sustainable, people-first strategies. More focused on the end-user than on the latest algorithm development.