The AI wars are heating up, with OpenAI launching SearchGPT as a rival to Google’s efforts to implement AI in search.
What does all of this mean for SEO?
Let’s take a look . . .
What is OpenAI’s SearchGPT?
OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT are launching SearchGPT, an AI-powered search function.
AI-powered search is nothing new, of course. Every time you ask Alexa, Echo, Nest, or similar devices you’re using voice-based, AI-powered search to find or buy something.
What is new is that SearchGPT is built on ChatGPT’s famous and widely used large language model (LLM). OpenAI is the giant in the AI space, fighting for relevance and revenue against Meta and Google.
The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI is doing another massive funding round, aiming for a $100 billion valuation. Its previous valuation was $86bn.
Back to their search product. In July, The Verge announced that “SearchGPT is just a “prototype” for now. The service is powered by the GPT-4 family of models and will only be accessible to 10,000 test users at launch”
OpenAI is aiming to reuse the data to integrate it with GPT-4 and other models they’re working on. Kind of like Google creating the Chrome search engine to provide more search-based data and ranking signals.
The question is, could this be a serious threat to Google?
Could people flock to SearchGPT instead of Google? Here’s one leading SEOs opinion on this subject:
What Does OpenAI’s SearchGPT Mean for Google and SEO?
Before OpenAI announced SearchGPT, Google had already started to hastily add AI-powered search features into their search engine.
It’s not just OpenAI that Google is worried about. Tech giants like Meta are getting into the AI game and startups like Perplexity, which bills itself as an AI “answer” engine, could become a threat.
There are other reasons Google is scrambling to achieve supremacy in AI-powered search:
- The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has won a landmark antitrust case against Google, confirming what everyone has known for decades: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
- Specifically, Google has “violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act” (US antitrust/anti-monopoly laws) in “general search services” and “general search text advertising.”
- This historic US ruling mirrors several European Commission court rulings (Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)) against Google that have incurred “€8.25 billion euros in fines for Google last decade.”
- The DoJ ruling confirms a lot of what we found out back in May, when 2,500+ internal documents relating to Google Search’s Content Warehouse API which mirrors (or did, at the time of the leak), the Document AI Warehouse.
- “Google’s monopoly in general search [is] remarkably durable,” going from around 80% in 2009 to 90% in 2020, with that position for global general search (GSE) dominance being maintained consistently.
This case found that Google knew, for a long time, that it could keep its search product as is without making changes (or even degrading the quality of results), without affecting its business model.
Until now.
Now with OpenAI and other AI-powered search engines coming into the market (and the DoJ ruling), Google has to act to retain its market dominance in search and paid search.
If millions of people go to rivals, then search volumes will reduce, and advertising revenue will plummet as a result.
The DoJ won’t need to break up Google’s business units because the market could do that for them if Google fails to maintain its monopoly.
Google’s AI search powers (that many people who’ve tried it in the wild aren’t impressed with) include the following:
“With new breakthroughs in generative AI, we’re again reimagining what a search engine can do. With this powerful new technology, we can unlock entirely new types of questions you never thought Search could answer, and transform the way information is organized, to help you sort through and make sense of what’s out there.”
“Context will be carried over from question to question, to help you more naturally continue your exploration. You’ll also find helpful jumping-off points to web content and a range of perspectives that you can dig into.”
For eCommerce in particular: “This new generative AI shopping experience is built on Google’s Shopping Graph, which has more than 35 billion product listings — making it the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews, and inventory out there.”
What does all of this mean for SEO?
As with the DoJ ruling, it’s still early days.
All of these AI-powered search functions are still in beta, and none of this is going to impact SEO massively for now.
A bit like when voice search came out. The SEO industry jumped, yet little has changed.
For now, the best things you can do are:
- Find out how to improve the SEO of your website and content with an SEO Audit and Topical Map.
- This will also show you what Technical SEO fixes are required.
- Create a link building strategy that will increase your business’s backlink profile, which will help you rank higher in search engines, bringing in more traffic and sales leads.
- Create an SEO content marketing strategy that will have the same impact, improving your website’s DA, CTR, search rankings, traffic, and sales leads.
- To maximize results: Combine a link building strategy with SEO content marketing and on-page optimizations.
Talk to us today about SEO services you can depend on. OutreachMama is trusted by over 300 companies worldwide to generate high-impact organic growth from Google.
OutreachMama can deliver every SEO service you need to improve your rankings and drive more traffic, sales leads, and customers to your website.
