Are we at the end of an era or the dawn of something new?

Recently, I’ve noticed AI-generated overviews appearing above my search results. AI has officially made its way into online search results. Is this the end of an era? Will AI dominate search results from now on?

For a long time, search engines have been an integral part of our lives. When we encounter a problem or need to complete a task, the first thing we do isn’t to ask someone—we type it into a search engine. We don’t think twice about it; it’s the norm. If, on the rare occasion, it doesn’t provide an answer, we reach out to someone as a last resort. In my mind, if Google or the internet doesn’t know something, then no one does.

On the other hand, appearing in search results, especially at the top, has been important to businesses as it legitimizes the brand and what it offers. According to an analysis by Backlinko, the average business spends $497 per month on SEO. However, research indicates that clients who invested more were 50% more likely to be highly satisfied with their results. This is likely because organic search traffic makes up over 53% of all website traffic, making search engines the most valuable source of traffic.

However, some things are changing in the AI-powered world.

Recently, search results started displaying AI-generated summaries. Honestly, I thought this would be annoying or unhelpful, but to my surprise, I’ve started liking it. Instead of having to browse through numerous articles, I just have to read the summary to find what I need. This is much easier than before, and if you want to learn more by reading through the articles, there’s always the option to browse the articles listed below the summary. It’s definitely not the end of online search, but it is certainly evolving.

Impact on SEO

With SEO as a primary focus, businesses optimized keywords, pages, and links to rank higher on search results pages. But that’s about to change. Website traffic from search queries may drastically decrease due to this new AI feature. This means the objectives of SEO have changed. Now, pages must be optimized based on the new AI summarization feature.

According to a report from Brightedge Research, organic search accounts for roughly 45% of the average company’s revenue. That’s a lot to lose if search results are no longer relevant or change drastically. The exact impact of SEO on GenAI-powered search engines is yet to be known, but it surely won’t be the same as before.

Will the monopoly be beaten?

Google is the biggest search engine, and no one could beat it. There have been tough competitors in the past, but none could actually replace Google.

Take the case of Neeva, a search engine focused on safeguarding user privacy, founded by an ex-Google employee who headed Google’s ad business. So, if anyone could do it, it was him. But Neeva co-founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan said, “Throughout this journey [of building a search engine], we’ve discovered that it is one thing to build a search engine, and an entirely different thing to convince regular users of the need to switch to a better choice.”

After the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the Google search engine is under threat. Not only Google, but all traditional search engines are taking steps to integrate GenAI and move away from the traditional search engine model.

Google has introduced an AI overview to its search engine, which summarizes the search results page. An AI company, Perplexity.ai, has launched a research and conversational search engine powered by AI that provides answers to questions using natural language and advanced predictive text algorithms. OpenAI is also working on a search engine with GenAI capabilities called SearchGPT. All companies that provide search engines, including Google, the king of search engines, are clamoring to implement and integrate GenAI into their search engines.

Tech companies see this as a new opportunity, with people leaning towards GenAI-powered search engines more than ever. People are now looking for other ways to search, beyond just Google. It’s the only chance these tech companies have to break Google’s monopoly, and the verdict is yet to be out. 

So, what does this mean for online search engines?

We are at an interesting juncture in the development of online search engines. If you asked me last year, I would never have imagined that search engines would look different or that GenAI would penetrate the search engine landscape. But now that it’s here, I can’t think of anything better, and I can’t imagine using search engines any other way. It’s clearly easier and better than browsing through multiple articles, which can lead to information overload. For many years, Google was the only search engine that mattered to a lot of people, but that’s slowly starting to change, giving space to other competitors in the market—and that’s a good thing.

The GenAI feature in search engines is something we didn’t know we needed all along. Maybe this AI evolution and its penetration in the search engine landscape can be compared to the rise of the world wide web in the 1990s. I’m here for it—we all are.

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