AI and social search poised to disrupt Google’s dominance
Taylor Fielding, TFM Digital CEO, believes while Google is still King, the sands are shifting within search marketing
Our search behaviour is already changing and I believe the AI search battle is coming at a pivotal time in our history – in other words arriving at a good time to capitalise on change.
Expect increasingly larger chunks of marketing budgets to funnel into these new formats moving into 2025.
We’re into the business end of the year, with Black Friday and Christmas around the corner for marketers. And the confirmation of Perplexity AI’s entry in the ads market for Q4 is likely to shake things up as holiday campaigns start to launch.
Behaviours are already changing
Our behaviour when it comes to search is malleable. Especially for those less institutionalised in using Google as a verb. One study found 64% of Gen Z use TikTok as a search engine, with one in 10 preferring it over Google. This is a recent trend of new platforms offering more dedicated and useful results. We’ve seen Tiktok launch Search Ads for eCommerce brands recently and we envision it to expand to service-based brands in the very near future.
It shows that new entrants into the market can win over audiences, particularly young ones, quickly.
AI search offers a similar step change in how consumers will be able to begin online enquiries. We’ve already heard reports of $50+ CPMs with the initial launch of Perplexity AI ads focusing on 15 key advertising categories. With 230 million monthly queries, those numbers are not at Google’s level yet, but the shift in behaviour and fragmentation of Google’s dominance is definitely up for grabs.
While Google search remains king for now, the success of TikTok’s search feature, especially with younger audiences, provides evidence and guidance for how a new way to search can take off.
Familiarity with a twist
We have seen this search battle, to some degree before. Bing’s search engine relaunch has helped it gain over 10% of the search market and the experience Microsoft went through with its ad-supported features, could benefit SearchGPT’s launch, whenever its time may come (Microsoft owning 49% of parent company OpenAI). If this does take off beyond Beta and consumption is high, arguably we would see ad-supported features as Microsoft has the tech in place to support this.
It’s worth noting that in terms of AI-generated content for SEO purposes, if SearchGPT pulls from Google Indexed sources it most likely won’t work due to Google’s recent algorithm change to penalise sites that use AI-generated SEO content.
For SEO, the mission remains unmoved, that the best user experience and the quality content which delivers value, will win out.
Beyond the buzz
ChatGPT has shown that its monthly visits have continued to grow from 266 million in Dec 22, to 1.4 billion in Aug 23, and now 2.44 billion in July 24. If the company can replicate that success with SearchGPT, it will undoubtedly eat into Google’s dominant search market share.
Whether it goes down the same path as Perplexity with its ad formats remains a question, but I suspect OpenAI will benefit from being a fast follower, rather than first mover, learning from the market’s reaction to Perplexity AI.
In terms of AI-generated content for SEO purposes, if Search GPT pulls from Google Indexed sources it most likely won’t work due to Google’s recent Core Update which penalises sites that use AI-generated SEO content.
Iterate and grow
I expect that marketers will be trialling AI search, much like they did when Bing or TikTok search or Bing relaunched. And this will most likely come from Google search budgets.
The success of those trials will ultimately dictate the impact Search AI will have moving forward. For some brands, there will definitely be a larger case to make to funnel ad dollars into these platforms, we have seen Bing and Tiktok emerge as disruptors to the search market, AI search might be the final step in changing search behaviour norms.
Taylor Fielding is CEO at TFM Digital
I’d love to know the detail behind “ChatGPT has shown that its monthly visitors have continued to grow from 266 million in Dec 22, to 1.4 billion in Aug 23, and now 2.44 billion in July 24.”
The global population is estimated currently at 8.118 billion. That means that exactly 30% of the global population ‘visit’ ChatGPT. Statista pegs the 2024 number of internet users at 5.44 million (two-thirds). That means that 45% of the global internet users are monthly ChatGPT users.
Also, what does ChatGPT define as a “visit”. Is it the commonly used ‘two-second threshold’ to be considered a “visit”? Or maybe the ‘visitors’ data might be the ‘visitations’.
User ID not verified.
Apologies the links to the supporting articles were not uploaded initially due to an error, however, this has been rectified. Regarding the visits, they do not represent unique people. The article references that ChatGPT has over 200 Million active monthly users worldwide, representing 2.44 billion site visits on ChatGPT in July24.
User ID not verified.