AI Search apocalypse is coming! Are you ready?

The new search model is going to hit your traffic

I am not the one who tends to scare folks into an argument. But something transformational is brewing up in the Search world.

Unprecedented progress in AI algorithms have opened new avenues in the search arena, causing major turmoil for all players. Search is moving quickly to an answers-based model and players old and new are jumping in, to seize the opportunity.

Whichever business you are in, at least 25-30 percent of your traffic is either paid or organic search. Will that be the case in future?

Imagine you are looking for best trench coats for London weather. If you are Ted Baker, today you show up as one blue link or sponsored link and hopefully convert a tiny fraction of that traffic into $$$.

Compare the same search from Google (on the left) and Perplexity (on the right)

As Ted Baker, you will be worried. Your visibility on world's largest intent driven platform goes to zero. Burberry will be happy to see the results.

Question is - Will you stay visible in the future? When search results will be driven by LLMs + RAG on tools like ChatGPT 4-o, you don't know which weights and biases are impacting your brand visibility in a world where you get back a blob of text as one answer.

Side note: If you are interested - try Google's AI search overview here

The Intent - Content Framework

If you break information discovery (search) down to first principles, it is nothing but matching intent to the content offered.

For search engines, this exchange looks as shown below - A query is put in by the user and the magic middle returns the most relevant links back.

As it turns out, this little interchange of information in the middle enables a multi-billion dollar industry with 谷歌 supremely at the forefront of what we today call as the 10 blue link economy. Other search engines Bing / Baidu / Yandex have their own niche and trying to penetrate further into the market. New players like ChatGPT, Perplexity and more are trying to get in.

And then of course there are multiple businesses running on top of this magic middle - you being one of them.

A paradigm shift !

At the moment, this model works well for most parties (with the exception of CAC extracted from brands) but it is not without its limitations. Although Google / Baidu / Bing have invested millions, if not billions, into providing more relevant information above the fold, the 10 blue links model is still fraught with lack of understanding of user intent combined with the work user has to do to get to the information needed.

In nutshell the platforms says - We are give you links - You figure out the answer yourself!

Here is an another example of a query asked of Google (on Left) and Perplexity (on Right) about who won the previous T20 world cup

Do you see the difference? Google is stuck with the old way - one would expect more from 谷歌 . Perplexity seems to have got the intent right and is spot on, in providing the answer.

All search engines will move to this new paradigm where they assess the intent better and provide answers while also protecting their business model of ad monetisation.

AI pushes the envelope

With rapid innovation in LLM and advent of RAG architecture, the magic middle is changing - the secret sauce of connecting the user to the information is becoming even more sharper and the search as we know it will be turned on its head.

On the spectrum of links and answers, the new Search model will probably be at the right of center.

What you as a brand can do

As this model evolves from links to answers, there is a definite threat of your traffic dropping significantly. Hence the time to act is now. As a brand, you need to start thinking now about how this model will impact your traffic and how you can ensure continued traffic.

There are three critical areas to take action on:

1. User intent becomes even more critical - Over invest in understanding your users and their intent - Not what they say but what they need/think/do. Start with optimising for the important queries and later scale using AI for all your content.
2. Understanding the New Magic Middle - This won't be easy - There is lot of innovation still to be done in this space. More players will come but 谷歌 will remain dominant. Start working with your agencies and Google to understand what will replace PageRank. How you can ensure you enable everything from your end to be part of the new algorithm.
3. Experiment with new ad formats - Google / Baidu / Bing / Perplexity / <New Players> - Everyone will launch new ad formats , new ways to access your information , new creative formats. Push your agencies to experiment and be on top of upcoming formats.
4. Looking for new avenues of visibility - In this game, not everyone will win. So you must have other avenues to get traffic to your website or products.

In Conclusion

• Search is going to change as we know it - While AI is deeply embedded today in most algorithms, the next wave is focusing on intent and summarisation to one answer.
• Threat to you - Your search traffic can quickly go to 0 if you don't act.
• Lot of innovation is yet to come - New formats / New algorithms will be continuously tested by the major players and new players will emerge. Be on top of them and experiment
• Above all - Embrace the New AI Search paradigm by deploying AI on your end

The future is exciting!! As always, thank you for reading.

-YS