Search GenAI has landed: What’s top of mind for brands?
Matthieu Jacomin
VP Revenue APAC - Botify I Managing Partner - FastTrack | Advisor | Investor
New Gen AI-powered players continue to enter the search arena, providing another avenue for brand discoverability and business growth.
Whilst Gen AI has been around for some time, the arrival of AI Overviews (OAI-Search Bot), Perplexity, Microsoft Pilot, Google Gemini and Arc Search is a more recent event, and brings with it implications for ecommerce brands, marketers and SEO practitioners.
Concerns, Insights & Opportunities
This was the topic of a recent Network & Fireside chat event, organised by my Singapore team. The event brought together ecommerce customers, prospects and marketing peers to discuss Gen AI, how brands are using it, and the emerging opportunities for greater brand visibility and customer acquisition
The questions, concerns and discussion points during the evening, which I cover later in this article, are the same as those I have been hearing from my colleagues and peers in Australia.
Gen AI in the Search Arena - What We Know
Within the search ecosystem consumers are increasingly choosing the option of a direct relationship with search and answer bots like Perplexity - which recently announced it had 10 million monthly users - Microsoft Pilot, Google Gemini and Arc Search.?
These platforms offer a more conversational and personalized experience, with tailored and interactive responses. They are faster and more efficient, understand context and natural language and can accommodate longer search queries. They allow for seamless follow-up questions without the need for a new search query, and maintain context across multiple interactions.??
They can also work with search engines to provide quick access to real-time, current information and knowledge - rather than the old, out of date information that ChatGPT has previously been blasted for - and deliver summarized results with in-line source attribution, and multimedia integration.
These next generation of search and answer bots do claim to offer better Publisher Controls and Content Management, making it easier to opt in or out. But News Corp has a few things to say about these claims. The parent company of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal filed a lawsuit against Perplexity this week regarding a “massive amount of illegal copying” of copyrighted work. And there have been a number of claims from other publications that the platform continuously disregards their robots.txt files and includes enough of their content in answers that users have no need to click through to the original source.??
For ecommerce brands there are different factors that make business sense to opt in. Search Engine Journal’s article [Google AIO Is Ranking More Niche Specific Sites] highlighted that Google AI Overviews can be asked to show product comparisons and visuals, delivering consumers with a quick and easy way to compare product prices, features and specifications and make purchase decisions.?
It goes without saying that, in order to thrive in this evolving search landscape, brands must develop adaptive strategies that prioritize speed, depth of response, accuracy and relevancy - AND - maybe consider allowing these newest search bots to crawl and learn from their site.?
By opting in, brands will have another touchpoint in the consumer journey of search through to purchase. If they opt out, it will be harder for their site, products or content to feature or rank highly in the platforms.?
Positioning Your eCommerce Brand for The Next Generation of Search?
Three specific questions about GenAI search platforms were raised by the Singapore audience at my teams recent event:-
The general feedback from our guest speakers Aaron Ting (Castlery) and Zine Bitat (L'Oréal), Lucas Oriot (Botify), and from other SEO experts like Neil Patel, is that brands should prepare in the same way they did for AI Overviews, SERPs and EEAT.?
As one of the guest speakers commented:?
“You already “play the game” for Google, and their rules change regularly for SEO.? You also adjust your strategy for different markets.? This is no different”.
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2. Which insights and data should I use to inform my strategies?
Continue to monitor your customer data and analytics, customer intent, behaviour and touchpoints. It's important to monitor and discuss these with your tech partners, solution providers and agencies to understand what you are seeing.
Customers go through more touch points now before they purchase or commit. They research across multiple platforms, including social media. They check blogger and influencer accounts, and review sites. They may look at your products, or your brand in greater detail across policies like sustainability or returns policies, before they commit to purchase.??
And they either have, or will soon have, a PA-friendly bot option for product and price comparison, and easier decision-making with AI Overviews.?
What we know -
98% of people used search engines
61% use search engines,?
30% of people use AI Chatbots
17% use Social Media (source NP Digital)
What is key is that brands need to make sure they show up wherever their customers may be, including these new search platforms, and that their websites, strategic pages and products are easily found by search and answer engines and - therefore - consumers.??
3. What can we do to make changes to our site and content, at the scale and speed needed?
Scale and speed could well be an issue for some brands that want to prioritise readying their site for these next generation platforms, and there are SEO solutions on the market that may be able to assist you with your velocity and scale issue, but I can only confidently comment on (& champion) the capabilities of Botify. I will discuss some of these game-changing capabilities in a future article - but - send me a message if you want to know more now.??
In the meantime, it was great to hear from a satisfied Botify customer at the Singapore event, who commented - without prompting:
“Botify’s PageWorkers has helped us scale really quickly, we were able to apply implementations across thousands of pages and within just a few days, rather than 6-12 months.? So we can respond quickly when we spot a change in behaviour or an opportunity for growth”.
It may seem daunting to those looking into the vortex of this next generation of search and answer engines - but you managed to make the necessary changes for all those Google updates, and for SERPs and EEAT, so this is achievable too.??
If you haven’t begun preparing …start today!?