Search Strategies: More And More Trading Traditional For AI

Like Kleenex and tissue paper, Band-Aid and sticky bandages, and Trampoline and, well, whatever a generic description of a trampoline is, Google’s name is all but synonymous with the online search, with a name that’s replaced the verb-tense of the daily function.

Which makes AI’s meteoric rise in that realm all the more remarkable.

A September survey by The Information found that more than three-quarters (77%) of its readers had used genAI tools in place of Google and other traditional search engines, showing more overall optimism about the technology.

This, as The Neuron points out, checks out considering the tech-savvy audience that The Information has cultivated. And in comparing Google to ChatGPT and Perplexity based on users and visits, it’s more than just search.

“The [number] of people who use Perplexity is a drop in the bucket compared to those who use ChatGPT,” writes The Neuron’s Grant Harvey of ChatGPT’s 3 billion monthly visits. “Information retrieval is one of the key drivers of those visits. Google still gets 131B visits per month, so even if every one of those 3B+ GPT visits was replacing a Google search, AI search engines have a long way to go to replace Google.”

Still, the trend is worth paying attention to. I’ve definitely found myself putting ChatGPT through its search paces and defaulting to Google less and less. So have more than half (55%) of those surveyed by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, who said “my audience is more SEOs and search marketers, who likely use Google and traditional search a ton.”

What do you think? Are you satisfied with AI for search purposes? And which AI tool do you prefer to Google with?

Not "Google with" — I meant search with.

That might be the tougher habit to break.