Introduction
SearchGPT was unveiled on July 26, 2024 and opened to the general public on October 31 of the same year. Les SEO professionals (including ourselves) had the opportunity to test it. Here's our initial feedback and what we think of it forFuture of Search, and SEO in general.
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SearchGPT is revolutionizing the search world with a conversational mode and clickable sources, while pushing Google to adapt with its own AI tools. Efficient on informational queries, it remains limited for commercial and local searches..
An opportunity to watch for SEO, in particular thanks to traffic tracking and quality long-tail content.
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Why is the arrival of a new SEO player interesting?
The platform ChatGPT has a thermonuclear strike force: the daily use of its tool by millions of people, who sometimes even used it as a search engine. In fact, ChatGPT has nearly 200 million weekly users worldwide in October 2024. These users have developed search habits (in conversation mode) and could, in theory, easily switch to regular use of SearchGPT for their daily searches.
The other highlight of the new OpenAI product (the parent company of ChatGPT) is that they already crawled and scrapped the web when the tool was created (and afterwards to improve it day after day) to feed and train their AI. In addition, they have since signed collaboration agreements with Reddit (among others) to improve their AI and the content generated for users.
Here is what the Open AI press release on May 16, 2024 said when it was announced:”OpenAI will access Reddit's data API, which provides unique, structured, and real-time content from Reddit. OpenAI's AI tools will thus be able to better understand and highlight Reddit content, especially on recent topics.” Given the number of daily posts on the platform, it will be a real opportunity for OpenAI to improve their conversational tool and to capture the needs of users.
So far, what has been the impact of the use of generative AIs on Google's market shares?
According to a Article by SparkToro published in August 2024, The use of AI tools has, for the moment, not yet had a major impact on Google's use and market shares but that remains to be monitored closely. We are already seeing a strong increase in traffic from SearchGPT to websites. How do you know that? Easy, you just need to look at the “referral” traffic for your site via Google Analytics, as explained by Jean Sprimont in this LinkedIn post.
What are the specificities of SearchGPT as a search engine?
A conversational mode (like ChatGPT) but with quotations and an interactive interface in the search results: Overall, we work the same as ChatGPT except that here the results include clickable quotes/sources that lead directly to external sources. We also have a hover function to preview the pages, and a sidebar with additional results, which allow the user to delve deeper into the subject if necessary.
A search engine that uses Microsoft Bing as a base, but not only. We suspected it but we know it now, Search GPT is mainly based on the Bing search engine to offer relevant search results to users. It is therefore useful to think about how to optimize your SEO according to the guidelines proposed by Bing for SEO. A few points differ from Google, but we are generally on a similar optimization, so the fundamentals do not change.
We also know that SearchGPT is based on Google APIs (favicons, addresses on maps). via Maps), This makes it relevant for local queries and allows it to easily provide addresses, phone numbers and this type of information on establishments. But Open AI has also established partnerships with media groups. In France it is The newspaper Le Monde, which signed the first and only partnership to date. We have seen similar agreements such as with the News Corp group very present on English-speaking markets (owners of the Wall Street Journal in the US for example or the Sun and The Times in the United Kingdom) or In Italy with the GEDI group, so stay tuned. The objective of these agreements is to refine their search results but also to contribute to sending them traffic to the sites of their newspapers or magazines. In these cases, we see, a preponderance of these media in the search results related to news in these countries on SearchGPT. A win-win in short.
What are the key takeaways about SEO?
Visibility and traffic
ChatGPT Search highlights sources in a summary format, which can increase the visibility of sites and encourage users to visit source pages, but can also lead to an increase in the number of queries called “0 click searches”.
One Recent study by Rand Fishkin showed that 60% of searches end up without clicking on Google search results. In Europe, 22% of Internet users start a new search after their first request (the beginnings of the conversational search engine in short) and 37% stop there (potentially because they found the answer in the result snippets or in position 0). Nothing new under the sun but Google is becoming more and more of an answer engine, which Search GPT is already in short.. You will therefore have to get used to seeing more and more searches that do not lead to any click and integrate it into your marketing and content strategy.
But it will also be necessary to consider it for its tracking strategy. Because simply explaining a drop in traffic by this new paradigm within search engines is not enough. So tracking and data analysis will always (more) play a major part in marketers' web strategy, because without data, the strategy to adopt becomes more perilous.
At present, we are able to track the traffic that comes to our site from Search GPT (via “referral” traffic on Google Analytics, for example), but we do not yet know how to say which requests led to this traffic and adapt a strategy accordingly. The secret hope of all SEOs (including us) lies here in the arrival (next hope) ofan equivalent of the Google Search Console for Search GPT, to track the queries that brought results, the rankings in Search GPT and so on.
Importance of informative content
The first tests seem to show (unsurprisingly) that SearchGPT performs best on long and informational queries, which are best suited to the ChatGPT Search format. This can be an advantage for publishers who publish detailed and specialized content, and who will target “long tail” requests.
Saw theopulence of content on the web since the appearance of generative AIs for content creation, it is more and more difficult to stand out on search engines where content is sometimes standardized due to the mass use of AI. It is therefore necessary to focus on unique content, which pushes into detail (without over-optimizing either and taking care of the user experience) and that goes to the heart of the topics. This type of content is most likely to appear on super-specific queries because tools such as Search GPT or Google AI Overview (the Google equivalent) will have understood the relevance of your content for these searches.
The types of queries that SearchGPT is working best for at the moment:
SearchGPT works well for informational queries, such as travel organization (preparing a trip in stages for example based on results found on the web) or the summary, simplification or explanation of long and complex content existing on the Internet or requiring reading several contents. He seems to do that very well (unsurprisingly again). On the other hand, it seems to perform less well on product searches and seems less suitable for commercial queries, it also seems to offer a worse experience (especially in terms of the quality of responses) for users for local searches (we will come back to it).
Is SearchGPT a real competitor for Google?
Benefits of ChatGPT Search for informative queries
According to the SearchGPT tests performed by Aleyda Solis The tool ChatGPT's Search stands out for conversational and informative queries. It offers structured and summarized answers, particularly suited to complex questions or detailed queries, which allows it to differentiate itself from Google where you often have to perform a series of searches to reach your goals.
The tool seems to show limits for commercial queries
Also according to the analyses of Aleyda Solis, Google is more efficient than SearchGPT for commercial searches. Thanks to features such as product carousels and “knowledge panels”, Google makes it easier to buy directly and better meets the expectations of users who intend to buy a product, so for the time being, they still have an advantage in this area. SearchGPT is effective for product comparisons, which is an advantage and can take traffic shares from comparison sites. We also note the use which consists in comparing products or doing research on different products via ChatGPT or SearchGPT, but in making the final product purchase via Google.
A step behind schedule for local requests
On local queries, Google also seems to be staying ahead of the curve, at first glance. The display of a map and a more user-friendly visualization of the results (with stars for establishments in Google Business Profiles and on Google Maps), easier access to user comments and reviews. On most queries, we use paragraphs to describe each establishment in the case of SearchGPT, which can extend the search time.
But we know that it is bound to evolve, and by the time we finish writing these lines, we have already noticed a shift in the visualization allowed by SearchGPT on the local, with a visualization by map on some requests, reviews displayed directly on the map (from Google or other review platforms), with a really interesting visualization. Where the problem seems to hurt is, for the moment again, in terms of the quality of the information. We did tests (by pure chance) on typical requests:”Recommend us SEO agencies in Brussels”, but very general agencies have emerged, and none really specialized in natural referencing. But we will certainly see an evolution in the future. It is therefore important to consider for your strategies of Local SEO.
Improvements needed for the ChatGPT Search tool
For Competing with Google on commercial searches, Aleyda Solis points out that ChatGPT will need to integrate more data and develop purchase-oriented functionalities to better meet the commercial intentions of users. On this point, we note (in the United States in particular, and soon in Europe as well), that Google is one step ahead thanks to its direct integration into e-commerce requests.
For example, if you type:”Buy iPhone 15 Pro Max” on Google in the United States, you will directly see a lot of filters appear on the left and the top of your search results, which will allow you to personalize your search on criteria such as: second-hand product, the budget you have, the place where you want to buy it, where you want it, if you want it delivered or picked up on site, if you want it delivered or picked up on site, which delivery company, etc. Filters that were originally used on e-commerce sites directly but which will be increasingly used on e-commerce sites more integrated into the search results directly , always with the idea of keeping users in its ecosystem.
Is SearchGPT a danger for Google in the future?
Yes, but. A large number of users may in fact gradually turn away from Google for their searches and prefer the conversational mode of SearchGPT, which many have already integrated into their daily routine. But Google is already reacting with the implementation of the AI Overview (the late SGE, soon available in Europe) and there is no doubt that they work on the quality of their products over the long term to remain as qualitative as possible in terms of results. For those who don't know it yet, theGoogle's AI Overview is Google's integration of AI.
On a certain number of requests (informational but also commercial), Google offers users the ability to generate content using artificial intelligence to answer their questions. This result will go above the classic results and have a format similar to what is found on ChatGPT (and now SearchGPT). With the answer in summary, clickable sources for the generated content, content highlighted to deepen the information but also the proposed answers to click for the user to go further in their search (remember the 0 clicks searches mentioned at the beginning of this article). We are on a user experience similar to what a Search GPT can offer but with results that are sometimes less qualitative and clear than this one.
It will also be interesting to see How Open AI is gradually integrating paid advertising into its search platform, because it is on this point that they are likely to take market shares from Google (we noted since yesterday that Google has already started monetizing AI-generated content in Google AI Overviews by placing ads on it). This is clearly what will and is already motivating the Silicon Valley giant to improve its AI-based tools to improve the user experience as much as possible, but also to continue to place ads on as many queries as possible. Since the visibility potential for businesses is very important via SearchGPT and the budgets are not always scalable, the risk is especially there for Google in the short and medium term. So to be followed closely.
To summarize, even if it does not represent Not an immediate danger to Google in the short term, it remains a revolution in the world of Search and has already forced Google to adapt (even before the release of SearchGPT). It's just getting started and we can't wait to follow it! SEO is not dead my friends, far from it, it is only in perpetual evolution.
