Virtual agents and AI chatbots will eat into search engine volume over the next two years, reducing search engine volume by 25%, according to a report released Monday by technology research and advisory firm Gartner.
The institute predicted that pressure from competing technologies would lead search engines to place a new emphasis on quality and reliability. Gartner says that the usefulness and quality of content remains paramount to success in organic search results, so to offset the sheer volume of material generated by AI, search engine algorithms are focusing on the quality of content. He explained that it was necessary to evaluate the
Content creators will need to place greater emphasis on watermarks and other methods used to authenticate high-value content, a trend driven by government regulators around the world that will increase the likelihood that search engines will It went on to say that it would impact how such content is displayed.
“Businesses will need to focus on creating unique content that is useful to their customers and prospects,” Gartner vice president analyst Alan Antin said in a statement.
“Content should continue to demonstrate the factors that measure search quality, such as expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness,” he added.
Rethinking marketing channels
Antin explained that organic and paid search are important channels for technology marketers looking to achieve awareness and demand generation goals. “Generative AI solutions are becoming alternative response engines that replace user queries that were previously performed in traditional search engines,” he said.
“As Gen AI becomes more integrated into every aspect of the enterprise, companies will need to rethink their marketing channel strategies,” he added.
The decline in search volume predicted by Gartner will have a major impact on marketers.
“If this prediction turns out to be accurate, it is important to remember that this is just a prediction and not a guarantee, but businesses will need to reevaluate which platforms and channels to invest in and how much.” “There will be,” said editor-in-chief Danny Goodwin. He is a member of Search Engine Land, a marketing and advertising technology publication.
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“For a long time, organic search and paid search, Google, was a pretty reliable source of traffic,” he told E-Commerce Times. “Google has delivered search users who are more likely to convert, make a purchase, or complete some task on your site.”
As AI answer engines become part of search, marketers will need to optimize their strategies beyond the web and Google. “That might mean learning optimization methods that affect large language models like ChatGPT,” Goodwin surmised. “That might mean investing in videos or his SEO for TikTok or YouTube.”
“For retail businesses, Amazon SEO can become even more important,” he continued. This also means optimizing for social media platforms like LinkedIn and Meta. ”
“Essentially, businesses need to assess where their target audience is and optimize everything to ensure that their target audience is present and found everywhere at the same time,” he added.
Diverse approaches required
Greg Stirling, co-founder of news, commentary and analysis website Near Media, agreed that the drop in transaction volumes will impact online marketing strategies. “Companies will be forced to act differently and diversify their channels further, but they should do so anyway,” he told E-Commerce Times.
He added that he believes Gartner's numbers are “forceful, but the assumptions behind them are directionally accurate.”
Joe Kalasin, founder and chief marketing officer of Kalasin PPC, a Lapeer, Michigan-based marketing agency specializing in Google ads, said brands are already rethinking their strategies.
“This is an issue that has been known for some time and companies have responded by increasing investment in alternative platforms,” he told E-Commerce Times. “E-commerce brands are investing heavily in TikTok, which has become the de facto search engine, especially among younger consumers. Searches are also increasingly adding “Reddit” to the end of queries. , Reddit has become a more valuable channel for brands. “
To adapt to the changing search landscape, marketers may pivot to a diverse approach and allocate resources to alternative platforms such as social media, content marketing and collaboration with influencers, says Smart, a San Jose, Calif., company. added Mark N. Vena, President and Principal Analyst, Tech Research. .
“Focusing on user experience may become a top priority, driving investment in website optimization and personalized content,” he told E-Commerce Times.
“A good experience for users is very important,” Antin added. “If you don't provide a great experience, you're going to lose users,” he told his E-Commerce Times.
Fighting the flood of AI content
Vena also speculated that there could be a new focus on data-driven decision-making to effectively target audiences across different channels. “This shift could usher in a more holistic and nuanced marketing approach that leverages a combination of digital and traditional channels to navigate the evolving landscape and maintain brand visibility and engagement. There is,” he said.
He added that as volume declines, search engines will likely increase their efforts to identify quality content on the web. “To address this challenge, they may enhance their algorithms to better distinguish between genuine, high-quality content and AI-generated spam,” he explained.
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“Working with AI researchers and investing in cutting-edge technology can help search engines stay ahead of the curve and maintain the integrity of search results even as AI-generated content proliferates.” he said.
“Google will say its algorithms can already detect low-quality content, whether it's human-generated or AI-generated,” Sterling quipped. “In reality, it's going to be more complex. You'll need to use more or different signals to catch cynically produced AI content.”
“A lot of people have been complaining about the quality of Google search lately,” Goodwin acknowledged. “However, history has shown us that when Google faces an onslaught of criticism about its search quality, it tends to respond with major algorithm updates, including: After months of complaints about ranked content farms, Google launched an algorithm update called Panda specifically for that issue.”
Fight AI with AI
One way search engines can improve results and perhaps reduce user flight is by cracking down on “parasitic SEO,” says Aaron Masterson, president of ABM Initiatives, a home furnishings retailer in Austin, Texas. he claimed. Parasite SEO content is a strategy where someone creates content on established and authoritative websites in order to piggyback on their reputation and increase the ranking of their own website.
“If we stop parasitic SEO, blogs and niche sites that work hard to provide great content will be able to rank properly on the first page of search results,” he said. told the Commerce Times.
But the main way for search agencies to compete with AI competitors will be to adopt AI themselves, argued Will Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute think tank in Washington, D.C.
“We experienced that with Bing,” he told E-Commerce Times. “Over time, Google will incorporate its AI products into its main search tools. It's already showing up in Google's answer panels. It's a case of if you can't beat them, join them. .”
“If a certain number of searches that people are doing all the time are best answered by a chatbot rather than a link to content elsewhere, then don’t use a chatbot tool to answer those questions. There is no reason,” he added.
“People often Google things that don't fit into a ranked list of websites. They just need an answer to something,” he continued. “This somewhat obscures the losses in traditional search, as users will be querying traditional search and AI search at the same time or in parallel.”
