How AI chatbots will disrupt Search Engine Marketing (part 1)
The “tyranny of the search box” might be coming to an end with the launch of the new ChatGPT version in Bing and Google’s reaction with Bard… but how will it impact Search Engine Marketing?
Let’s be clear, Search as we know it today is not going anywhere. AI chatbots will not replace but enrich the current search experience — with different levels of cannibalizations in search marketing depending on the nature of the query.
But online companies with a high level of SEM&SEO dependency will face some interesting challenges: how much of their current organic and paid traffic will evaporate? How much will be replaced by chatbot referrals? How many of their search attributed transactions will potentially be shifting into the native chatbot ecosystem?
This graphic shows how the Chatbot integration into the traditional search engine will impact SEM&SEO, starting with an obvious drop of organic traffic on queries where the chatbot provides a direct answer to the user’s need.
Chatbot answers are likely to integrate links that provide both the source of the content and allows reading further details on the topic. How many of them will be unpaid links vs Text Ads? We will only learn with the gradual roll out of these chatbots, but you can bet that Google will do its utmost to try to monetize chatbot sponsored links to the same level than Search, while Microsoft will jump on the opportunity to grab a slice of its rival golden goose.
Finally, Conversational Commerce hype might finally turn into real business once customers get comfortable interacting with bots and Search Giants build transactional capabilities into these platforms to keep users engaged in their ecosystem
In the next part of this piece, I will elaborate which factors will impact this new Search paradigm.