Being a first-mover to SEO had massive benefits as the incumbents tend to stay incumbents, mainly caused by strong backlink profiles, robust user signals, and brand familiarity.
For now, ChatGPT uses Bing search results to ground and weigh answers, which means sites with strong visibility on Bing also have a high chance of being very visible in CGS.
However, there is a chance that using Search for RAG (grounding) is just a jumping-off point until AI Search platforms have gathered enough of their data (queries and user behavior).
Early in this transition period, not much changes. Content that ranks well in traditional search engines, specifically Bing, gets a higher weighting in CGS, which means traditional SEO has a big impact on visibility in AI Search.
AI Chatbot referral traffic is skyrocketing, and ChatGPT’s new search capability could accelerate that growth even more.
Outgoing referral traffic from chatgpt.com increased massively in August and September, according to Similarweb.
Image Credit: Kevin Indig
Noticeable call-outs:
YouTube’s referral traffic increased from .17% in July to 3.9% in September.
Bing grew from 0% in April to 1.8% in September.
Amazon grew from 0% in July to 1.1% in September.
If referral traffic keeps growing at the same rate, it will get interesting in the next six to 12 months. It’s not just the volume but also the quality of traffic.
People use longer and more complex questions when they engage with AI answers, according to Sundar Pichai. Length is a way to be more specific.
Longer questions allow search engines, LLMs, and marketers to better understand and serve users what they want.
Based on conversations and observations, referral traffic from AI chatbots isn’t consistently higher than search traffic in every case, but in most.
Looking Forward
I’m leaving you with two interesting questions:
1. Is it a coincidence that ChatGPT Search came out three days after Apple Intelligence launched publicly?
Apple launched Apple Intelligence, which uses ChatGPT in certain situations:
Apple is integrating ChatGPT access into experiences within iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, allowing users to access its expertise — as well as its image- and document-understanding capabilities — without needing to jump between tools. Siri can tap into ChatGPT’s expertise when helpful.
Users are asked before any questions are sent to ChatGPT, along with any documents or photos, and Siri then presents the answer directly.
Additionally, ChatGPT will be available in Apple’s systemwide Writing Tools, which help users generate content for anything they are writing about. With Compose, users can also access ChatGPT image tools to generate images in a wide variety of styles to complement what they are writing.
We also know how valuable Google’s exclusive search deal with Apple is.
From Monopoly:
Apple’s impact on Google Search is massive. The court documents reveal that 28% of Google searches (US) come from Safari and make up 56% of search volume. Consider that Apple sees 10 billion searches per week across all of its devices, with 8 billion happening on Safari and 2 billion from Siri and Spotlight.
“Google receives only 7.6% of all queries on Apple devices through user-downloaded Chrome” and “10% of its searches on Apple devices through the Google Search App (GSA).” Google would take a big hit without the exclusive agreement with Apple.
Since Search is part of ChatGPT, any API request could trigger the new Search feature.
As a result, ChatGPT has a direct line to searches and actions on Apple devices whenever Apple Intelligence uses ChatGPT. Is that integration the new version of Google’s deal with Apple?
I speculated that OpenAI could work on a browser in Search GPT:
If the main benefit or Search GPT for OpenAI is a revenue stream and access to more user data, the next logical step for OpenAI is to build a (AI-powered) browser.
Browser data is incredibly valuable for understanding user behavior, personalization and LLM training. Best of all, it’s app-agnostic, so OpenAI could learn from users even when they use Perplexity or Google.
We’ve seen the power of browser data in the Google lawsuit, where it turned out Google relied on Chrome data all along for ranking. The only layer that’s more powerful is the operating system and device layer.
OpenAI seems to be very aware of the importance of being the default when we look at how hard it pushes its Chrome extension, which changes the default browser search engine to ChatGPT.
hey i’m really sorry to keep hyping our own product but you really should get chatgpt plus and install the chrome extension for search
i am cheerfully the first to admit when we ship something that isn’t very good, but this time it’s…really good
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 1, 2024
2. As it’s likely that more users don’t browse the web but get answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc. directly, will the open web become a place primarily for bots instead of humans? And how would that change the purpose and look of websites?
1 Introducing ChatGPT search
2 Introducing Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that puts powerful generative models at the core of iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal