AI changes the Internet game

In just a few months, AI has begun to change the way people search for information online in ways that have marketers worried.

Instead of using traditional search engines like Google and Bing, users are now greeted at the top of search results with AI-generated topic summaries. A growing number of users are now even turning directly to large language models like ChatGPT to answer everyday questions or ask for shopping guidance.

Change to survive

According to the WSJ , both of these developments have begun to eat away at clicks and website traffic, which marketers have painstakingly built by spending millions of dollars on search engine optimization, or SEO.

More importantly, the emergence of AI has also created a new wave of emerging startups, specializing in new acronyms in the advertising industry. Typical of these are the fields of generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO) and especially artificial intelligence optimization (AIO).

According to Ellen Mamedov, global director of search optimization for email software platform Intuit Mailchimp, the company has seen a steady decline in web traffic since AI-powered search engines allowed users to gather information about companies and their products without visiting their websites.

According to OpenAI, ChatGPT now processes more than one billion searches per week. PHOTO: Zuma Press.

To cope with this shift, Mamedov said Mailchimp has had to start updating its sites to better serve crawlers, a term used to describe bots that visit websites to gather data to inform answers on AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

Compared to traditional search engines, technical factors like page load speed and the scripts used to track user activity are more important to crawlers and AI-based search, Mailchimp research found.

Crawlers are designed to absorb and process information as quickly as possible, which is why they favor faster-loading websites that are optimized for machines rather than human readers, Mamedov says.

Mailchimp's director even predicted that websites will soon only serve as data sources for AI platforms, instead of being destinations for users like before.

The decline of traditional tools

According to new research from Adobe, AI-powered search has become an important traffic channel for retailers.

Specifically, the report analyzed “more than 1,000 billion visits to US retail websites” through the platform, and conducted a survey with “more than 5,000 US respondents” to better understand how users use AI.

The survey results indicate that visits from AI search have skyrocketed 1,300% during the 2024 holiday season compared to 2023. These are significant growth numbers and somewhat expected, especially when the demand for searching through AI chatbots is still in its infancy.

What’s more interesting is the engagement metrics. Users guided by AI, compared to regular search sources on Google or Bing, tend to stay on the site 8% longer, browse other pages 12% more, and are 23% less likely to “bounce.”

The Verge suggests this proves AI tools may be directing users to more relevant websites than traditional search.

According to Joy Howard, marketing director at Back Market, a refurbished electronics marketplace, searches through large language models (LLMs) have not driven sales, and they account for just 0.2% of traffic to sites.

Google AI Overview is strong in results leading to commercial sites. Photo: Search Engine Land.

However, Howard stressed that such traffic was already 470 times higher than in the summer of 2024, and was expected to continue to increase.

This has led Back Market to adjust its SEO efforts accordingly, with a stronger focus on updating individual product pages, driven by the tendency of some consumers to ask chatbots to help them identify products that match their needs and preferences.

Users then use search engines to locate products before purchasing, Howard said. Back Market also began using a more conversational tone in its product descriptions.

The reason comes from the site's search research team's discovery that LLMs like ChatGPT prefer natural, conversational language over detailed descriptions, which are considered to work best in traditional search engines.

“SEO teams were taken aback. Traffic, rankings, average position, click-through rate… none of those metrics mattered going forward,” said Nikhil Lai, principal performance marketing analyst at Forrester.

Source: https://znews.vn/ai-thay-doi-cuoc-choi-internet-post1552271.html