AI-powered search engines are changing how we find information online.  It’s no longer some toys for geeks. 

Gartner predicts AI search will capture 25% of the traditional search market by the end of 2025.

What is happening now is the rapid development of AI search engines

  • OpenAI recently launched an AI search engine called SearchGPT (with the cooperation of Bing!)
  • Google is expanding AI-generated summaries to over 100 countries making it the biggest AI search engine.

Plus, just a few days ago, there was news that Meta (Facebook owner) is working on their search engine. 

How AI Search is Different

What makes AI search engines different from regular search engines? It comes down to how they handle your searches.

Instead of typing keywords, you can now ask questions in everyday language, just like you’re talking to someone. This makes finding what you need much easier and more natural.

For over 20 years, Google (and any other search engine, such as Bing) had significant limitations. Users had to use simple keywords instead of natural language. 

Now, AI search engines (now, with AI Overviews, we can treat Google as an AI search engine)  allow for natural language queries,  you can ask them some questions the same way you talk to a friend. 

Here are some examples from popular AI search engines: 

SearchGPT: 

Perplexity:

Google: 

Google’s Response

Google is changing how search works by adding AI features to keep up with new AI search engines:

  • They’re rolling out an ‘AI Mode’ that lets you chat with Google instead of just typing keywords.
  • They’ve also added AI summaries at the top of search results to help you understand topics quickly. With their new Gemini 2.0 system, Google is making their AI tools smarter at understanding what users really want, which means SEO will need to adapt. These changes help Google compete with other search engines like Microsoft’s Bing and other AI Search Engines, such as SearchGTP, Perplexity and Claude.

According to my research these AI summaries now appear for about 20% of conversational queries (as of November, 2024), up from just 2% initially. That’s 10x increase!  This clearly shows Google’s direction to secure its position as the biggest AI Search engine.

    In my observations, many SEOs, marketers don’t treat Google as an AI search engine, focusing on LLMs that have (at least currently!) much lower potential of generating website visits, bringing leads and revenue.

    The examples below clearly shows that Google can act in a similar way to ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity.

    Below I show you a couple of examples: 

    Will AI Search Replace Traditional Search?

    Will AI Search take over Google completely? We don’t know yet, but the way people search online is changing.

    Some users might choose AI tools for specific questions, which means search traffic will likely spread across different platforms instead of staying on one search engine.

    And, I’m almost sure that Google will be a part of this evolution – Google will be fighting for shares in AI Search market & for satisfying their users who will (likely) expect to use conversational queries. 

    Considering Google will be able to answer their conversational queries, chatGPT is losing its competitive advantage, making Google a dominant search engine both for “traditional” search and AI Search.

    In conclusion, we’re entering a new era where natural language and user intent are becoming more important than traditional keywords. 

    The biggest challenges for AI search engines. 

    I believe the biggest challenge for AI search engines is their ability to rely on trustworthy sources.

    In July, for internal purposes, I checked what percentage of publishers and newspapers block ChatGPT bots.

    The results were astonishing: 87% of the top 100 newspapers were blocking ChatGPT.

    My analysis showed that publishers commonly block other AI search engines as well, including Perplexity and Claude.

    I will rerun the analysis in the upcoming months, once ChatGPT search becomes more popular.

    However, after manually checking some brands in November 2024, they still seem to be blocking GPT bots.

    Here’s an example from The Washington Post:

    This example comes from The New York Times: 

    Of course, AI search engines can bypass these limitations in various ways: 

    • Since August, OpenAI allows publishers to decide if they don’t want their content to train ChatGPT models while still appearing in ChatGPT Search. They can block ChatGPT-User/GPTBot but allow OAI-SearchBot. 
    • OpenAI and other AI search engines also make deals with publishers
    • Additionally, SearchAI and other AI search engines can purchase access to common databases.

    However, this requires additional work on both OpenAI and publishers’ side. 

    When I search for coming from news from New York Times, I get a result from chatGPT search, but.. it presents no sources, which may indicate chatGPT really have no data from The New York Times, except for article titles and summaries (that potentially could be taken from some common databases).

    On the other side, it gives Google, as the leading AI search engine, a competitive advantage. Google doesn’t need to care about blocks from major publishers, as Google is a huge market for them.  

    Impact on users & marketers

    As I mentioned, Gartner predicts AI search will capture 25% of the traditional search market by the end of 2025. As AI search evolves, we can expect:

    1. More natural language processing in search engines
    2. Increased use of voice search
    3. AI-organized search results
    4. Full integration of conversational AI in major search engines (Bing, Google) 

    Anyone involved in SEO or digital marketing will need to adapt to these changes to stay relevant in this rapidly evolving landscape.

    This shift will significantly change SEO practices:

    1. Keyword research will focus more on user intent and customer journey
    2. SEO professionals will need to learn how to optimize for these new AI search engines.

    Wrapping up & words of caution 

    We need to be cautious about AI-generated search results and demand high-quality information. 

    In June 2023, I wrote an article called “7 Deadly Sins of AI Overviews,” where I pointed out some crucial problems with Google’s AI summaries. 

    Now, in October 2024, I’ve taken another look to see how these AI Overviews affect “Your Money Your Life” (YMYL) queries. 

    These are searches where accurate and trustworthy information is especially important because they can impact people’s health or finances.

    Unfortunately, many of the problems I mentioned in my original article are still present, including outdated Information and poor selection of choices. 

    As users, we should ask for better quality from AI search engines. One of the possible ways we can do this is by: 

    • Encouraging fact-checking, especially for crucial queries related to money or life. 
    • Advocating for reliable sources: AI should prioritize trustworthy sources. 

    We can’t stop AI Search, but we can advocate for higher-quality results. 

    Also, equally important, we need to remember that Google is the biggest AI search engine, considering its market share, and infrastructure.

    ZipTie wants to be a part of this revolution. 

    ZipTie can track AI Overviews with (probably) the highest accuracy on the market.  It gives clear, actionable information for which queries AI Overviews appear

    Soon, you can expect some cool chances in our product, so stay tuned!