One of the big changes in my recent internet behaviour: I use Google far less.
Instead:
- I prompt ChatGPT
- ChatGPT searches Bing
- And I get a summary with source links
ChatGPT search was first only available for paid accounts, but it works in free accounts now, too.
And it is a huge time saver.
No more digging through lists of results and viewing crappy websites riddled with ads. Just ask the question and get the answer.
And it really provides pretty good answers, though I do check the source pages if the answer matters.
Usage statistics are hard to come by, but if AI search becomes the new way of searching, it raises a number of questions.
How will it impact education marketers?
Perhaps not as much as you might fear.
It’s now a language model using the search engine on behalf of a user. If your SEO is in order, the language model will still find out about you and report about what you have to offer.
People will see far fewer search ads, though. And if a lot of your content is aimed at the discovery phase, it may be pulled off your website and into ChatGPT, meaning that it nets you less attention.
How will it impact Google?
AI search is potentially disastrous for Google. It undercuts Google’s business model.
If language models serve answers, people will see and click far fewer ads.
In 2023, advertising constituted 77% of Alphabet. Co.’s revenue and was likely responsible for a far larger proportion of its profits.
Is it here to stay?
AI Search might not be here to stay, at least not as a free service. It’s resource intensive. ChatGPT will conduct something like 10-20 searches and synthesise the results. Doing this takes far more energy than a simple search query on Google or Bing.
There is no business model to make money out of it yet, except perhaps putting it behind a subscription fee – which would greatly limit usage.
Investment money is flowing to OpenAI right now, but that will not last forever.
So, all in all, it looks like 2025 is going to be an interesting year again for us, marketers.
All the best!
