SearchGPT will force Google, and SEO, to innovate

OpenAI’s entrance into the search space with SearchGPT was both a surprise and something expected.  And as generative AI continues to upend the world of search, the expectation is that Google’s decades-long hold on the space might change.

But search and search engine optimization (SEO) experts said Google won’t die. SearchGPT and Perplexity do represent a change for Google and for the search world in general: competition and the need to innovate. 

Scott Gabdullin, CEO and founder of SEO and marketing company Authority Factors told VentureBeat that generative AI began pushing Google to try new things like its controversial AI Overview feature and SearchGPT will force Google to try new things. 

“There’s competition now, and it’s always good for the industry when there is competition because that is where innovation takes place,” Gabdullin said. “The monopoly on search is shifting.”

For decades, Google has dominated search, with almost 82% of search traffic in 2024 so far. If companies want to have a presence in the search engine and be at the top of people’s minds when looking for information, they must play by its rules. Companies began finding ways to rank higher on Google and reach the top of the results page. This inevitably led to the rise of sectors like SEO and the gamification of internet search, which many believe is why finding information on Google is so bad these days.

Other AI-powered search engines, like Perplexity, have begun taking some traffic share from Google, though it hasn’t made a very large dent yet. Nevertheless, Google began rolling out AI features to its flagship product. It released AI Overview in May but immediately began attracting controversy, and site owners believed it was taking traffic away from them. Perplexity itself got into hot water for allegedly ignoring opt-outs from websites. 

Gabdullin believes Google must stay ahead of the curve and continue to develop features that outperform competitors. 

However, experts believe it takes the larger power of OpenAI to really push Google’s buttons. 

“OpenAI is very well-positioned currently. They have brand recognition, they’re integrating with Apple iOS, and they offer functions like conversational search and visual answers,” said Jim Yu, co-founder of SEO platform BrightEdge, in an interview with VentureBeat. 

He added that OpenAI has a “big opportunity to disrupt not only how people search, but also how brands and companies market their products online.

SEO experts said that it seems OpenAI is learning from the missteps of Google and Perplexity in launching SearchGPT. Yu said SearchGPT and other AI-powered search platforms also function differently from Google by encouraging follow-up questions, a feature he said Google removed from AI Overview. Additional questions help narrow down information for users. 

Gabdullin pointed out that, unlike Google’s AI Overview, OpenAI wants to let publishers know it’s directing search traffic to their websites. It’s also actively seeking partnerships with publishers to allow them to use their web crawlers and index these sites. 

To make things more difficult for Google, OpenAI is making deals with large companies like Apple to bring its products to a sizeable captive phone market. 

“If SearchGPT starts to complete any Siri request, imagine the number of new potential users who will be introduced to search results without ads,” said Christina Ward, CEO of Yext. 

Despite this, Google won’t give up search market share that easily. 

“Going up against a behemoth like Google is no easy feat,” Yu said. “A newer AI-first engine like Perplexity likely has more to lose at this juncture, but this could also be seen as the first step to SearchGPT becoming a meaningful threat to Google.”

SEO gets better

Google’s search platform is not the only one that needs to innovate. Gabdullin believes SearchGPT will make brands diversify how they reach customers, and that includes not relying on SEO too much. 

“SEOs are now realizing that it’s not enough just to be an SEO; you have to be a marketer,” Gabdullin said.

Figuring out the best SEO keywords to dominate Google search results became a bit of a game, but Gabdullin said AI-based platforms like SearchGPT or Perplexity index data from websites and do calculations fast. This lets SearchGPT focus on new factors like a site’s quality and rank that higher. 

“Gaming starts to become more difficult now that the computation is so much more powerful,” he said. 

This has forced SEO companies to use AI tools like Ahrefs or Semrush, which use AI models to predict search and keyword rankings.