Companies reliant on traffic from search will need to get creative to avoid being left in the dust, with email and social media becoming even more crucial in driving sales. 

Let me explain...

Artificial intelligence models have been progressing at a rate that would make even the Flash's head spin. 

Some changes have left people in a right pickle. Teachers are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to stop students from using chatbots to do their homework. Artists are feeling the heat as image-creating AIs begin to steal their paid work. And some people are trying to replace journalists with large language models. 

But hold onto your hats, bigger changes are coming.

Google, Microsoft, and Baidu, who run the three most popular search engines in the world, have announced that their services will be supercharged with AI chatbots. Instead of getting a boring old list of websites when you type in a simple query, users can now ask detailed and specific questions and get a customised response.

It may sound like a small change, but the implications could be massive, including wrecking ecommerce retailers reliant on search traffic and shaking up the online advertising industry.

The potential benefits of having an AI chatbot answering your search queries could be gigantic. 

Need to know how to fix a flat bike tyre? No sweat. Want the instructions to be written like a Shakespearean sonnet? Easy-peasy. You can even ask the AI to plan a family vacation or write a job application letter. The answer doesn’t have to be on the internet, but the AI will still whip up an appropriate response.

Quick and easy visits that start and end at a search engine could be a godsend for many, but this set-up is even better news for the tech firms running the show. 

The Google and Baidu search engines, as well as Microsoft’s Bing, will be able to keep users engaged on their own platform, where they can be shown advertisements and monetised, reducing the amount they pass people on to other websites.

Search engines like Google crawl the web, following links from page to page and building up a vast database of information about them. This information is used to tailor results and bring the most relevant information to the person searching.

When people leave the search engine to visit one of those suggested sites, that site receives receives in-market, qualified visitors and some get advertising revenue based on the number of visitors. 

Once search engines start serving up more AI results, the stream of traffic from organic listings will diminish because people won’t need to leave the search engine, and along with this, the online advertising model is going to be shaken like a martini, with the landscape of search changing forever.

So, as mentioned at the top of this article, companies reliant on traffic from search will need to get creative to avoid being left in the dust, with email, social media and custom audience targeting with first party data becoming even more crucial in driving sales.