Shane Dutka’s Post

Transcript

By 2028, brands organic search traffic will decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace generative AI powered search. This was reported by research from Gartner on December 14th, 2023. Headlines like these are causing concern not only for businesses who rely on search traffic to get customers, but also people who rely on SEO as a career. But are things as bad as they seem with AI, the DOJ case, and increasing competition from other search engines? I wanted to round up a lot of what has been said around the death of Google and answer these three questions. Are there? Actually less people using Google search. With new AI tools out there, can you expect less clicks and traffic from Google because of their AI overviews and other widgets they're adding to the search results? And what does the DOJ antitrust case result mean for the future of SEO and Google? OK so are there less people coming to Google to search for stuff? Will guard your published 2 reports in the last 18 months stating that they believe search traffic is going to decline as much as 25% in 2026 up to 50% in 2028 due to generative AI powered search. Basically what they're saying is that. Users are going to get their answers for their questions from chat bots like Chad, GBT, and Claude, which are not going to send users to websites. Given the gravity of these predictions, I wanted to learn more about some of their assumptions. So I started with the 2026 prediction, which was 25% less search traffic. Alex Kantrowitz, a tech journalist of Big Technology, actually spoke to the Gartner VP responsible for the report, Alan Anton. He explained the logic behind the prediction himself on a video call with Alex. Alan mentioned that the logic came from Google losing the Apple deal as a result of the DOJ. Space and then Apple replacing any version of the search engine for Safari on its iPhones with a version of ChatGPT instead. So those searches would never actually occur on a search engine. When Alex specifically asked Alan about the 25% prediction figure in the report, he responded that it came from internal debate, which I thought was insane. So how did you get to the 25 #25% number exactly? And he says, and I think this is crucial, just through internal debate, there is no model, no data, just some swaggy math and lively internal. Debate that somehow made its way into a press release and then labeled as research. So what about that 2028 prediction that said there'd be 50% less search traffic? Well, at least with this one they had some data because they surveyed 299 consumers to derive this prediction of 50% less search traffic. Though I still think that's kind of a crazy numbered throughout there. Ian Howells, cofounder of the SCO Community Traffic Think tank, nails it with his response linking to some of the classic prediction misses from Gardner. While I am picking on Gartner here, they many others out there have clearly tried to cash in on the clickbait given the uncertainty in the SEO. Right now. So what is actually happening? What does the data say? And it's been since 2 years since Chad TBT launched. Surely we'd see some kind of serious change in user behavior, right? Well, yes and no. Let me show you what I found. In October 7th, 2024, Rand Fishkin of Spark Toro conducted a research roundup of his own. I should definitely watch Rand's full breakdown, but the headline is Google's search market share is as strong as it's ever been, hovering around 89% of the market for search engines according to Statista and dados 2 platforms that. Monitor user search data at scale. Rand also looked at how often people are switching to use AI for their search needs and found that 14.6% of people switched in May 2023 and that number grew to 17.1 in August 2024, which suggests more people are indeed switching to use AI tools, though the growth has slowed. But what I found really interesting about Rand analysis was those people who are using these AI tools are still using Google a lot, like 200,000 times per month, which according to Rand is up from last year datos. Also caught wind of the Gardner 25% headline prediction and wanted to do an investigation of their own, analyzing their search data, which is derived from actual user behavior, not intuition or any internal debate. The headline here is that despite the rising popularity of AI driven search tools, Google's search traffic share has remained relatively stable, dropping only marginally from 91.5% to 90.7%. Another really interesting finding was that users using search engines continue to have repeat visits, meaning that the user search engine and they come back the next day and the next day while when users. Go and visit open AI, there's initial a lot of interest, but the repeat visitors are a lot lower. It drops off a Cliff quoting datos referring to open AI and chat GMT. The typical user will investigate the tool, try it out a few times, then loses interest. It seemed like the general public doesn't like using AI tools as much as the reports like the ones from Gartner would have you think. Now this is me speculating for a second. It makes sense for marketers and tech minded folks that things are moving more in a direction where people are using chat, CBT and Claude because they use it themselves, but the broader market. Isn't OK so we've established that Google is still holding steady as the leading global search engine but can you expect less clicks from Google with new AI features in additional ads and widgets that Google continues to rule out while like Gardner you have these other clickbait reports coming out from sources like eMarketer suggesting 20 to 60% declines in search traffic from search generative experience, or Sgt. And when I say SGE, I'm referring to that box you're probably seeing at the top of Google search results labeled AI overviews. And while it makes total sense that this AIO reviews box can reduce. Clicks to your site for certain queries. They're actually conflicting reports on this. Ross Hudgens of Siege Media reported in May 2024 that they were seeing a 3% increase in click through rate when being featured in an AI overview widget, which results in more clicks to websites. And then just seven days later, Kevin Indigo with the Growth Memo reported that when he saw AIO reviews in the search results that he saw 8.9% fewer clicks to websites overall. And it makes sense, the results are mixed. Google literally keeps changing these results every single day. And as I record this meeting, seeing a new version of the AO Reviews widget, which includes blue links that cite the original source in text, which is a very different experience than the version Ross and Kevin reported on, which looked more like this with no links and just some hidden citations below the fold. And while you have Google adding a bunch of new features to the search results, you also have Google dropping features, one in particular, June of 2024, the continuous scrolling feature. It's very likely that the impact is something like this is going to be felt on the second and third page of Google where users used to be able to get to those. Things easier now? It's gonna be harder, but then Google is adding features that actually may increase clicks to websites. For example, Google is now adding a bigger favicon, which is the icon to the left of the domain name. In the search results that look like this. You can see it's very prominent and easy to identify the brand, compared to the old treatment with smaller favicons where it'd be harder to actually see which brand you're about to click a link on. And then even before that, there weren't even any favicons in the search results, there was just a blue link. And these bigger favicons can actually translate and opportunities for savvy brands. For example, Carol and SOA Gusto Payroll Sass reported a 6.5% increase in Ctr. by making their favicon more visually engaging. So again, smart Seos here are adapting and winning. Setting aside the AR Reviews widget, it's clear on the whole Google is definitely adding more widgets, more ads and other experiences that are going to reduce click through rate to websites. Gary Nissim, founder of Indago Digital, reported that for the Australian market. The CPR from the top three positions are actually down roughly 27% when you compare 21 to 2024. So in 2021, if you were getting 100 clicks, you're now getting roughly 74 clicks for the same rankings. Now yes, that definitely stinks. But those 74 clicks are still extremely valuable high intent clicks that I know I as a business owner would still want to be getting. And when compared to other platforms like Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, Google is still far and away the best platform to get traffic to your website. So it's not like the investment in SCO would have been better somewhere else over these last couple of years. Citing yet another data study from Randpark Toro, on March 11th he published a report looking at the top traffic referrers on the Internet and found Google is still the number one by a mile, accounting for 72% of all US web traffic referrals, 14 times larger than the next highest, which is big. In simple terms, despite the declines and click through rate over the years, if you want traffic to your website, Google is still the best and it's not even close. Businesses who understand this and invest in SEO adapting to the changes are going to profit. OK, so we've established that Google's market. There is still strong and not losing too perplexity or TikTok and yes, Google is reducing the clicks it sends to websites with new ads and features and things like that, but it's still far and away the best place to get traffic to your website. Well, what about losing Chrome and the Apple deal? Is that going to kill Google Now everything I've said so far in this video, this is definitely the part where I have my attention focused and it's definitely something that you should be focused on too. Now again, you have to speed. There was a 23 page report filed on November 20th by the Department of Justice with the US District Court in. Washington, DC. Now, there's a ton in this report, but here are the highlights #1 Google must sell the Chrome browser #2 Google must share its data. This means that search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing could actually use Google's data to improve their search engines to be more competitive #3 Google can't be the default search on Apple devices, or Android or Firefox or anything. It needs to give users choice. Now, for context, Google actually paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 to be the default search engine on Apple devices. Now, if we were to lose that deal as a result of this, that would hurt Apple almost as much as it would hurt Google. Now, this first filing, it was only the beginning. We're actually have to wait until March to see the final formal proposal. And it's likely many of the details in their initial report are going to change between now and then. And again for more contacts. Microsoft, who went through a similar antitrust case, it took five years from the initial lawsuit in 1998 to complete in 2002, which ended in a settlement, which it doesn't seem like Google is actually going to settle here. And even when March rolls around. Assuming no settlement, this whole thing will probably take us until the end of 2025. And at this point, we're going to see the final details of what Google will be required to do. But of course, there's an appeals process. So even though we'll know Google is likely going to appeal anything that comes of this, and that's going to push out the date until probably 2027, which will be the soonest. Anything will be final and it'll actually impact the SEO industry. So where does this lead you right now? Well, First off, feel confident knowing that any investment in SEO is not going to be wasted. First reason is that Google isn't losing the share people. Latest these new AI tools and platforms like TikTok or Bing or whatever, they're still holding strong at #1 and reason #2 while there are less clicks coming out of Google due to more ads and again, widgets and AI overviews, they are still 14 times better than the next closest alternative. And reason #3 even if Google were to be unseated, the work you do to optimize for Google translates near 1 to one for any other search engine like Bing, Perplexity, DuckDuckGo, it doesn't matter. So you should continue to create great content, build quality links, and cultivate a strong brand. Because at the end of the day is these three things that are going to make you competitive and get search engines to send you traffic regardless of the platform and whether they're AI generated responses or not. And it's important that you understand this, OK? SEO is one of the only compounding marketing channels in the world that the investment today continues to pay back again and again and again. And I mean that by you publish a piece of content, it's going to continue to drive traffic regardless of whether you update it or not. Businesses will understand this and adapt are gonna profit. And I can guarantee you they will continue to need SEO experts to guide them. My name is Shane **** and hopefully this roundup will put you a little bit at ease when it comes to, hey, should I invest in SEO or not? So anyway, I'll see you in the next one.