Recently, OpenAI rolled out a new feature, ChatGPT Search, bringing search to their popular AI chat product. Mistral just launched something very similar. Giving search capabilities to Large Language Models is nothing new; services like Perplexity and Bing have offered this for a while. But it does show that AI is reshaping how we find information online, and that the trend is accelerating.
1) Less Need to Visit Webpages
Traditionally, searching meant visiting multiple websites to gather information. Now AI can give direct answers without the need to click through to the original pages. This matters for brands, content creators and advertisers, because it changes the digital relationship between companies and their customers when users no longer engage with branded content directly.
2) Combining Multiple Sources
AI can combine information from various sources into a single response. For example, you can ask for a summary of recent news about competitors from Techmeme, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and Reuters, and receive a consolidated answer. That saves a lot of time, but it also raises questions about content ownership and attribution. What may matter even more is that these AI models are in the process of "getting to know you" better than Google does, for example through ChatGPT's memory function. Over time they get better at matching all this information with your (private) preferences.
3) Bypassing Traditional Search Engines
With OpenAI's and Claude's Google Chrome extensions, users can bypass traditional search engines entirely. This challenges the dominance of platforms like Google, which processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. Google still holds about 92.47% of the global search engine market, but the rise of AI-driven search tools could change these numbers in the future.
4) Make online purchases without visiting a website
Conversational AI search engine Perplexity just launched its move into ecommerce. Users can get recommendations on products and buy them straight from the AI conversation, without visiting a single e-commerce website. This is a first step towards a new user experience for e-commerce, on a different route than the websites and apps we’ve got used to in the past two decades.
Implications for Companies
This shift in search behaviour has several implications for businesses:
- Reduced Website Traffic: Direct answers from AI may lead to fewer visits to company websites, affecting metrics and engagement.
- Content Strategy Adjustments: Companies may need to prepare content for AI consumption, so that information is structured in a way AI can process and relay. A nice example of making website content more accessible for LLMs is https://github.com/AnswerDotAI/llms-txt
- Advertising Challenges: Traditional online advertising models may become less effective as users spend more time in AI tools that don't display ads in the same way.
Navigating this change
To adapt to these changes, companies can:
- Optimise for AI: Structure content so that AI tools can access and understand it.
- Diversify engagement channels: Look for new ways to connect with audiences beyond traditional web pages, such as AI platforms and voice assistants.
- Monitor AI developments: Keep up with what is happening in AI to anticipate and respond to shifts in user behaviour.
New Developments Making This Shift Even Bigger
AI-driven search is moving fast, and recent developments from OpenAI, Claude and other players are speeding things up:
- Real-Time Internet Access: OpenAI recently enabled real-time web browsing in ChatGPT, which means users get up-to-date answers without visiting traditional websites. Combined with better summarisation, this gives users answers sourced from multiple platforms in seconds.
- Multimodal Capabilities: With tools like DALL-E and ChatGPT’s ability to process and generate images, voice and text, users can go beyond basic search queries. They can get visual summaries of complex data or use voice queries for hands-free access, which bypasses traditional search and website browsing even further.
- Personalized AI Extensions: Both OpenAI and Claude now support a growing ecosystem of plugins and extensions. These can connect with specialised databases, handle unique datasets and integrate with existing productivity tools, so the information is tailored to each user’s needs.
- Improved Contextual Understanding: Advances in natural language processing mean these AI tools are getting better at understanding nuanced queries, following long conversation threads and delivering contextual answers. That makes AI a stronger alternative to traditional search engines, especially for complex questions that used to require extensive research.
These developments are changing how we find and use information online. For brands, content creators and businesses, the task now is to find new ways to connect with audiences as search moves to AI.
