On 31 October 2024 OpenAI launched ChatGPT search. If you host any kind of content online, you’ll want to pay attention.
AI search is changing the way that your users experience your content, and the internet.
Gone are the days of users having to sift through pages of search results. Instead, AI powered search engines do the work for you. AI figures out what you’re asking, finds content that can answer your question, picks out bits it thinks are relevant, then rewrites and restructures the content to give you an answer.
ChatGPT search is OpenAI’s competitor to search engines from Google and Bing. It promises fast and timely answers to questions, backed up with links to sources.
The implications are significant:
- Your content is being rewritten. AI chooses what to say, and how to say it. That means people are making decisions not based on your content, but on AI interpretations of your content.
- Users are less likely to visit your website, because they’ve got no need to. If they’re convinced by the answer they get from AI then they’ll search no further.
- Users will search for content less, and search for answers more. Some experts are already saying that we’re moving away from search engines and into the world of the answer engine instead.
It’s easy to dismiss new developments like this by thinking that ChatGPT is a niche product.
It’s not. Not anymore.
ChatGPT has around 200 million active weekly users. This will grow even further this December, when Apple Intelligence opens up access to ChatGPT through Siri in the UK. (See our blog on Apple Intelligence)
And ChatGPT isn’t the only way that your users are using AI to search the internet. Users are already getting AI answers when they search with Google and Bing.
These answers are appearing automatically – people do not have to opt-in to them. And the disclaimer that declares an answer is generated by AI is small, easy to miss, and easy to ignore. These disclaimers are not changing user behaviour. Users are relying on, and making decisions with AI answers. (See our blog on how AI is changing decision-making).
Don’t you want to know what your users see when they get answers about your content online?
Don’t you want to know whether it’s your product or company that tops the list when a user asks a question like “what is a pension?”, “best pension?”, or “where should I transfer my pension”?
If you knew what AI said, you could influence it. You could adapt your content to make it more likely that AI gets your message across in the way you intend, and in the way that you originally signed off.
So please, test your content. Go do it right now – it’ll only take you 15 minutes.
Ask the questions you know your users ask, and see what answers they get.
Because it’s only when you understand what users see that you can begin to create content that performs well in the world of AI.
