E395: SearchGPT is OpenAI’s GPT-enhanced search engine. OpenAI is coming directly after Google’s main business.
Searchers no longer need to go into the results to get their answers.
So digital marketers are wondering - “Is SEO still a viable channel?”
The answer is yes and no.
Not for SEO as we know it - not for top-of-funnel.
For bottom-of-funnel, however - it is a blue ocean.
The old SEO is dead.
This is the future of SEO.
00:00 OpenAI's New SearchGPT 01:10 SEO in the Age of SearchGPT 02:29 The Future of Keywords 05:22 SearchGPT's Impact on Exploratory Traffic 07:27 SEO Volatility with Generative AI 09:12 Recommendations
#seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #openai
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
OpenAI is attacking Google even further. What? You may have heard. OpenAI is coming out with something called SearchGPT. I just signed up for the beta. It is waiting list only right now. Waiting list only, your name has to be on the list. It's called the SearchGPT prototype from OpenAI. We're testing SearchGPT, a temporary prototype of new AI search features that give you fast and timely answers with clear and relevant sources. It's a bit different from Google because you do your search, but where Google will sometimes have the featured snippet, the rich snippet, where it gives you a quick answer. Whereas Google will have that some of the time, SearchGPT has that all of the time, and it has better summaries. SearchGPT is a lot more likely to go into documents and look at them for you and then return the answer right there in the SERP and the Search Engine Results page and its sites its sources, unlike chatGPT, which sometimes or never sites its sources, SearchGPT always sites its sources. And so people are wondering, is it even worth doing SEO anymore? If you're just going to query documents from the SearchGPT interface and people aren't even going to go into the website to look at the answers in that site so that they can be marketed to, people don't even care about the brand anymore, is it worth doing SEO? I want to explain this a little bit further. This is the real concern here. People who are doing SEO wonder if it's worth it because if a searcher isn't actually going to the site to get their answer, they can't be marketed to. They won't see a pop up to join an email list or a newsletter. They won't see a sidebar with different call to actions or relevant articles or blog posts. They'll rarely take a look at the brand name so the brand will mean less. And a lot of people are wondering, why do SEO? And the reason I'm making this episode of the podcast, episode 395 of my daily digital marketing podcast is there is actually a reason to do SEO. But it is not to answer these top of funnel questions, whereas somebody is kind of just exploring, looking around, messing around, aiming to get top of funnel traffic. People in the exploratory phase, it is not a worthwhile use of time. However, what search GPT is not going to disrupt is bottom of funnel search engine optimization, which I talk about all the time in the show. What you want to talk about on this episode some more, I'm making a product called Compact Keywords about this. It is almost ready, I know I've been saying that for months, but it really is almost ready. Bottom of funnel keywords, compact keywords, they target people who know what they want, but they don't know the brand that is going to give it to them. So they are going to their search engine of choice, writing in their use case, writing in what they are trying to solve. And the smart marketers, the smart marketers, are thinking super customer centric. They are thinking from the customer, from the user's point of view, what is the user typing into a search engine in hopes to find a solution to their problem? And what these marketers do, people like me, is they figure out what these people type, they do this in a lot of different ways, they look at what competitors are ranking for, they look at suggested keywords in Google, they look at popular language that similar users are using, but they find these keywords, these things that people are searching, and then they name entire pages for these keywords. The keyword goes in the H1, the heading, the top heading, the keyword goes at the beginning, the opening sentence, the keyword goes in the meta description, goes in the page title, it goes in the URL, the page is perfectly targeting this use case. Page is a couple hundred words, maybe 400, maybe 500, and what happens is this page is made so directly for this use case that it ranks really high, it ranks on Google, ranks on Bing, soon it will rank on search a GPT, because people aren't searching on search a GPT, asking for search a GPT to make the solution, they are just looking for the solution that they can use. If someone goes to search a GPT and asks for a good CRM for small businesses, they're not expecting or hoping for search a GPT to be that CRM, but they are hoping that search GPT will tell them the CRM to use. The user is hoping that search GPT will tell them the brands to use, the brands to buy, and that they won't have to do as much research, they can ask a bunch of questions, and bottom of funnel search engine optimization targets these keywords so deliberately, these searches, so deliberately that just like Google, search GPT will recommend them, and how do I know this because I've been doing bottom of funnel SEO for many years now, and I see even chat GPT recommending my pages for the bottom of funnel language that I put in the pages, and I see it from other sites, from other software sites, and I see it from services companies that are doing bottom of funnel search engine optimization. I'm gonna read a bit more from the search GPT landing page from OpenAI, getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results. We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you're looking for can be faster and easier. The thing that stands out to me about the search GPT preview landing page is how the examples are very top of funnel. Someone searches, when can I see new book branches in a half moon bay this weekend? And then they get an answer and then they ask, will it be hot, but that is top of funnel. When can I see new book branches in half moon bay this weekend? That's super top of funnel. In the past, your blog would be answering that. Now, search GPT is gonna answer that. And you might be thinking, Edward, didn't you just share a study where it was actually proven that websites ranking for the featured snippets got more traffic because they were in the featured snippet. People would often click into the snippet to get more detail. I did just share that. But the thing about search GPT, and I would not be surprised if Google copies this, is now people are asking the search for further information on a result without actually going into the result. And that is the game changer with this super user friendly, but it is not publisher friendly. It is such a waste of time to focus on keywords that have a low purchase intent or low use intent, because these keywords are getting disrupted left and right. They're getting disrupted by AI chatbots and search GPT generative AI. They're getting disrupted by generative AI. And they were just heavily disrupted by the March Google update, which went after so many content sites. There's a lot of people sharing on Google content sites have been completely obliterated. I just shared this on LinkedIn, on X and threads. I wrote the last couple of months. So actually I was looking at Alguru, which is this amazing tool for seeing volatility in the search engine results pages over time. Alguru.com. And I saw in Alguru that the last couple of months have been the most volatile time on Google in the last several years. In the last two, maybe three, maybe more, maybe more years. This is what I said. I said the last couple of months have been the longest period of SERP instability search engine results page instability in literal years. My guess is this is 100% due to generative AI. For two reasons, webmasters are flooding sites with generated content and generative AI chatbots are taking market share from Google. And so Google is testing defensive solutions. If there's one thing to take note of, it's that this volatility is not going to die anytime soon. So the best solution is to go with a more durable strategy. Personally, I'm all in on bottom of funnel keywords and brand building. My demand generation keyword funnels. Demand generation keywords are synonym for bottom of funnel keywords. Over the last several years, during the times of the most instability in Google, I have actually seen just complete consistent results. And I've seen people hosting who are going really hard on demand generation keywords. They're either getting stable results or increasing results. However, everyone who's targeting top of funnel, and I've seen this from my own blogs, from other websites that target top of funnel, their traffic is going down, sometimes very fast from everyone. The number one thing, the most durable strategy, the most durable over time, is focusing on bottom of funnel keywords. So is search GPT anything to be afraid of? Will search GPT kill SEO? It will kill top of funnel even further. The most durable strategy is targeting keywords at the bottom of the funnel, where searchers know what they want, but they don't know the brand that's going to give it to them. They're hoping to find that brand and use it or buy it immediately. That's what I wanted to share. I'm seeing so much success from this. This is episode 395 of my daily digital marketing podcast. If you're doing top of funnel on just a website, so not user generated content, not video, not a newsletter, not X or threads, that's going to be heavily disrupted. Still works very well for user generated content, and it makes for entertaining content for consumers, for your audience. Actually, this podcast is top of funnel, but focusing on top of funnel for websites, for just normal website content, as is what used to be done, no longer super profitable. If you were thinking about what direction to go in, because you heard about search GPT, I hope this episode informed you, or if you're thinking about where to align your marketing efforts, I hope this episode informed you. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
