Welcome to the Search Revolution: Getting Your Brand Found in ChatGPT Search and AI Assistants

The search revolution is here. Are you ready for it?

Change is accelerating every day. Meta just announced that it has launched a web indexing program to create a new search engine supporting Meta AI. We’ve gotten further insight into Perplexity’s primary content sources (and their definition of plagiarism), with their CEO stating that they’ve “hit 100 million search queries per week.” And on October 31st, OpenAI announced the launch its users have been waiting for: ChatGPT Search, offering consumers “fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for.” 

Our robust data across tens of thousands of client domains illustrates how search has changed. AI bots from both established companies (such as Amazon, ByteDance, and Apple) and startups (like Claude or Mistral) are using website content to improve their AI models, build new search indexes, and tap into organic search rankings to provide up-to-date information to consumers.

So, what does this all mean?

Search is expanding beyond Google, generating new opportunities for brands to be found by consumers

Google still has the largest market share, but for the first time it has competitors armed with novel, exciting AI-driven approaches to search to draw attention and users away from its platform.

In early 2024, Gartner predicted that search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026, but this shouldn’t be perceived as a threat to brands’ revenue online. Online traffic is being redistributed beyond Google. Bing, ChatGPT, and others are attracting audiences eager to engage with brands in new ways. Consumers aren’t searching less — they’re simply looking for information elsewhere, in different ways. 

Why?

AI search is easy for consumers. AI assistants generate fast, personalized answers that build on earlier context. Consumers complete more of the customer journey in these conversations, and once they’re ready to visit a website, they’re more qualified. This drives conversion rates higher despite a lower volume of impressions. Consumers want the same things from new and different interfaces, and as their behavior shifts, your brand should consider your visibility strategy in AI search as well.

Brands that act on this growing opportunity now will be tomorrow’s winners

Whether they explore a list of links and suggested products on a Google result page or have ChatGPT Search summarize a list of personalized options, your consumers want relevant, up-to-date information or they need to make a purchase. This is great news for brands: your understanding of how consumers search, combined with your expertise in answering them via a relevant content strategy, remains as important as ever.

Brands that can react and adapt to new search behaviors across new platforms, all while answering your consumer’s needs just as effectively, will be tomorrow’s big winners. 

Botify customers are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this growing opportunity and are already seeing promising results. For instance, a major apparel brand saw visits from OpenAI’s user agent, which fetched real-time information when a consumer searches, double month-over-month, reaching 1.5 million hits. Since the agent hits the website with each search on ChatGPT, it provides a strong proxy for assessing traffic potential. 

While the revenue impact is still being evaluated and might seem insignificant compared to Google Search, in times of disruption, you need to look for these trending signals so you don’t miss the boat and find yourself scrambling to ride the wave when they go mainstream. Plus, who’s to say you need to compromise your Google Search strategy? This same apparel brand didn’t, allowing them to reap the benefits of a well-optimized website for search today while positioning themselves for tomorrow.

Change doesn’t come without challenges for brands

Brands will face the consequences of a shifting search landscape in a few ways:

• Increased workload for teams in charge of digital visibility: Your teams in charge of search will be tasked with new data to analyze, new strategies to formulate, and new experiments to run, in addition to staying educated on advancements in AI search. 
• Slow-to-adopt brands will fall behind: Big shifts in technology like this are rare. The brands that react with agility and make investments early will keep pace with consumer needs and race ahead. Those who take a wait-and-see approach will be scrambling to catch up in a few years. 
• Measuring organic visibility revenue impact across platforms will become even more challenging: Most AI search platforms don’t yet provide relevant analytics tools to help you understand and optimize your visibility. Understanding your brand presence, your share of voice, and how GenAI search contributes to your revenue mix requires new processes and access to first-party conversion and contribution data.
• Increased acquisition costs: Being found in the decentralized search era is going to require resources and investments in data, content, and infrastructure. Acquisition costs are expected to rise (again) and brands’ profitability and sustainability could be impacted.‍
• Increased infrastructure costs due to the need to be found on multiple platforms: As more AI bots visit your website in search of content to share with consumers, the extra bot traffic can add server strain and cost, without the value of engagement and revenue human traffic usually provides.

Accelerate your visibility strategy and transform your organization with Botify AI capabilities

At Botify, we’ve been anticipating this shift for years, pioneering the future of search and brand visibility with an integrated data model, machine learning-powered alerts and recommendations, robust automation, and a measurement framework. Our solutions already have the insights, actionable recommendations, and automation capabilities required to thrive in this new AI-first world.

Let’s explore some of the ways Botify can help:

• Understand how AI platforms use your content to generate their answers: Botify Analytics reveals if and how your website content is used by Gen AI assistants. Use these insights to make sure your most valuable pages and their most recent versions, including the latest information, prices, availability, or product reviews, are visible to consumers, anywhere they search.

• Dive into consumer intent by analyzing what they search for on Google: Botify gives you real-time access to all the questions your consumers ask on Google. Information about your consumers’ intent isn’t available on AI platforms, but you can use this Google data to power an AI-first content strategy. 
• Accelerate your AI search strategy with the Botify suite: Botify Activation accelerates your brand visibility strategy in the new fragmented world of search. It gives you the control and the tools to optimize what all search platforms know of your site before they generate answers. With this AI-powered automatic solution, brands can deliver their most valuable pages and content to bots rapidly and efficiently, whether from traditional or AI search engines.

• Transform your search organization and complement your team with our AI-powered innovations and Botify search experts: Our Botify Advantage team has decades of search experience and the most up-to-date insights on how to win in AI search. We’re ready to partner with you, building custom strategies to succeed today and thrive in the future of search.

As your consumers start to embrace the AI search revolution, now is your chance to seize this moment and lead. Our vision for Botify is to give every brand the power to be found. That vision is stronger than ever as what it means to be found expands across new technologies and platforms. The future of search is bright, and we’re ready to meet these rising opportunities to connect brands with their customers.

We’re here to help you succeed — just reach out to start a conversation with our team.