Most people still prefer traditional search engines
Artificial intelligence can be used in many different ways. But one thing that has been gaining traction lately is that people are using AI programs like ChatGPT essentially as a search engine. When they’re looking for specific information, they just ask the AI for a result. The language model then searches the internet and returns the answers based on its findings.
There are certainly some potential problems with this—first and foremost, that artificial intelligence often gets things wrong. It’s difficult to know if the results being provided are accurate, so some people shy away from this and would rather perform a search on their own. But younger people in particular do seem to be adapting to this trend, with 14% saying that they use artificial intelligence this way on a daily basis and 71.5% claiming that they use AI similarly to a search engine.
However, at 79.8%, the vast majority of internet users claim that they still prefer to use more traditional search engines. The two in question for the study were Microsoft Bing and Google. Just over 20% of users have switched to using AI as their main search platform, but most do not do so.
Why is this important?
This is very important from a search engine optimization perspective. For one thing, people who simply read results from an artificial intelligence program or application aren’t clicking on links and actually visiting the sites where that information came from—it’s just being compiled for them. So the fact that most people still prefer traditional search engines means that SEO remains very important for getting traction to those sites.
It’s also worth noting that many people use AI simply to do research. They may ask an artificial intelligence program to list the most popular tents before a backpacking trip, for example. They may have certain specifications, like the weight they’re looking for. But after they’ve done their research, they’re still going to type in specific keywords or navigate to a company’s page to order the tent that they want. In that sense, both technologies go hand-in-hand.
A changing landscape
Along with AI overviews being involved in the search process—which we recently discussed—this shift to using AI specifically for search is altering how people approach the internet and what they’re looking for. It’s very important to keep an eye on this when considering both SEO and the type of content you’re creating for your site. We can help at Content Customs, so just give us a call today.
