Desde su debut en noviembre de 2022, ChatGPT ha sido considerado como la mayor disrupción en SEO desde la creación de la industria hace más de veinte años. Algunos incluso llegaron a decir que era el fin del SEO como lo conocemos. Pero, ¿es esto realmente cierto? Vamos a analizarlo.
Will ChatGPT replace SEO?
The truth is that, so far, ChatGPT and other generative AI products have had a very small impact on SEO. A pesar de la enorme ola de interés en ChatGPT, la cuota de tráfico de búsqueda de Google a nivel mundial se ha mantenido constante en el 91% durante los últimos 12 meses. Sin embargo, la IA generativa parece estar preparada para cambiar el SEO de varias maneras en los próximos años.
For example, on the search engine side, there will be more "no-click" interactions where visitors stay in the Google ecosystem conversing with a chatbot. And on the marketing side, content creators will use generative AI tools to better research, summarize complex web pages and generate graphics quickly, raising the standard for content.
Why won't generative AI replace SEO?
Before we get into the details of why SEO won't be overtaken by generative AI, let's start with a question: do you use ChatGPT to make important decisions about how to spend your time or money? Or do you mostly play with it, ask it interesting questions and watch it compose amazingly human-like responses?
If you still don't trust chatbots to make important decisions for you, you're already getting to the first reason why SEO won't be replaced any time soon.
People don't trust generative AI
To this day, we don't trust generative AI enough to use it as a replacement for Google. Why? Because it often gets it wrong, doesn't have up-to-date information on many topics, and doesn't give specific and useful opinions to commercially oriented questions.
Given these limitations, generative AI is not ready to replace Google's core function of helping people make decisions. And if it can't do that, its chances of displacing SEO as a marketing channel are low. After all, the fact that we rely on Google to advise us when the stakes are high is the main reason SEO is such a powerful channel in the first place.
Of course, not all Google queries are high-stakes; a substantial percentage of them are in the realm of basic research, e.g., "what is a parquet floor?" - precisely the type of queries that generative AI is best equipped to answer. However, losing users to chatbots for these types of searches is not very impactful for Google. Basic research queries have always been a loss leader for them, as few companies want to advertise on searches with low purchase intent. Most of the investment in both SEO and paid search is on transactional keywords like "interior designer in Brooklyn" or "best parquet flooring brands".
Of course, Google would like you to stay in its ecosystem for all information discovery, but none of us are too far from it between Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, Android and Drive.
Generative AI cannot write expert content
Marketers hoping to use generative AI products like ChatGPT or Google Bard to write content for them find an interesting phenomenon: the content is acceptable, but not very persuasive. It has an even-handed tone that conveys neutrality at the expense of persuasion.
Marketers who rely too heavily on generative AI to produce SEO content will find that their content is mediocre and, more importantly, of equal quality to many other marketers in their industry who are doing the same. In Google's meritocracy, where there is only one #1 result, standing out is essential. Therefore, true thought leadership written by subject matter experts will continue to outperform AI-produced content in the realm of SEO and in the broader context of grabbing the attention of potential buyers.
Legal and competitive barriers will limit effectiveness of generative AI
Una respuesta común a la afirmación de que la IA generativa es inexacta o menos confiable que un experto humano es «Solo va a mejorar». Si bien esto es cierto, esta idea ignora la inevitable resistencia legal y competitiva que enfrentará la tecnología. En pocas palabras, los titulares de derechos de propiedad intelectual y los creadores de contenido no regalarán su contenido gratis.
For years, Google has maintained an environment where website owners voluntarily share their knowledge publicly in exchange for exposure in search results. If generative AI companies use this knowledge to feed their chatbots without giving the same exposure, website owners will lose their incentive and stop creating free content. ChatGPT avoids this problem by using training data that is outdated anyway. Bing AI, on the other hand, collects newly created content from websites, and in doing so breaks the tacit agreement that website owners made with Google in the 2010s that incentivized the creation of this content in the first place.
If search engines continue down the path of feeding chatbots with user-created content without the consent of those users, they will discourage users from creating it. Major intellectual property rights holders such as Dow Jones, Reddit and Twitter have already demanded that Microsoft stop scraping their data to train its chatbots.
Related articles
- Discovering Generative Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Content Creation: Este artículo puede ser de interés para aquellos que deseen profundizar en la generative artificial intelligence, que es la tecnología subyacente de ChatGPT.
- Omnichannel strategy: Discovering the potential of e-commerce: Este artículo puede ser relevante para aquellos interesados en cómo las estrategias omnicanal y el comercio electrónico pueden beneficiarse de la optimización SEO y la inteligencia artificial.
- ChatGPT and Learning: Innovative Strategies for Transforming EducationThis article may be of interest to those who wish to understand how ChatGPT can be used in the field of education, which may also have implications for its use in SEO.
