The biggest news story of Internet history (that has gone unreported): Search Generative Experience

What if all of the (unpaid) traffic you get from Google simply disappeared? Would this impact your business in a significant way? Introducing Search Generative Experience "SGE": NO-CLICK SEARCH.

Firstly welcome to all of our new subscribers! In the first month since launch there have been thousands of article views and over 200 people subscribed from all over the world. We’ve got CEOs, professional investors, VCs, billionaires, entrepreneurs, founders and engaged business leaders of all types. All with stories to tell. All with the interest to apply the Three Strikes Theory in real life.

It’s amazing how much positive feedback and how many stories you have all shared with me so far, both private and public.. I’m on a mission to surface these stories.. of failure - and the three strikes that brought on disaster.. as well as the stories of success - and the three strokes that brought on a win. Please keep sharing your stories with me! And enjoy the read..

When I say this is the biggest story of Internet history I mean it. Because since the beginning of the internet, we have accessed the web via search engines. These search engines have crawled the entire Internet and delivered a list of relevant websites in response to the queries we have searched for.

And more importantly, many businesses today only thrive through their ability to generate traffic from Google.

Search Example - TODAY: 

• I go to Google

• I type in a query and hit search

• I am served a list of websites that Google’s algorithm thinks will be the most relevant sites to find what I’m looking for (with some ads at the top) 

• I click through to those websites. Maybe one of them is your business. 

But with a Search Generative Experience all of this will change and the impacts to businesses, large and small, could be as significant as the birth of the Internet itself.

When I say that this story has gone unreported, that’s not entirely true. Ricky Sutton has reported on this in his excellent Future Media newsletter, but since it affects every website on the planet I think it should be front page news.. because: 

Search Example TOMORROW: 

• I go to Google

• I search for the same query

• I no longer get a list of websites to look through, but Google’s AI re-constitutes, re-contextualises, and re-writes the web’s content specifically for me, based on what it thinks I need to know. It does the searching AND the reading, and hand delivers the information it decides we should get.. complete with prompts of my next questions to the AI.

• Yes, there is a new “carousel” of websites (3 visible, but more if you scroll horizontally) in the top right of the screen.. are these the new top SEO results? Are these the new top paid ad placements?
  (If you’re not across Exact Match Blogs or if you’re not the top Paid Ad bidder then you’re not in the running for one of these spots - which will undoubtably get the lions share of traffic.

• Yes, a bunch of paid ads below the AI results.

• Yes, the regular long list of websites below the fold, further down the page.. but does this mean that the best place to hide a dead body is now on the first page of Google? (see below)

How much of a big deal is this? 

Well, if the predictions are even half right, it’s a huge deal. Gartner predicts that “organic search traffic will decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search.”

The world’s largest news websites have already seen this decline and are on a trajectory to zero SEO traffic by the end of 2024. 

You know this old joke? 

Q: Where is the best place to hide a dead body?
A: On the second page of Google 

Well, what if the second page of Google no longer exists at all? Or simply gets no traffic? What if being “discovered” on Google turns into convincing the Google AI to surface your business through the answer it constitutes for each individual query?

Many of us are going to have to reimagine the way we do business, or at the very least the way we develop our websites and conduct our SEO.

Google’s marketing of SGE on YouTube

Have a watch of Google’s marketing spin on this..

Now, here is the paradox:

• Does SGE centralise the world’s content across the “free” internet via a single AI that determines what answer you should recevie? YES. 

• Is SGE typical of the Big Tech Playbook, meaning that it forces businesses to pay for ads if they want traffic from Google? YES.

  
  (Remember when Facebook convinced businesses to buy “likes” and grow an audience, then turned off organic reach for posts on company Facebook pages? I quote from Facebook: “.. businesses should now assume an organic reach of zero.” - and pay to boost their posts to their own audience, which they just paid to acquire - This is the typical Big Tech Playbook in action.

• Now here’s the paradox.. does SGE remove user friction from the search experience? YES. 

Search Friction

I agree that me, as a human, doing the work to click through on a long list of potentially relevant websites, to read them myself, to determine if I’ve found what I’m looking for is indeed time consuming. 

I agree that if an AI could do all of this for me that does indeed remove “friction”. 

But, I’m also worried about getting lazy, complacent and putting all of my trust into a single AI to represent the world’s information for me.

I am gravely concerned about the impact on businesses, large and small, all over the the world that rely on organic SEO traffic today, and new businesses being discovered on Google. 

As it turns out, we don’t search the internet - we search Google’s internet. 

This is most certainly a potential strike for any business. 

What to do about it:

Businesses whose operations are predicated on online discoverability are pretty screwed, so they all must now think about:

Diversification of Traffic Sources:
Engage with your customers more, everywhere else. 
Prioritise other platforms and traffic sources, ie social media, email, conversational AI (and Custom GPTs?).. and turn your customers into advocates.  

Enhanced Value Proposition:
Encourage direct type for your URL
Offer unique, compelling content that encourages users to seek out your site specifically, bypassing Google Search. 

Redefining Online Presence:
Adapt your SEO to proactively position your site for AI (set up Exact Match Blogs specifically to rank in SGE and test if it works etc)
Ensure visibility within SGE's AI-generated summaries. Optimise content for clarity, conciseness, and direct answer generation, aligning with how AI interprets and presents information. (Are we pandering to them? I suppose we must.)

Lets hope for the best, as continued anti-trust cases are filed against all of Big Tech, we can only hope that competition is preserved and the rights of users and businesses on a free internet are maintained… but in the meantime.. let’s plan for the worst and think of SGE as a potential “strike” - and reassess our risks accordingly - as if we had the benefit of hindsight.

Since launching Three Strikes Theory I have been invited onto a number of podcasts, talking specifically about SGE, and you can read an interview I did for TheUpgrade  here. 

Thanks, for reading.

SK