Users won’t need to visit search engine websites anymore
SEO experts (and their clients) search Google for site ranking. Everyone else search for answers, solutions, information.
Therefore, any users expect that a good search engine serves what they are looking for almost immediately – hence most of them stick to first page results.
Continuous scrolling, finally deprecated by Google, is bad for User Experience (on any screen, not only SERP), and overloads users with extra info indeed not expected, causing frustration when having to screen a potentially endless list.
So back to first-page value on one side, but also more to expect from Google in term of ready-made AI-generated answers based on multiple, qualified and relevant sources. Something that scares the SEO industry that must learn how to optimise websites to be noticed by AI scrapers, otherwise their brands might disappear, or others will talk for them.
Such approach is vital for Google, to contrast the user trend to ask AI chatbots directly on places not traditionally associated with search engines.
Think of the recently announced – basically it’s powered by OpenAI, but they didn’t seem so proud to mention they are lagging behind with AI. Apple AI integrates a conversational search engine via text or voice (let’s call Siri 2.0) on its devices, for free. It will make this new form of search and integration/interaction with other apps available and accessible anytime, anywhere.
Think also of Copilot, natively integrated into Microsoft 365 apps, popular among corporates (more than Apple which is more popular among individuals & SMEs).
Google had already improved SERP UX via featured snippets, questions and other widgets, pushing down organic results, but that’s not enough to compete with new, more effective alternatives.
TikTok has also integrated AI capabilities into its search, already preferred by younger audiences for queries previously asked on Google. And it’s been selling its content discovery algorithm more effective than AI at Meta (still far from leaders despite progresses with #Llama) to other companies.
X is repositioning itself like the world’s most popular newspaper (adding community validation to counter fight fake news) and offers its AI tool, Grok, to all paid users.
Google must innovate to remain relevant in its core business, changing fast – probably it will integrate its AI Gemini (still lagging behind competitors in terms of usage and capabilities) on Android devices & Workspace apps. Ideally free.
It’s expected that less and less users will need to visit Google to find information via single queries that generates a list of websites, each with a different UX/UI, some outdated, some low quality or irrelevant, or blocked by geography or paywalls. This will cause a huge drop in search ads, and Alphabet revenue. However, businesses still need to be visible.
Why such an exhausting, long journey when users can ask AI via voice conversations, anywhere they are, whatever they are doing, ensuring faster and better results?
