In recent news, OpenAI, parent company of the most disruptive technology of the century, ChatGPT, announced that they're going straight after Google's search market dominance with SearchGPT, a new search engine powered by AI. The stock price of Google's parent firm, Alphabet, fell 3% to a 2024 low. Why are Google executives terrified about SearchGPT? Well, because it's promising a new type of search experience that users are drooling for. As OpenAI put it themselves, getting answers on the web can take a lot of effort, often requiring multiple attempts to get relevant results. We believe that by enhancing the conversational capabilities of our models with real-time information from the web, finding what you're looking for can be faster and easier. We'll see about that soon in this video. That said, if this works out for them and even a small amount of people leave Google for SearchGPT, we're then at the most important crossroads in marketing history.

This will have a tremendous impact on search engine optimization, and will either be the best freaking news you've ever heard in your marketing life, or mark a firm step towards the demise of the best traffic channel ever known to mankind, organic search. In this video, I'm going to pick this whole story apart and give you my opinion on where this all is going. We're going to look at some rare beta tester footage to see exactly how good search GPT is or isn't. We're going to explore why Google may just be screwed, what that spells for search engine professionals, and also discuss what you should do to stay prepared. Let's get started. In case we haven't met before, my name is Matt Diggity and I'm the founder of multiple seven-figure businesses in the SEO industry. A couple of weeks ago, OpenAI announced the prototype launch of search GPT accessible to only 10,000 lucky beta testers.

What does it look like? I look good. I mean, really good. Check this out. Here's the search GPT result for what's going on in the stock market. A search that requires up-to-date information that's only found by crawling the web. First off, it's fast, just as fast as chat GPT 4.0. And the biggest thing you'll notice compared to a typical Google search is that you actually get your answer. Comparatively, look at the Google result. There's no answer here. It's a list of websites where you may or may not find your answer. The search GPT result talks about a recent surge in both the Dow and S&P, what's going on in the tech sector, economic indicators. It answers the damn question. And as you've likely already noticed, there's no ads here, a very important point that we'll bring up later. Search GPT is offering a whole different search experience.

And check out the links. There's tons of links to all the websites that were used to create the search result. Much better than the link sheisty AI overviews that have SEO professionals on meltdown. This is amazing for website owners, as we'll dig into later. Search GPT also has a tab on the left side where you can expand out all the links to the articles that went into the AI answer and the image data as well. Here's another search. Who is doing better in polling for the presidential election? Again, lots of graphics, lots of links. And here's one more search for a summary of the last week's political events, where the beta tester put Search GPT up against perplexity. Search GPT was faster, and the beta tester quoted, This GPT search is pretty darn good. Now, before we analyze just how screwed Google is, we need to understand why OpenAI has launched Search GPT in the first place.

Reports have shown that OpenAI is financially struggling with $5 billion in annual expenses. Whereas estimates say that ChatGPT only brings in $100 to $200 million per year. Damn. Now, according to Statista, Google has 82% of the search market, but the problem is ChatGPT isn't a search engine. SearchGPT is, and it would compete directly with Google if they can capture just 3% of Google's market share. They just paid for all $5 billion of their annual expenses. Meanwhile, Google's getting slammed by antitrust lawsuits. That might just make way for a good chunk of that market share to come up for grabs. OpenAI smells blood. Another reason OpenAI has launched SearchGPT is for data, to better train their large language models. If OpenAI can get a constant stream of user data from SearchGPT, they'll be able to drastically reduce hallucinations regarding current events, making their

core LLM product even more powerful. So, is Google screwed? We'll get to that in a second, but real quick, I wanted to let you know that my SEO agency, The Search Initiative, has a $1,000 off discount going on until the end of the month. To get a free audit, head on over to thesearchinitiative.com and put your details into the form, and we'll let you know what we can do for you. Here's why Google is crapping their pants. As we touched on before, users are going to love the fact that they actually get their answer after a search, as mind-blowing as that sounds, rather than a list of 10 links for them to dig through and hopefully find their answer. For this search, what did Elon say about Zuckerberg last week? Upon inspection, the Google result isn't even showing anything from the current year. Compare this to the search GPT answer, and yeah, sure enough, I

guess Elon wants to fight again. For users, this is just straight up better. Let's do a Google search for the keyword, how many calories are in an apple? Here's one of the top Google results. Just look at how much fluff you need to get through to find the damn answer. Meanwhile, the rest of the article feels like it's necessary to tell you about the 7,000 different apple varieties when all you wanted to know is the freaking calorie count. Meanwhile, if you asked an LLM the same question, not only is there no fluff, but you also get how many calories there are in various apple sizes. Which you can then follow up and ask it to put into a table, also differentiating between red and green apples. Being the smart cookies they are, OpenAI made sure to flaunt the fact that SearchGPT has follow-up conversational capability, and you can see it being demoed right here on the announcement page.

Another advantage SearchGPT has over Google is that Google is restrained by their ad-based monetization model. Google makes its money from selling ads, and because of this, it's always going to put ads first, above the actual search result. Once again, there's friction before you get your list of POSSIBLE places to get an answer. SearchGPT has no ads. You get your answer front and center. It's a better user experience once again. Based on the beta tester footage, SearchGPT also adds some nice videos and images to spice things up. Here's an example of that when asked about medieval European history. And here again with the weather. But in my opinion, the biggest reason Google is tripping is um, maybe because OpenAI's track record so far is f-ing insane? It took two months for ChatGPT to hit 100 million users. With any luck, they'll have similar success with SearchGPT.

Especially if Google's exclusive partnership with Apple, being the default search engine, gets broken up. So, what would this all mean for SEO professionals? If Google lost significant market share to SearchGPT? If you ask me, bro, it's going to be awesome. By the way, here's a quick word from the sponsor of this video, Search Intelligence. This campaign got us big links in websites such as Lifehacker, Wales Online, Daily Record, and about 20 other news websites. Let me show you how we've done it. We knew that people would be flying a lot this summer, and we knew that journalists would be writing about this topic a lot. So, on behalf of our client, we put together a nice guide about how to fall asleep on the plane. Then, we used MuckRack to find journalists who write about travel. Then, we put our advice in a nice email and sent the tips to the journalists.

Within just a few days, the links started landing, securing our client natural placements in really big websites, just like this, this, and this. This is a great example of how you can leverage seasonal trends to earn links to a website. Anticipate what journalists want to write about at all times and give them the stories that they need. They will reward you with some great, juicy links. I hope this is helpful. Now, back to the video. The current situation sucks for publishers. To say that publishers are frustrated with Google's constant, unforgiving algorithm updates would be the biggest understatement of the year. Meanwhile, Reddit, of all places, has surged to a bajillion traffic per month. The Google search result continues to push down organic results with more and more ads, and AI overviews are rewriting our content with little to no links to our website. SearchGPT, right on its announcement page, says they're all about the publishers.

Quote, we are committed to a thriving ecosystem of publishers and creators. And SearchGPT is designed to help users connect with publishers by prominently citing and linking to them in searches. Responses have clear, inline, named attribution and links so users know where the information is coming from and can quickly engage with even more results in a sidebar with source links. And sure enough, when you look at the demos, plenty of links and what's that? No ads pushing down those links. And check out the search GPT result for a portable stove. The content is actually encouraging the reader to click the links. But what does that mean when they say they're partnering with publishers and creators? It means they're actually giving them money via publisher licensing deals. And they've started this already. There's also rumors of a potential revenue share model with creators, similar to what they've done in their GPT store. That said, there is a scenario where the rise of search GPT is

terrible for the average SEO. So far, the licensing deals have only been made with the big mama publishing companies like News Corp, Associated Press, and DotDash. If it ends there, then search GPT is more likely to cite the companies that it's done deals with, rather than the mere peasants like you and I. Also, there's been some SearchGPT searches that show results that are pretty darn light on the link citations, like the one you see here. Which is ironic, because this particular search on books released in June 2024 is a buyer intent search where the user would clearly want links to buy the damn books. That said, I think this is pretty rare, as every other demo I've seen has tons of links. Let's steel man the other case though. Google may not be screwed at all, and this could just be another AI hype bubble. First and foremost, LLMs still have a major problem with

accuracy, namely AI hallucinations. The Homies at Authority Hacker dug into this June 2024 book list and found that only one book was actually released in June. To add, users still prefer directly human-written content. If you're searching for health advice, you want an article written by a doctor. If you're searching for travel advice for a trip to Japan, you want insider tips from someone who's actually been there. Users also still very much like control. People prefer a selection of human-written content for them to make a decision on what advice they want to follow. Plus, there's still a very open question on how SearchGPT is going to monetize. Okay, so they're not going to run ads. Does this mean that they're going to be a paid search engine like perplexity? If so, the adoption is going to be low. Either way, what should you do in the meantime? How can you prepare for this potentially drastic new change to SEO?

I expect us to have answers very soon. Things happen fast in the ever-evolving digital landscape of AI. If you catch my drift, we may soon end up with the search GPT search console and a whole new field of AI search optimization. I started a bunch of experiments, optimizing my content to see what it takes to get featured in Google's AI overview. And as soon as I get access to SearchGPT, you can bet your buns I'm starting there too. I'll release a video on what I found, so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.

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