The war of uses rages among web giantsthose who today have the ability to aggregate and disseminate “global knowledge”, so in theory the possibility of answering any question. If we extrapolate slightly, the promise is that of meeting all the needs and all the potential desires of consumers not always warned. Since the early 2000s, Google had gradually argued this mission in a monopolistic manner.
The Mountain View giant model, that of the search engine, had already transferred to a logic of an answer engine, or even personal assistant, As the integration of machine learning mechanics intended to improve the quality of response : interpretation of user intentions, treatment of ambiguity in certain research (“Polo” = a polo shirt, a polo shirt or the polo shirt?)multimodality (Find text present in an image for example)or even the understanding / translation of languages and specificities of natural language (Internet users’ questions for example).
The disruption of uses came largely from Openaithanks to (or because of) the opening at the end of 2022 of chatgpt to the general public, which then discovered an immensity of new possibilities and uses thanks to the generative AI, going well beyond the simple logic of research by keywords. In reality, the “new IA engines” (Search GPT, Perplexity, Bing/Copilot, etc.) play the role of revealing a deeper trend Who is not new: Google, by its approach which aims to be “omniscient”, aims to be competed on all sides, by many actors seeking to appropriate whole sections of decision -making processes: to rent an apartment? Book holidays? Buy a dishwasher? For a huge part of consumers, the purchasing course has not passed through Google for a long time To meet some of these needs. Specialized sites or applications (Seloger, Airbnb, Skyscanner among others, or of course Amazon, Shein, Temu …) are the real competitors of Google, each on its vertical.
It is also both surprising and obvious that for everyone, go through Google to directly access these “audience crossroads” sites, is a usual and massive practice. Google finally, by the exhaustiveness of its index and the presence of “the omnibox” of Chromereplaced the “bookmarks”, flow players, and in a way “direct” traffic (The real one, not the one you measure in your analytics tools, which is an “unidentified traffic”).
Social networks also play a strong role in modifying uses. According to the targets and contexts, Tiktok, Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook, are essential sources of decision -making, inspiration, brand discovery, which it is essential to integrate synergically into any Search Marketing strategy. Purchase media, social media, content marketing and SEO/SEA approaches must therefore think of being in concert.
You have to think “Global Search”, via an approach de-siloted for efforts and investments in digital marketing. This is the approach that the agency chose Cybercity To ensure that you systematically implement a strategic advice offer to anticipate and exceed the glass ceilings faced by advertisers as part of their SEO/SEA “Google-Oly” strategies. The necessary traction of branding on performance actions is indeed far too often badly measured and understoodeven sometimes ignored. Even though a study published at the end of 2024 at Datos / Semrush announced a figure of Almost 45% Google research carried out on brand names or assimilated (Source : https://www.abondance.com/20241206-759389-eude-recherches-google-revelations.html))
In this context which affects certain limits to what traditional Search marketing can bring as an incremental business to advertisers, Google (via Gemini/AI Overviews) and Microsoft (via its partnership with Openai) constantly strengthen the integration of AI In their research tools, to remain competitive in the face of this new competition from IA engines.
It is therefore all the more urgent to Understand how LLM (Large language models) on which the tools of ia-general are based perceive your brandto ensure that you remain essential actors in your sector tomorrow. A new acronym has even appeared to name this: GEO for “Generative Experience Optimization”.
Analyze the visibility and perception of a brand today is preparing for changes in use ::
- Are you a Source of information for LLM in your sector of activity?
- The sources used quote and sufficiently your brand So that it is part of the most frequent answers?
- Have the capacity, legitimacy and strike power to Become or remain a brand “Top of Mind” In your sector of activity in this IA-STIVE environment?
- What is the perception of your brand by LLM compared to your competitors?
- THE feedbackwhether they come from the media treatment or the UGC (User Generated Content, the content generated by users of your products or services) go in the direction of positive perception of your value offer?
- Is this value offer maximized in your communication, compared to the needs of your marketing targets? Generate her a speaking and position On the trends in your sector?
Create an audit of the presence of your brand now in the main IA research tools Allows to identify the limits, strengths and weaknesses of your products or services. These elements will be critical elements to emerge in research tools fed by LLM. All research tools will increasingly take into account brand preference, user feedback, your editorial imprint and your ability to demonstrate your Eeat (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Confidence) within your competitive ecosystem.
Why is it essential to look at these subjects? Because it would be a mistake to think that the low volumes of traffic sent to websites on the part of tools as chatgpt make it negligible. As we mentioned earlier, the change is already underway, with an offer of “IA agents” tools which will become exponentially multiplied, to assist humans in the realization of ever more varied and complex tasks. The interconnections between “traditional” engines and the tools powered by IA-Gen will gradually abolish the borders of the Open Web, while the “closed” platforms (overall: all social networks) will continue in parallel to partition or to pay dearly for their datain an isolationist approach aimed at imposing its own uses.
It is necessary now Consider that the website and the very notion of “traffic” may represent, in many sectors, that a very quickly limited portion of what really drains the consumer to a brand. Especially if we talk about the mission of “discovery” of the acquisition, therefore a logic that aims to obtain new customers who have never heard of you. It is also a symptomatic consequence for a tool like chatgptwhich often gives results of “research” or “conversation” which will cite or mention brands without sending traffic to their website.
If AI is a subject that can arouse many debates about its ethics or ecological footprint, it would today be strongly risky, strategically, to ignore its massive and inevitable deployment in the uses of tomorrow. This is all the more true in a sector of digital marketing and online information research to satisfy a need, whose rules of the game have actually changed for a long time.
