Hey friend!

Google’s taking up a lot of news real estate these days from its antitrust battle with the DOJ to the integration of ads in its AI Overviews. Oh, and then there’s OpenAI. Outside of its recent talent exodus and potential for-profit transition, it’s got its wheels turning with SearchGPT’s public release in the next few months.

Let’s dive in!

–Thenuka

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What’s new in AI and content?

⚖️ The Department of Justice considers breaking up Google

Quick refresher: A federal judge declared Google a monopoly in search and advertising markets this past August. Since then, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has begun proposing potential solutions to restore competition for search engines. Suggested remedies go beyond splitting Google into separate entities and include sharing its search index and AI data with competitors, limiting exclusive search distribution deals (like with Apple), and increasing transparency in ad auctions. To no one’s surprise, Google has strongly opposed these proposals, arguing that they could harm innovation, user privacy, and disrupt the tech ecosystem. 

• What this means for you: To be clear, nothing’s set in stone yet. But on the horizon, marketers may face a more diversified search ecosystem, one that’ll require optimizing for multiple search engines and advertising platforms rather than just Google. Time will tell—we’re keeping a close eye here to see what happens next.

👀 Google’s AI Overviews now include ads

Antitrust drama aside, Google continues to tweak its search experience. One of its latest updates: ads in its AI Overviews are now live. These ads display as product suggestions under a “Sponsored” label and appear only for queries with a commercial angle. While Google began testing the feature back in May, it’s now rolling out more broadly, beginning with U.S. mobile users.

• What this means for you: Remember when SEOs complained about Google pushing organic results further down its SERPs in favor of paid ads? This development is reminiscent of that, with traditional search results losing ground yet again but to both ads and AI. On the bright side, Google’s AI Overviews display cited pages more prominently than before, so organic traffic hasn’t totally disappeared.  

🥣 SearchGPT will be integrated into ChatGPT by year-end

Early reports of OpenAI’s SearchGPT may have been lukewarm, but that’s not stopping the public release of the AI-powered search engine. At a recent conference in Brussels, OpenAI’s head of media Varun Shetty announced that SearchGPT will be launched as part of ChatGPT by the end of 2024. Though it’ll include links to publisher websites, Varun also said that OpenAI doesn’t currently plan to share SearchGPT ad revenue with publishers, claiming traffic to be fair enough compensation. This has sparked some controversy, but nothing’s finalized yet. In Varun’s words, “This will be something that we’re thinking a lot about, but I think we’re going to start with this proposition of traffic.”

• What this means for you: SearchGPT has been called the “Google killer” and Grim Reaper for Google rankings since it promises to simplify search so users can find what they’re looking for faster. While SearchGPT could disrupt the traditional search experience, there’s no need to panic yet. According to one firm, SearchGPT drives more traffic than Perplexity, so it’s not likely users will stop clicking on links altogether. 

Expert Insights

🔍 Eli Schwartz: “Mid-funnel is where I think SEO should be because now you can do purposeful, intentful SEO optimization.”

SEO veteran (and one of daydream’s investors) Eli Schwartz is on a roll with yet another insightful interview—this time, on the GTM Podcast. He describes the difference between focusing on user intent versus users’ keyword searches, and also explains how AI isn’t a silver bullet to content generation. “If you need to create content and you use AI to create the content, but it lacks emotion and depth, that’s the issue,” Eli says. “AI is not the issue—it’s really the intent and purpose of the content creation.”

>> Listen to the episode

🚘 Kevin Indig: “Organic traffic is a strong signal for AI Overview visibility.”

Growth and search expert Kevin Indig analyzed more than 500,000 AI Overviews to understand how websites can get cited in them. According to his research, there’s a strong correlation (0.714) between organic traffic and AI Overview visibility. In other words, ranking well organically can increase your likelihood of getting cited in AI Overviews. Kevin also notes the importance of aligning content with user intent, as meeting user needs in specific queries appears to boost AI Overview inclusion. 

>> Read the complete breakdown