By Sam Hurley, Co-Founder and Managing Director at NOVOS For anyone who's worked in eCommerce SEO as long as I have (since 2013!), Google has been synonymous with SEO”the two have been inseparable for over a decade. But now Google faces a real challenger. This post examines AI's impact on Google and the broader Search industry. First, we'll focus on 3 key stages: the product, The Search Engine, and The Response. Then, we'll move on to what we think will happen to eCom SEO from 2025 onwards.

Stage 1: The Product

ChatGPT took Google by surprise with its launch. Combining a genuinely incredible product and Google's poor reactions (which I'll discuss further below), we've arrived at our current situation: ChatGPT has captured a significant portion of users, particularly those at the top of the funnel. As of November 2024, ChatGPT has over 200 million weekly active users, doubling YoY from 100 million in November 2023 - Ars Technica. ChatGPT is a brand identity on its own and is the only company to have successfully taken market share away from Google in the past 10 years. That's something to take notice of (see below).

Stage 2: The AI Search Engines

With ChatGPT launching a search engine, they've already done the hard part of acquiring a huge user base that defaults to them over Google, and now they are launching a product that services these users' needs instead of them needing to jump to Google. Many other AI-powered Search Engines have also been released in the last 2 years, including Perplexity, ecosia and Qwant. More on those here. Either way, tech start-ups think AI is a route to challenge and disrupt the search industry finally.

Stage 3: The Response

In short, Google has faced real competition for the first time and despite making attempts to respond to ChatGPT, they did not gain competitive advantage as they missed the opportunity to be first to market.

Where Are We Today?

Coming to the end of 2024 - It's important to get off the hype train and look at what the reality is today: