AI Chatbots and the Evolution of Digital Search: A Threat to Traditional Engines?
Recently, Gartner, a well-known American consulting firm, made a rather bold prediction: by 2026, the number of visits to traditional search engines will drop by 25%. The reason is that AI chatbots and other virtual assistants have taken away this market share. The rise of generative AI raises legitimate concerns, and the trend reflects the changing landscape of digital marketing, underscoring the growing importance of social platforms and AI chatbots in information search and advertising. They pose a potential competitive threat to traditional search engines.
Today, many businesses are integrating AI chatbots on their websites to interact with visitors, such as Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa. They provide users with a direct way to interact and search for information through built-in artificial intelligence chatbots, free from the constraints of leaving the platform. This new trend not only increases user retention and engagement but also attracts potential users looking for new ways to search for online content. Taking Facebook as an example, language assistants play a key role in assisting users with inquiries, providing product information, and even facilitating transactions. This trend also reduces users’ dependence on traditional search engines, marking the arrival of a new era of information search.
Secondly, social platforms are becoming new ways to search for information. For example, TikTok is trying out a new feature called Taco. Taco is an AI-powered chatbot that conducts conversations in natural language and recommends videos based on the user’s needs. Taco changes the way people search and browse videos on the app, making it easier and faster for people to find the videos they love. They provide a more interactive and personalized content search experience than traditional search engines.
Finally, if these social platforms succeed in using AI chatbots as advertising channels, advertisers can directly reach users who are searching for content related to their products or services. This could pose a challenge to search advertising revenue from traditional search engines like Google, which relies heavily on search advertising as its main source of revenue.
AI chatbots serve as an innovative and exciting feature that showcases the huge advancements in AI technology and its potential power on social media platforms. This phenomenon highlights the fierce competition and dynamic changes in the search market, while also revealing that there is still a lot of room for improvement and innovation in this area waiting to be explored.
