5 things your brand needs to do to adapt to AI-powered online searches

 

From chatbot-assisted customer service to AI-based search engines like Perplexity, artificial intelligence (AI) finds new ways into the everyday life of brands and consumers alike.

 

No wonder that the market is booming: currently measured at $600 billion, the global AI market is expected to quintuple its value to $3,000 billion until 2030. The Year-on-Year growth of the market is presently estimated to be ca. 26%.

 

A recent study discovered that around 7 in 20 organisations use AI, with almost a 100 million people globally working directly with AI.

 

 

Online searches transformed by AI

One of the highest-valued aspects of AI is its flexibility and integration capabilities into already existing processes. The nature of online searches, for instance, is changing right in front of our eyes due to AI. Instead of a collection of links, consumers are now increasingly looking for ready-made and personalised answers to their online searches.

 

Traditional search engines have to keep up with the demand. For example, Google has introduced a comprehensive answer to online queries provided by generative AI, which is displayed right on top of the traditional link-based search results.

 

 

Screenshot of a random Google search with the answer provided by gen AI on top

 

 

Companies all around the world have to adapt their strategies to emerging AI-based online search habits, and your brand is no exception. Take a look at the five simple ways below that could help you adapt.

 

 

1. Shift toward direct answers and reduced web traffic

Traditional search engines present users with a list of links that relate to the keywords they typed into the search box. AI-based internet searches, however, result in a comprehensive text with full sentences. In other words, users don’t have to click through links to find what they’re looking for. Instead, they get a ready-made answer in a matter of seconds.

 

This means that many users won’t click through to your website anymore. The numbers prove it: almost 60% of all Google searches are finished without clicking on any of the results, contributing to a 15-25% decline in organic web traffic.

 

| 60% of all Google searches are finished without clicking on any of the results

 

Unfortunately, this means that you will have to adjust your brand’s content marketing strategy to ensure that you’re still visible to consumers and can engage them even if they don’t end up clicking through to your site.

  

 

2. Personalisation and analysation of user intent

AI perfects its skills by learning the ways and preferences of its users. This is true for AI-powered online searches as well, which means that with each new query, the search engine will be able to create ever more personalised content that aligns with its user’s intent, maybe even at the expense of proper keyword matching.

 

As an increasing number of consumers begin to expect this level of personalisation, you have to adapt your brand’s web content to better address your customers’ evolving intent and their ever-changing needs. To be able to do so, you’ll need a robust data collection and analytics tool to analyse and learn from your customers’ online behaviour.

 

 

Illustration of the data collection process

  

 

3. Evolving SEO and content strategies

With new ways of accessing the internet (e.g. via voice assistants), the traditional search method of typing keywords into a box has started to give way to new methods. Voice command, for example, is becoming increasingly popular, as are picture-based searches via Google Lens and queries run via conversational AI tools like ChatGPT.

 

Find out how voice commerce changes online shopping!

 

This means that searches with full sentences spoken into a microphone are just as common as searches with no words at all, only pictures pasted into the search bar. This is true for general inquiries and product searches as well, and it’s this latter that brands active in e-Commerce have to consider.

 

Traditional, keyword-focused SEO is not sufficient in meeting this new demand. You need to optimise your brand’s content for voice and picture-based searches, as well as those generated via ChatGPT & Co.

 

  

4. The rise of multimodal and conversational search

Keeping up with the new online search methods is crucial, but even more importantly, you have to be aware that consumers now tend to use a combination of methods during one single search. For example, a consumer may take a photo of a product they like, then ask their voice assistant to find them a similar product.

 

This multimodal way of searching requires your brand to adapt your content accordingly. AI search engines that respond to these queries take their answers from existing web content, and tend to prioritise content that’s relevant, comes from an appropriate context and fits its user’s intent.

 

This means that featuring high-quality, professional and structured content on your brand’s website is more important than ever.

 

Related topics

AI and online brand protection

 

How voice commerce changes online shopping

 

Meta AI and online brand protection

 

 

5. Maintaining brand trust and ensuring brand authenticity amid AI-driven search and discovery

AI-based online searches are increasingly becoming the primary point of contact between your brand and potential customers. Ensuring that your website content is ready to be crawled and featured by AI in its response is the best way to create new connections and strengthen customer loyalty.

 

This means that it’s critical to have accurate and consistent content on your website. Mistakes and outdated content can be amplified by AI, resulting in your brand’s loss of face and consumer trust. And that’s not all.

 

| AI-based online searches are becoming the primary point of contact between your brand and potential customers

 

AI, like many other technologies, is a double-edged sword. Fraudsters who take the time to create AI-friendly content may impersonate your brand and steal your customers. Indeed, a professional website and structured, high-quality content, including images, can convince AI search tools and virtual assistants to feature fraudulent content in their response, which elevates the fraudsters and damages your brand integrity.

 

To prevent this from happening, you need to actively monitor how your brand appears in AI-based searches and educate your customers about your official online channels. When you discover that fraudulent content is featured in AI-generated responses to queries about your brand/products, you have to actively engage with domain providers and/or e-Commerce platforms to delete the infringing content.

 

Or you can just let globaleyez do that.

 

 

Online brand protection in the age of AI-based searches

As AI responses to online searches are structured into a compelling, coherent text, they have a much greater power in convincing consumers to take a specific action than a mere collection of links. This unfortunately means that should fraudulent content that infringes on your brand’s IP rights find its way to a response, consumers will be much more likely to believe it and purchase products from the fraudsters.

 

This makes online brand protection more important than ever.

 

Luckily, globaleyez’s services and solutions work just as well with AI-based searches as with traditional ones. Our monitoring services detect IP-infringing content anywhere on the internet. This includes product listings on over 150 online marketplaces worldwide, fraudulent website domains, images and social media posts and listings as well.

 

Our work combines specialised software tools and intuitive human expertise, bringing you the best of both worlds to ensure the safety of your brand’s IP rights.

 

Once we zero in on fraudulent content, we can ensure its removal from the internet as soon as possible to put a stop to the damage it causes to your brand.

 

 

Conclusion

AI-based searches redefine the way users search for information and products online. If your brand wants to keep up, it’s best to adapt your content to accommodate AI search engines.

 

Unfortunately, fraudsters may take advantage of AI to impersonate your brand, infringe on your IP rights and damage your reputation. Don’t let this happen to you!

 

Contact us and let’s devise a comprehensive online brand protection strategy to safeguard your IP rights in the age of AI.