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Is it the end of Google Search as we know it?

By Strategy Staff
July 3, 2024

This piece was originally published in the Summer 2024 issue of strategy magazine

By Will Novosedlik

Soon, you will notice something different at the top of your Google search results pages.

“AI Overviews” are already being tested in the U.S., but the company plans to expand to other countries by the end of 2024. When you use Google Search, a box of AI-generated text will appear at the top of the search results, with links to external websites. Traditional search results will appear below the AI Overviews.

In a blog post from Google VP Liz Reid, AI Overviews results are generated using the company’s large language model (LLM), Gemini, and are designed for instances when someone wants to “get both a quick overview of a topic and links to learn more.”

But observers say it is far more grave than that. According to Scott Rosenberg, managing editor at tech journal AXIOS, Google’s shift toward AI-generated search results, displacing the familiar list of links, is “rewiring” the internet – and could accelerate the decline of the World Wide Web.

Gartner VP Alan Antin predicts a 25% decline in search traffic by 2026 due to AI chatbots, which could lead to a decrease in the importance of web pages. This prediction is based on Gartner’s observation that more and more people are using chatbots like ChatGPT to answer questions they would have normally done with search.

Rosenberg says that the search engine still relies on web-based information, but it doesn’t reward the creators of that information with users’ visits. Publishers and retailers are terrified that this may mean the demise of their businesses.

Today’s web exists because millions of people have spent decades growing it with their written content and images. That process is the only reason today’s AI is able to know anything about anything. As Bruno Pisano, founder of SEO agency LaV1, suggests: “It’s hard to see why people would bother sharing their expertise if their posts don’t get visited by seekers of information and instead just become fodder for AI to regurgitate.”