Eddy Cue, Apple’s services chief, said he believes that AI search engines will eventually replace standard search engines such as Google, per Bloomberg. I think Google is already moving in that direction with AI often at the top of their search results. The article says that Alphabet stock dropped after the Eddy Cue statement but I don’t really see how AI is going to hurt google. It is going to hurt people like me; not that I’ve ever benefited that much from SEO anyway. But I don’t see how it will hurt google.
As a webmaster, AI bothers me, but I love AI as someone researching for information while writing. The more information at my fingertips, the better. And the truth is most of us are geared more toward writing entertainment pieces than authoritative pieces. Most of us have realized we need to do videos, stream, and write our eBooks as entertainers. And yes, still maintain our websites with opinions and entertainment in mind. We know that we will have to depend more on getting traffic where we can, as the search engine traffic will become less and less.
Cue is eyeing AI services from OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic as potential search options in Apple’s Safari browser in the future, he said as he was testifying in a federal court in Washington as part of the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alphabet. The executive noted that searches on Safari declined for the first time in April.
Gartner predicts that search engine volume will drop by 25% by 2026, partly due to AI chatbots.
People who have mastered SEO in the past (not me) say that:
Google is forever changed and is becoming more of an answer engine than a search engine. That’s because AI Overviews generate answers rather than pointing searchers to websites, which studies have shown is hurting traffic and decreasing CTRs for many types of websites.
