OpenAI Web Browser: Another Step Towards No-Click Search
Here’s the thing: for the last 30 years we’ve been pandering to search engines finding any which way we could to rank as high on page 1 of Google as possible. The tides are shifting and now we have a bigger issue. No-click search, and its implications on websites altogether.
The conundrum is clear. We’ve invested hundreds of thousands into our websites and SEO over the last 30 years and the thought of that vanishing in the future is enough to make one sea sick.
But if we look between the lines, my opinion is that websites aren’t going to vanish overnight or even in the future. I’m thinking they’ll phase out more like the way the government thinks ICE vehicles will as they push toward 100% EV mandates by 2035. What I mean to say is that I think website will be here for a while.
OpenAI, the creators of the famed chatgpt have signaled that they are working on a gpt-powered web browser. Google, on the other hand, has already rolled out their SGE (search generative experience) in SERPs and I’m sure Bing is up to something (though I rarely find the interest to go and check, tbh).
Check out this episode of The Automotive Troublemaker, where Paul J. Daly and Kyle Mountsier talk about it.
Where do we go from here? — This is the time to double, triple, and quadruple down on your website content. There are some opinions in our industry that nothing you post on your website (blogs, pages, landing pages, etc.) will make a difference when compared to national sites like cars.com, etc. but here’s what I think: Look at your data. What is it showing you as far as opportunities are concerned?
In a no-click search environment, we get to flip the script a little bit. Instead of pandering to search engines alone, they need our content to make their product more well-rounded. That means our content should focus on relevancy to a given target audience, and accessibility — meaning the robots can access it easily for indexing.
I don’t see the primary purpose of search engines changing in the near future. They want to provide the most relevant search results as close to the searchers physical location as possible. This means that the more relevant content we create, our authrotiy increases. The more our authority incresases, the more accessible we are to robots. The more accessible we become to robots, the better chance we have for them to pull our information as a source over our competitors.
I wrote about this in more detail here, if you’re curious about how to bring it altogether.
AI browsers, no-click search, and whatever else is coming our way should be viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat. Those who adopt early and evolve will grow into the next era of the internet.
