Google’s Restructuring and the Evolution of Internet Search

Google made news last week when it announced buyout offers for employees in its Knowledge and Info Division. These restructuring buyouts affect people working in search, ads and commerce. Google acknowledged reality by saying these buyouts will free up resources to focus more on artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLM) moving forward. Corporate speak like this takes place regularly, but an element of this announcement created an earthquake for the marketing world. It planted a stake saying the evolution of internet search has arrived.

History of Search

For the past quarter century, a primary goal of marketing endeavors has been to get a URL placed as close to the top of a Google search results page as possible. A high search result position equates to relevance with a page one or page two result being essential. Companies have historically been able to achieve a high search result placement one of two ways: paid and organic.

Paid Search

Paid search essentially allows an advertiser to buy their way to the top of a user search. One can, in effect, bid on a search term or string, and if a user searches on that term or string, the highest bidder appears first, the next highest bidder second, and so on. Within the Google environment, paid search returns are easy to spot as they contain a “Sponsored” icon within the block.

Organic Search

Organic search operates more as an earned search type of placement. With a combination of art and science, sites with dynamic relevant content that match search topics earn their way to the top of a search return. One can detect organic results by the absence of a “Sponsored” icon within the block.

As a marketing agency, we make recommendations to clients about when paid ads make sense and challenge ourselves to help our them appear as high as possible on applicable organic search results.

The Ebbing of Traditional Search

Why does Google’s recent employee buyout announcement create apprehension within the marketing world? Google says that traditional search (Google, Bing, Yahoo) is on a downward trajectory and will be replaced by large language models with chatbot interfaces like ChatGPT (OpenAI), Copilot (Microsoft), Grok (X, formerly Twitter), and Gemini (Google) as the preferred method of search soon.

Should this revelation concern advertisers and consumers? I would argue that it should. While some say that the chatbot revolution and its effect on advertising parallels what traditional search did to the yellow pages, I believe this change will be different and not all good. The main difference in the evolution of internet search lies in the volume and choice of the returned information.

Differences Between Traditional and Chatbot Search Results

A query in traditional search returns a page with 10-20 URLs featuring a mix of paid and organic results. As a user, I determine which links to click and read. In response to a chatbot query, I see and am captive to the one response that the model returns. From a paid standpoint, I fear that those with deep pockets will crowd out the little guys.

When I do a traditional search about where I can buy a hammer in my zip code, I get return links to Home Depot, Lowe’s, Menards, a couple of local independents, random blog posts, and articles about hammers. Though most LLMs still operate in a revenue-neutral mode, I foresee a future where a chatbot query will point me towards the advertiser with the largest budget as my choice with no opportunity for me to scroll and choose multiple options. Unless I ask the chatbot for more options, I won’t get them.

For those companies with small or no paid budgets, they likely will not appear in the query result, and organic results will likely disappear altogether without additional prompting of the chatbot. Though LLMs claim they do not currently work in an ad-buy format, I suspect they will soon. In 1999, Google advertised that it “is a pure search engine – no weather, no news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distraction, no portal litter.” Investors like a decent return on their money, and this ad copy resides as a humorous footnote.

User Behavior

Marketers will also be pressed to work through how a user interacts with the LLM through their chatbot. With traditional search, advertisers have been challenged with choosing the most applicable search terms to invest in and creating web content that earns organic placement. Search terms have been static targets. LLMs are learning user preferences and tailoring responses to them. I fear that chatbot queries will begin to tell the user what it thinks they want to hear rather than feeding them a variety of options from which to choose.

The great upside to LLMs includes their ability to customize content as users can broaden or narrow a search request based on a response. However, this customization may favor those with the largest budgets and create additional barriers to entry for new market participants. Creative marketers are on notice to figure out a way to overcome this challenge.

Call to Action

As we’ve started talking to our clients about this topic, many aren’t sure where to start or how to focus their resources. This evolution of internet search is the next great revolution of marketing. If you need help sorting out your marketing prioritization, reach out to us here.