There was a pre-search-engine age. It’s arduous to conceive of now, however there was. Even within the early days of search engines like google, when Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, and Excite nonetheless competed for the crown, I can keep in mind net portals. Pages that I’d begin at, within the “pc room” in school, to navigate and discover the online not by looking, however by clicking on organized hyperlinks.

To start with, there have been net portals. The web was with out kind and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

These had been already the dying throes of a earlier web age. Search engine dominance, and particularly Google dominance, has been the norm for this type of journey for many years now. It’s all that many SEOs have ever recognized.

However what comes subsequent?

Individuals have talked for a very long time about existential threats to Google’s dominance, and sometimes, implicitly, by extension, search engine optimisation. You’ll have heard the claims that Amazon or YouTube at the moment are most popular engines for sure sorts of search, or that Google goes to battle in opposition to the distinctive technological benefits of Apple, AI chatbots, the distinctive regional benefits of Baidu, or the distinctive format benefits of TikTok. Or possibly you’ve even heard that folks desire to limit their searches solely to Reddit. Even mainstream retailers are suggesting that Google search high quality could also be in decline.

This put up will not be concerning the well being of Google search as a product, or concerning the implications of enhancing AI merchandise to your search engine optimisation technique proper now. (Though, I do know of a minimum of one put up for this weblog being written on that subject!) As a substitute, this put up is about which of those threats, if any, truly stand an opportunity of unseating Google’s dominance.

In what capability?

To ask what would possibly take Google’s function, we should first ask what function it’s that we’re serious about. Google is many issues, and presumably a part of the rationale Google’s doom is so typically predicted is that we’re not at all times speaking concerning the similar particular issues.

What precisely is it that search engines like google as a style, after which Google, have dominated? Maybe we’d imply:

• The place you’d begin to discover a net web page on a website you’ve not but found? For instance, you won’t know but what the very best website is for a given subject.

• The place you’d begin to discover a net web page on a website you’re already aware of? Maybe you’re looking on Google hoping to see a end result from Reddit, or from Wikipedia.

• The place you’d begin to reply a given query? So possibly you’d be pleased with a non-web end result so long as it answered your query.

• The place you’d begin to full a job? So, once more, the very best reply won’t be an internet web page in any respect.

The reality is that the current actuality blurs these use instances to the purpose of it not being helpful to separate them. However for Google to get replaced by one thing that maintains this shut alignment, it’d should be a detailed peer competitor.

The plain pretenders

There are two that come to thoughts, as equally resourced firms making an attempt comparable issues by way of the same methodology (an internet index): Bing and Apple.

I don’t need to be dismissive of Bing, or of the worth of somebody — anybody — else sustaining the same sufficient competitor to maintain Google considerably sincere. Though it’s typically mocked in search engine optimisation circles, Bing in actuality will not be so a few years behind Google at any given level. However, actually, it’s arduous to see the occasions that might result in Bing supplanting Google at its personal sport. It’s simply too comparable for folks to make the swap. One chance primarily based on latest information is for Bing to grow to be much less comparable, pursuing one of many exact alternate options I’ll cowl beneath – however extra on that once we get to it.

Apple, however, is doing one thing comparable, however with some distinctive benefits. I have to credit score my former colleague (and 2023 Mozcon speaker) Tom Anthony who has been very prescient round Apple’s strikes on this house, going as far as to backward-engineer Apple search outcomes that weren’t speculated to be publicly accessible. Apple can do issues that Bing can’t, leveraging Apple’s app ecosystem and machine integration to supply search outcomes that skip sure steps of a consumer journey in ways in which Google can’t, or won’t.

The difficulty with Apple as a Google search competitor is clear, although. The distinctive benefits, as I mentioned, are to do with apps and {hardware}. Apple units are costly — prohibitively so. (This varies by market – within the US, with the bottom value of a telephone contract being so excessive, iPhones are extra palatable and have a notably larger market share than in Europe, for instance. However, that’s a subject for one more day – both manner…). There’s a pretty arduous cap in the marketplace share of a search engine that’s solely superior on high-end units, and never solely that, however ones from a selected model.

So might Apple take a giant chunk out of Google? Sure, it could already quietly have completed so with numerous iOS modifications pushing the prevalence of Apple’s personal search outcomes. However completely substitute Google? Impossible.

You’ll be able to say the identical for regional rivals like Baidu, Yandex, or Naver. These could effectively constantly beat out Google in their very own backyards, and maybe even unfold to close by international locations and areas, nevertheless it’s arduous to see them beating Google in its personal yard(s).

Revolution, not evolution

So what about rivals that substitute Google by doing one thing completely completely different, to unravel the identical issues? The truth is that a variety of the issues we remedy proper now with net search, aren’t truly effectively suited to net search. The truth that one thing like a Google House will typically reply your questions by basically studying out a featured snippet is a symptom of Google’s dominance, not a symptom of net search being effectively suited to that use case. Even Google themselves acknowledge this, and betray that in instruments like Google Translate, clocks, calculators, and so forth, embedded in SERPs. So who would possibly the extra disruptive threats be?

One title that got here up loads in 2022 is TikTok, and I’d level you to this glorious put up by Lidia Infante on this very weblog. To sum up her argument, TikTok can take market share from Google, however it could’t substitute Google completely. TikTok is just too specialised (in video format and sure subject areas), and the standard assurance is just too weak. So, once more, now we have a competitor that chips away at Google with out changing it.

Then after all, most just lately, SEOs of Twitter have been proper to level out that for a lot of queries, ChatGPT produces higher responses than Google. Take this instance, “excel question for extraction the area title from a url”:

The ChatGPT end result above is much extra informative and straightforward to comply with. Nevertheless, like TikTok, this solely works for sure issues. ChatGPT will not be an internet search engine:

So it’s important to be prepared to desert the premise that your end result needs to be an internet web page. Which, on this context, comes all the way down to: do you belief a solution if you happen to don’t know who wrote it? ChatGTP and comparable applied sciences have entry to “information” sourced from the online, like Google, however they don’t cite a supply. Certainly, it will be immensely tough to hint the supply of their numerous claims, a few of which appear fairly… odd.

Just like TikTok, then, that is one thing I’d desire to Google for a selected type of question. On this specific case, the type of question that beforehand took me to StackOverflow. However I’m not going to ask it for mortgage recommendation.

I famous above that Bing is rumored to be integrating ChatGPT with its personal search product. This enlarges the menace to Google in that it makes this know-how extra accessible, however actually, the identical qualms apply – there are numerous, many queries for which this isn’t useful. Even when Bing can hybridize these applied sciences right into a “better of each” of conventional net search and NLP, effectively – that’s already the street Google goes down.

The opposite problem with this “ChatAI as search” mannequin is an financial one. Google and Amazon have each already come to the conclusion that the kind of queries requested of their private assistant units are barely, if in any respect, financial to run – due to the restricted monetization alternatives for purely informational queries. Maybe my distinction above, about what we imply by changing Google, may be very related right here – a few of our use instances of Google as a search engine are literally only a loss chief for others. As such, maybe this bundling of disparate makes use of is important.

The King is dea… wait, wait, he’s nonetheless respiratory

Variety of specific core search queries powered by search engines like google in the USA as of January 2022 – by way of Statista

Finally, these threats look set to chip away at Google, not substitute it. At worst, a broad monopoly shall be sliced up and shrunk, and that doesn’t really feel like all nice evil. For SEOs, we should always concentrate on these new search engines like google, and these new “search engines like google”, and of the dangers hooked up to being locked into the Google ecosystem. However don’t neglect the chart above: the unique pie will not be going wherever. The Google search engine optimisation sport continues to be not a foul sport to be enjoying.