The rise of generative AI in search engines like Google threatens the $68 billion search engine optimization (SEO) industry.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT aim to provide direct answers to user queries, bypassing the need for users to click on search results.
This could render SEO efforts useless and impact the revenues of SEO consultants and search engines.
However, generative AI search engines still face challenges such as providing incorrect or plagiarized answers, and gaining user trust and loyalty.
Search engines have been quick to experiment with generative AI to improve search results, with Google's Bard, Microsoft's Bing AI, Baidu's ERNIE, and DuckDuckGo's DuckAssist being examples of this approach.
As the quality of AI-generated answers improves, users will have less incentive to browse through search result listings, impacting the revenues of SEO consultants and search engines.
The SEO industry generated $68.1 billion globally in 2022 and was expected to reach $129.6 billion by 2030, but the emergence of generative AI puts the industry at risk of obsolescence.
Generative AI search engines are still in their infancy and face challenges such as providing incorrect or plagiarized answers, limiting their trust and loyalty among users.
However, with the resources available to researchers, it is safe to assume that generative AI models will improve over time, leading to the potential death of the SEO industry.
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