If you step back to consider just how big the internet is, it’s easier to understand why search engines lie at the heart of it. For decades, search engines have served as the primary gateway to the internet, enabling users to discover websites, articles, images, videos, products, and services and find the information they need.
The essential role of search has made it indispensable to digital marketing, an industry that is in the midst of being disrupted by generative AI applications for the better.
Today, brands around the world use search engine optimisation (SEO) as well as search engine marketing (SEM) with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to generate traffic, encourage product discovery, drive conversions and more.
Though still in nascent stages, the integration of generative AI with search is poised to elevate SEO and create new playing fields for SEM — particularly in the diverse and digitally-first APAC region. As industry leaders like Microsoft’s Bing and Google lay the groundwork for this new paradigm, the time for brands to educate themselves on the inherent opportunities of generative search is now.
A new era of personalised search
When it comes to AI, innovations to search have been ongoing, with applications like Google’s iterative AI helping marketers drive efficiencies for many years now. But generative AI’s ability to converse with users and be trained on the fly has the potential to fundamentally change the way people use and interact with search.
For example, Google’s SGE (currently an experiment in Search Labs) now uses AI on search queries to provide an answer. In Google’s case, the user’s entire Knowledge Graph would likely be deployed to ensure that generative AI provides the most relevant information for the user since Google prizes relevancy and trust above all else. SGE also cites sources when responding to the query, allowing users to click through to cited websites to learn more.
While this isn’t too different from current search capabilities, users can now also choose to stay on the search page to ask follow-up questions, continuing their conversation with the AI and narrowing the scope of their research until they find their desired solution. Each question helps the generative AI to build a deeply tailored and unique user journey funnel — all without leaving the Search page.
Also Read: Rewriting the creation process of ad creatives using generative AI
To understand the opportunities this new search format offers to businesses, let’s consider an e-commerce use case. Say you are trying to decide which ski jacket to purchase for a winter trip; you could start with a broad question about different types of ski jackets, then ask the AI to compare the pros and cons of a particular type of jacket before finally asking it to find a retailer who stocks that jacket, and purchasing on their website.
This change will have huge implications for Organic and Paid Search. For organic, instead of appearing at the top of the search results page, the objective could be to appear as one of the first sources cited by the AI.
Similarly, for Paid, the objective would revolve around being the first ad to be shown during the conversation, which means an ad would have to be deemed by the AI as being the most relevant to the user’s search experience.
While it’s still too early to tell how ad placements or AI optimisation will work, one thing remains certain — having relevant, rich content that is crawlable by the AI will be the key to “winning” in the era of generative search.
Optimising for generative search in APAC
As one of the most populous and diverse regions that are leading the world in internet penetration and mobile adoption, APAC’s users and brands have everything to gain from the personalised and localised experience that generative search offers.
Also Read: How to leverage personalised advertising in 2023
For example, Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine in the world, holding over 85 per cent of the global search market share. But in APAC, localised search engines like Baidu (China), Naver (South Korea), and Yahoo.jp (Japan) play integral roles in the daily lives of users in their respective regions. And some platforms are already ahead in the AI game.
South Korea’s Naver, for example, integrated AI in late 2021 to support a significant shift in South Korean search behaviours becoming more “exploratory,” with users going deeper into topics that aligned with their interests and search intent. Naver saw a significant increase in these exploratory searches, accounting for nearly 65 per cent of all queries.
As a brand, now is the time to review your SEO and SEM strategies and consider if additional attention to localised content, ad budgets, or search engines will be beneficial to your targeting.
Considering APAC’s high rate of mobile adoption, it is also worth considering how you can optimise your strategies to be mobile-first. Region-specific nuances and search best practices will be key to setting up for success in the new era of generative search.
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