{"id":9205,"date":"2024-08-04T16:10:36","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T23:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/?p=9205"},"modified":"2024-08-04T16:11:30","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T23:11:30","slug":"new-research-so-far-ai-is-not-disrupting-search-or-making-a-dent-in-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/new-research-so-far-ai-is-not-disrupting-search-or-making-a-dent-in-google\/","title":{"rendered":"New Research: So Far, AI is Not Disrupting Search or Making a Dent in Google"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The good folks at Sonata Insights<\/a> recently analyzed Datos<\/a>‘ clickstream panel to uncover consumer search behavior insights in the “age of AI”<\/a>. If you’re in the digital marketing world, it’s probably worth your time to download and read. Last Friday, I got access to the report and asked Datos for permission to share a few of the big findings and charts. Have a look:<\/p>\n\n\n

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This is a fairly solid, apples to apples comparison of traffic. It shows the visits\/month on desktop to Google vs. the major players in AI\/LLM search. In May of 2024, Google has slightly more desktop visits than they did in May of 2023 (+1.4% growth), while the largest of the AI search players by this metric (Perplexity), was at 15.69 (+42% growth from the year prior).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might be thinking Google’s gone from 16X Perplexity’s size to only ~11X, but… this is only showing visits, not searches. Sonata and Datos graphed that, but removed the axis details, unfortunately:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, they did include this key data point: Google had more than 290x the number of search users as Perplexity in May. And compared to Google’s ~200 “events” (i.e. searches) per searcher per month, Perplexity is ~15. In essence, Perplexity’s users are about 7.5% as active on the platform as Google’s users are on Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s not to say AI search isn’t growing! It is. And more rapidly than the much more mature Google search engine. But, Perplexity is similar most similar in traffic, searches, and searches\/searcher to Instacart or Kroger. As of right now, DuckDuckGo looks like a far more interesting potential competitor. I suspect the only reason they don’t get the same media attention is that we’re deep in the AI\/LLM hype cycle, and headlines are far more likely to draw interest if they include some mention of an AI-centric product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the ways I like to compare interest in my circles\/network (where LLM\/AI hype absolutely dominates my feed, especially on LinkedIn) is to compare it to mainstream, mature topics with steady interest on Google Trends.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Interest in AI search engines is absolutely big and growing. But do the topics get as many searches as a similarly-B2B subject like SEO? Or a mature, mainstream consumer topic like dinosaurs? Not yet<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Datos and Sonata’s report did have a few other findings worth mentioning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n