The long list of links is disappearing
For years, being found on Google was simple enough. Someone searched. Google ranked all the options. You tried to get your link near the top.
Today, that endless list of blue links is disappearing. Google has publicly shared that it intends to completely do away with its traditional list of links within the next few months.
Google and ChatGPT have stopped showing dozens of options. They have started recommending only the one or two businesses they trust the most.
Google and ChatGPT have stopped showing dozens of options and started recommending one or two businesses.
The numbers show how quickly search is changing
At Atlas, we publish a lot of research data. In two recent studies, we found that 84 percent of Google searches produced a summarized AI answer, also known as an AI Overview.
We also found that Google is mentioning local businesses nearly 75 percent less often than it was just two years ago.
Google is mentioning local businesses nearly 75 percent less often than it was two years ago.
The new road is bypassing local businesses
The metaphor I keep coming back to is Route 66.
Pixar’s Cars showed us a once-thriving town that was erased from the map when the new interstate bypassed it. That is exactly what is happening with modern AI-based search.
Customers are not sorting through and visiting a dozen sites anymore. Google and ChatGPT recommend only one or two local businesses for the customer to consider.
Those are not necessarily the best options. They are the options that best align with the rewritten rules of AI-based search.
The business may not have changed. The road customers use to discover it has.
The question is no longer where you rank
Rankings are quickly dying on Google, and they do not even exist on ChatGPT. The question has become, “Are we even getting mentioned in online search?”
Virtually every local business is being erased because most of us are not giving the new AI-based algorithms what they need to understand, trust, and recommend us.
Your experience, trustworthiness, and expertise do not matter to AI-based search if you do not structure that information in the way these new algorithms require.
Are we even getting mentioned in online search?
Learning the new rules creates the opportunity
That is terrible news for business leaders who roll their eyes at AI search and ignore these changes.
For business leaders who make it a priority to understand what is happening, it could become one of the best business decisions they ever look back on.
The next lesson gets tactical with the three specific things AI-based search needs in order to understand, trust, and recommend your business on a regular basis.