Digital Insights

Is ChatGPT Really a Google Search Killer?

I remember about a decade or so ago that people declared Email was dead. Let’s just say that Email has remained an incredibly viable marketing channel for B2B and B2C companies.

Now, there is a new cry! Search Engines are dead and CHATGPT is the Search Killer.

Yes, ChatGPT has taken on 2% of the “Search” market. It is growing, useful and getting a lot of buzz. However, it is a different beast. Why should I explain when AI can do it for me.

When doing research for a client, I asked CHATGPT if “how many people search for these types of products on CHATGPT”

🚨RESPONSE (with some editing to protect the client)🚨

ChatGPT isn’t a traditional search engine, so there’s no publicly available “search-volume” data for queries people make here. In other words, we can’t tell you “X people ask about [client topic] on ChatGPT each month”—those logs are private to OpenAI and not exposed as analytics.

However, in practice:

Marketers and R&D teams do use ChatGPT to:

👉 Brainstorm product-positioning language

👉 Get product or service ideas

👉 Compare products

To gauge real-world demand, you’ll still want to rely on:

✅ Search engines (Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs) for hard volume data.

✅ E-commerce platforms (Amazon, Walmart) for “autocomplete” and page-view metrics on product terms.

✅ Specialized forums and Q&A sites (Reddit’s r/foodscience, Stack Exchange) to see how often these topics come up.

If you’re looking to optimize your online presence, focus on channels where volume is measurable (Google, Amazon, YouTube) and use ChatGPT as your creative “idea engine” rather than your volume tracker.

3 Ways to Get Started Using AI with Semrush’s Keyword Research Tools

DIL - SEMrush and AI for keyword research

You can more your content development and digital marketing practices by combining AI-driven ideation keyword data effective SEO and content strategies. But, how do you merge the power of AI with the data-driven practice of keyword research?

Here are three ways marketers can leverage AI tools like ChatGPT alongside Semrush’s

Keyword Overview to drive better outcomes:

1. Accelerate Keyword Ideation AI tools such as ChatGPT can quickly generate keyword ideas and content angles based on specific prompts. This approach allows marketers to explore new topic clusters, customer questions, and long-tail variations with ease—expanding the keyword universe beyond the obvious.

2. Validate with Data-Driven Insights Once you have a list of potential keywords, Semrush’s Keyword Overview provides the critical metrics—search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, and competitive density. This ensures decisions are guided by real-time search behavior and data, not just assumptions.

3. Align with User Intent and Market Trends AI can offer predictions on search intent and suggest content formats likely to perform well (e.g., product comparisons, how-to guides). Meanwhile, Semrush offers real-world SERP data to help you refine your approach and stay aligned with what’s currently ranking.

Merging Strengths

When used together, AI and Semrush provide a strategic advantage—enabling smarter planning, sharper targeting, and faster execution. Explore more in this recent guide from Semrush: Semrush AI Keyword Research

#DigitalMarketing #SEO #KeywordResearch #MarketingStrategy #AIinMarketing #Semrush #ContentMarketing

AI-Security Terms

When you look at the lifetime of the term “AI” in Google Trend, you can see a nice steady buzz about it until the end of November in 2022. Then, the topic takes a swift upward climb.

Google Trend for search term AI

Today, the conversation is not about is ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot can help you with basic questions and tasks, the conversation is about what else can they do and what else ARE they doing.

As we learn more about these AI tools, we started to understand how they acquired data to train these AI programs. Most of them use public data, but what does that mean – ‘public”?

The conversation and security around AI is already a hot topic in many fields including communications, marketing, education, and other industries. However, it is the IT field that has been forced to create a vocabulary around some of the most profound risks.

According to an ISMG report conducted during the third quarter of 2023 and commissioned by Google, Microsoft, Clearwater, Exabeam, and OneTrust, AI has moved itself into the pole position and using AI tools continues to raises important questions for CTOs and IT teams.

In the study, respondents listed sensitive data leaks as a top concern for 80% of business leaders and 82% of cybersecurity professionals. Cited by 71% of business leaders, inaccurate data, especially hallucinations are another top concern.

Taken from the article Here are 5 gen AI security terms busy business leaders should know on the Google Cloud blog, these are good terms to learn so you can better understand the AI universe and the risks of using these tool for any work product.

Prompt Manipulation

Can be exploited when the attacker uses prompt design, prompt engineering, or prompt injection to force an unintended response from a model including revealing sensitive data.

Data Leakage

AI models reveals sensitive information that was never intended to be including in an output response. This issue can be two-fold with both inaccurate responses or unauthorized access to sensitive data.

Model Theft

Most custom AI models do including sensitive intellectual property. Protecting the code and related assets is another important area to fend off cyber attacks.

Data Poisoning

Without properly secured training data, hackers can manipulates the data source for the model. Aside from corrupt data, it can maliciously influence prompt output.

Hallucinations

Just like the word indicates, an AI model can create responses that are not only factually incorrect, but simply false and completely a nonsense fabrication. There are a lot of reasons for this to happen, but ongoing testing and review diligence are always needed for these models.

Since we live in the reality where AI exists, it is good to understand the use and shortcomings of these tools.

Google Market Share Drops

In a recent SEJ article, they talk about the dropping market share of Google. For many companies, Google is a main source for Organic and Paid Search. That makes it important to understand why traffic might see some declines with the drop in overall volume on Google.com. 

Although they are still the giant in the room, there will potentially be an impact in those metrics.

Google’s Search Engine Market Share Drops As Competitors’ Grows

Some article highlights:

  • Google’s search engine market share has fallen to 86.99%, the lowest point since the firm began tracking search engine share in 2009.
  • The decline is most significant in Google’s key market, the United States, where its share of searches across all devices fell by nearly 10%, reaching 77.52%.
  • Pundits are saying the new algorithm results and quality of results overall have declined and that is impacting performance

What does that mean for you– while there might be an impact performance from Google, the search engine that has been gaining ground in Bing and Yahoo (which uses Bing technology). 

It is worth monitoring the Bing webmaster /SEO tools to ensure you are not in any violations for their algorithm or policies.   Bing also has a program called IndexNow that can help with performance and indexing of other search engines. 

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