ChatGPT has been threatening to prise users away from Google search for a couple of years, but now it’s going for the jugular.
ChatGPT has integrated shopping links in the answers to user queries. “We’re experimenting with making shopping simpler and faster to find, compare, and buy products in ChatGPT,” OpenAI said. Nearly half of Google’s revenue comes through ads in search, so ChatGPT integrating similar results could affect the bottom line of the search giant.
OpenAI said that ChatGPT has improved search results with visual product details, pricing and reviews. ChatGPT will also give direct links for users to buy the products. “Product results are chosen independently and are not ads,” OpenAI said. “These shopping improvements are starting to roll out today to Plus, Pro, Free, and logged-out users everywhere ChatGPT is available. It will take a few days to complete the rollout,” it added.
As per a video shared by OpenAI, the shopping results are reminiscent of Google product ads, with pictures and a brief description. Users can scroll horizontally through different options, and click on what they want to buy. Clicking on an item opens a card which gives users options of different stores where they can make the purchase. ChatGPT also gives suggestions and summarizes reviews to help people make their choices.
This feature could hit Google where it hurts. Thus far, ChatGPT had become popular among users for ‘information’ queries, such as asking the history of a place, or asking how to write code. These queries don’t usually lead to any monetization for Google, because few companies want to place their ads above the results of such queries. But Google does make a lot of money with product queries, such as searching for shoes — when a user searches for shoes, Google shows sponsored results above its search results, and makes money when users click on them. All other search results, in essence, are a way for Google to develop user stickiness for getting access to the product queries which actually make it money.
But if ChatGPT can perform as well on commerce queries as well as Google, it might become the search engine-equivalent of choice for many users. If users switch from Google to ChatGPT, it could impact Google’s revenues, which chiefly come from billions of people performing searches on its search engine every day.
Google, though, has been looking to integrate AI in its search results as well. Google now shows an AI snippet before results from the web on many kinds of user queries, making the experience of using its search service similar to ChatGPT’s. Thus far, Google hasn’t seen much of an impact in its search business because of a host of AI players popping up. But ChatGPT is rapidly growing, and is now the fifth most visited website in the world. If it can keep up with its momentum — and come up with product updates like shopping links — ChatGPT could be the first realistic challenger to Google’s search dominance in years.