ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that has taken the world by storm. Launched in November 2022, it quickly became the most popular consumer app in history, reaching 100 million monthly active users just two months after going live. It is the first AI tool to be widely available to the public, and its success has sparked a wave of innovation and investor interest in AI technology.

But what can and can’t it do? And what does this mean for SEO and performance marketing in general? Read on to find out!  

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by OpenAI (an AI research and deployment company founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and Wojciech Zaremba). It’s built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3 family of large language models and has been designed to interact in a conversational way. This dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer questions, generate stories, and even write code. 

In a nutshell: 

• ChatGPT is a popular Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool that has been pre-trained on available information on the internet up until 2021, which means it has its limitations in giving up-to-date information. 
• It takes into consideration previous messages in an attempt to mimic human interaction. 
• It isn’t the only AI Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool available, however, it is by far the most publicized one.

Some of the potential benefits ChatGPT for businesses include automating tedious tasks, providing short widely available answers, and building innovative tools (such as customer service bots or automated FAQs) using NLP technology. But as we’ll see below, it has its shortcomings too. 

Limitations of NLPs like ChatGPT

No access to current or ‘live’ information 

Because ChatGPT has only learned up until the end of its training period in 2021, it doesn’t have access to information about more recent events or current data. If asked to provide answers in these areas, the AI may ‘make up’ outright incorrect information in an attempt to give a solution. 

Possible biases  

While we’re sure every effort was made to train ChatGPT in a non-biased way, it’s a well-established fact that human trainers often have inherent biases they may not even be aware of that leak into what an AI program learns. Just the way in which the material the AI will be trained on in the first place was selected can result in accidental biases. And because it considers the user’s previous inputs when generating responses, it may potentially magnify or propagate the user’s own biases.  

Generic content 

While the breadth of ChatGPT’s knowledge is undoubtedly impressive, it just can’t stack up against the knowledge of a human expert in a certain field. In terms of generating content that complies with Google’s E-EAT ranking factor (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) – and Google’s Helpful Content Update, ChatGPT falls short. In most cases, it isn’t able to accurately assess the quality of the content, or add the level of detail a human expert knowledgeable in their field would. 

Potential spam violations and manual penalties 

Using NLPs like ChatGPT to mass-produce low-quality content can potentially land you in violation of Google’s spam policies. While using AI to generate content is not strictly against the rules, so to speak, “using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results” most definitely is.

As an example, let’s take a business website that has been posting two or three well-written, informative, and high-quality blog posts for several years. If they suddenly start churning out masses of generic or generally unhelpful content, this is likely to flag Google’s SpamBrain system and may result in a manual penalty – and a major drop in rankings which will be hard to reverse. 

If you want to use an NLP like ChatGPT for SEO, then you need to do so in tandem with human writers or editors who can review and revise the generated text for accuracy and relevance. This hybrid approach allows for human oversight that ensures that only high-quality content is released.

Impact of ChatGPT on SEO and SEM

Reduced reliance on traditional search engines  

Because AI chatbots are better able to understand nuance and context, people are starting to use them in place of search engines like Google and Bing and voice search – especially with queries that require a complex answer. This is because it eliminates the need to scroll through results yourself, but rather receive one, human-like explanation. (‘Explain osmosis in simple terms’ or ‘Give some suggestions for an anniversary party’ for example)

We can expect this to have multiple effects: 

• Lower search volumes for long tail queries
• Potentially inaccurate data
• May affect top-of-funnel marketing (more on that later)

Changing SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)

Search engine results page (SERP) has been constantly changing over the years to provide users with more relevant and up-to-date information. Recently, this includes position 0, featured snippets, images, and videos as well as rich media. Additionally, depending on what type of query you are searching for, there may be different types of results that show up in your SERPs such as Shopping products or reviews. 

Bing is now rolling out ChatGPT as an addition to their SERPs to provide answers to user queries without them having to click through any links on the page:

Google is also soon introducing Bard, their answer to ChatGPT, which will change how people interact with their search engines once again by providing direct answers from websites rather than just displaying links in its SERPs. While this can be beneficial for users, it could also lead to fewer clicks from these pages. In fact, recent statistics show that 25% of searches already result in zero click searches.  

Overall NLP technologies like ChatGPT or Bard have great potential when it comes to improving user experience, but they will undoubtedly have a large impact on existing SEO strategies. We’ll discuss how Ruby Digital is responding to this new challenge in greater detail later in this post. 

Impact of ChatGPT on Performance Marketing

So what does all this mean in terms of digital marketing? The first thing to be aware of is that the impact will be very different depending on what stage of the sales funnel the potential customer is in. 

Most affected by the changing shape of the SERPs is likely to be Top of Funnel (ToFu), which is usually the first touch point customers have with brands. While they are still in this research phase of solving their problem, the funnel may now begin with an answer from an NLP like ChatGPT, rather than with search engine results themselves. 

If they ask a chatbot to help them compare products and services, this will likely have a negative impact on traditional remarketing and lead nurturing strategies, as they aren’t clicking on any ads or links that can be retargeted – at least initially. 

Thankfully, performance marketing generally focuses on the middle to bottom of the sales funnel to get more MQLs (marketing qualified leads). At Ruby Digital, by focusing on performance marketing and intent marketing, we are only dealing with the middle and bottom of the sales funnel and with companies that are ambitious about growth. 

Regardless of whether a lead first hears about an offering through traditional SERPs or via ChatGPT, they can’t take that final step of making a purchase through a chatbot. The ultimate decision will still happen on their (or their competitor’s) website. This is where what we do becomes so important. 

We help potential customers engage with and understand the story of a brand, and form an emotional connection with them. This is what ultimately builds trust and convinces them your offering is the right one for them – and that’s not changing any time soon.

In Conclusion

The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving, and there’s no doubt that Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology has the potential to drastically change how users search for answers online. ChatGPT uses AI-driven algorithms to generate written answers that can be used in SERPs instead of traditional text results. This means more 0-click searches, where users get their answer right away without having to take any extra steps or visit a website. 

While this could make life easier for searchers, it also presents some challenges for performance marketers who rely on clicks and conversions from visitors coming through organic search engine results pages (SERPs). At Ruby Digital, we’re prepared for these changes and excited by them too! We know that no matter what happens with NLP models like ChatGPT, our focus will remain on providing leads with an excellent user experience as well as helpful content that drives action when they are ready to take it. 

If you’d like to find out more about how ChatGPT and SEO will impact each other, or need help with content marketing in this new era of performance marketing, then please feel free to reach out.