Has Google Just Killed SEO in 2024?

Google just announced a whole RAFT of new options that are driven by AI, and a lot of people are asking the question:

Has google just killed SEO in 2024?

If you look back at the history of Google, you’ll know it started out as a way ‘to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’.

Kind of like a gigantic library index card system to find anything and everything.

And it was “good”.

Good organisation of information and provision of links to the information online that answered peoples’ questions was what made google become the #1 search engine many years ago.

SEO (aka Search Engine Optimisation) came about as a way for website owners to be able to get their site content to show up (ideally) on page 1 of search engine results pages, even before Google existed.

Quick history lesson: Back in 1997, the Webstep Marketing Agency was the trailblazer that first coined the phrase “search engine optimization” in their promotional materials. Fast forward to 1998, and Danny Sullivan, the mastermind behind Search Engine Watch, began spreading the SEO gospel, guiding clients on how to boost their content’s search engine rankings.

By 2003, “search engine optimization” made its debut on Wikipedia, solidifying its place in internet culture and sparking a boom in the industry. This led to a new wave of consultants and analysts dedicated to helping companies climb to the top of search engine results (and scammers trying to out-google Google!)

In 2000, Google introduced their Google Ads program (they were called AdWords back in the day!)

Google’s search ads were an AMAZING innovation, especially for businesses who wanted to attract clients quickly, rather than wait months or even years for their organic (SEO) content to begin ranking on Page 1 of Google.

I built my entire marketing career of (almost) 19 years off the back of Google Ads, and have helped clients all over the world generate 100s of millions (maybe more) of dollars in sales, all thanks to those simple little 4 line text ads at the top and bottom of the search results page.

However, understand this. SEO was always just the “gateway drug” to Google Ads.

Google tolerated website owners doing all sorts of dodgy stuff to get their pills & pawn site/s ranking on page 1, simply so they could show ads to people.

Google Ads have always been the golden haired child that made Google one of the most financially successful firms in the world.

According to the stats, in 2023, Google earned USD$237. 86 BILLION dollars in revenue!

To break that mindboggling number down to an easier-to-understand figure, that is:

• USD$651 MILLION dollars per day
• USD$27.15 MILLION dollars per hour
• USD$452,000 dollars per MINUTE!

Almost half a MILLION US dollars per minute, for each 60 minute hour and each 24 hour day!

That’s CRAZY money.

Now, here’s the “secret” (not really a secret) that many people DON’T know or understand.

If Google had it their way, they would be more than happy to DITCH every single organic (SEO) listing on their search results page and JUST show Google ads.

Especially if they could maintain the same level of revenue.

SEO costs google MEGA bucks money, time & resources to “manage”.

They spend millions – probably even BILLIONS of dollars per year just trying to control the stuff that many business owners and/or digital marketing consultants and agencies put out into the world to try and GAME google’s search results page, so that they can appear on page 1, preferably at the top of the page.

A page 1 listing is free traffic to anyone who achieve it.

Rather than pay Google for a click on their ads to get a visitor to the site, if you can rank page 1, or better still, at the top of page 1 for a relevant search term, you can bring a potential client to your site and not have to pay Google for it!

The SEO industry is mind blowing in its expense & complexity, and the amount of money & time people spend trying to achieve that coveted page 1 ranking is mind blowing, taken across the entire world.

It’s also very fickle.

You can be page 1, position 1 for your ideal keyword phrase today, and then google changes their algorithm and tomorrow you’re on page 27!

The only certainty with Google is that if you spend money on their ads, you’ll be able to show up on page one *IF* you bid enough per click for your ad/s &/or also have the best ad in Google’s eyes.

SEO takes time. If you wanted to rank #1 on Google for “video content marketing agency perth” [one of my desired keywords] via SEO, it might take months or even years of time & expense to optimise for it, OR you could have an ad showing on page 1 within an hour and you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad.

So, after all that “introduction” to the history of Google & SEO, we’re now in 2024 and AI is becoming the most important and powerful technology in our world.

In just over 1 year, ChatGPT has revolutionised how we do so many things, especially marketing-wise.

And Google is hot on their tail, trying to be sure they don’t lose their market dominance.

For Google to embed AI fully into their search engine, it means they run the risk of cannibalising their Ads revenue, because people are now starting to use tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity dot AI and Google Gemini as ANSWER engines, instead of SEARCH engines!

As a searcher, why would you go through all the hassles of doing a normal Google search, then have click through and look at multiple pages listed on page one, often wasting 10-20 minutes and still not finding the exact answer you need?

With AI embedded naturally in the search process (and it looks like ChatGPT is going to launch a search engine soon as well!) you no longer need to go through the hassles of finding the links to go off and do your research to answer your questions.

Now, you just ask the question and AI gives you the answer then & there.

Sure, it might have links to resources for you to go further explore, but if the quality of the ANSWERS given in Google are good enough, in many cases you won’t need to go visit an external website, because the answer is right there IN Google for you to read.

This makes Google Ads even more important over the medium to long term, because AI is still potentially going to struggle to answer bottom-of-funnel searches (when people are looking for a supplier to buy something from, rather than just simple curiosity) and ads will fill that gap much more than now.

If you’re searching for the “best accountant in Perth” (or even more specifically, “best accountant in Subiaco”), AI isn’t fabulous at giving an answer for that yet (although that will change as google reviews become much more important)…

Hence, Google Ads will fill the gap at the bottom of the funnel much more than before, and with a much greater necessity as a business owner looking for clients via google, the competition for specific keywords will rise as more & more people are forced to use ads where they mostly relied on SEO before.

More competition on keyword bids drives up ad pricing, which makes it more expensive to run ads but still very important if you need to replace the “free” site visits and leads SEO brought you in the past.

Even better for Google is if they can reduce the effectiveness of SEO while continuing to make bank from their ads platform, they can reduce the manpower, cost & computing resources required to keep SEO from “polluting” their search results, which reduces the number of people using Google!

In all, this is potentially a huge POSITIVE game changer for google.

AI giving great answers without having to rely on people clicking off the search results page to an external website will make Google more popular again, especially if the QUALITY of answers are good.

And if Google starts to become more popular (again, because they have been criticised for reduced quality search results over the years), people will use them more, which means more opportunities to show ads to people when AI can’t provide the best answer.

And with ad positions becoming more competitive, click charges will rise and google will start making more money from their ads options.

Now, just to be 100% transparent, the “title” of this post and on the image at the top was deliberately designed to be clickbaitey…

I don’t personally think SEO will be completely killed off. There are many situations where it will be hard to replace.

HOWEVER, with google changing from a SEARCH engine to an ANSWER engine, SEO will become much less effective and harder to use over time, and Google ads will become more important and more expensive!

If your ONLY (or major) online strategy is SEO, you need to start planning for these changes, because Google is rolling out AI natively embedded in their search results almost immediately.

Their big I/O conference (held on Tues) has already announced a raft of changes that are coming to Google search using AI.

You can watch the following short video discussing “AI Overviews” from the I/O keynote here:

Bottom line: Forewarned is Fore-prepared! If you stick your head in the sand and ignore this, hoping it will all go away, you are in BIG trouble!

You need to start preparing for a different world where AI rules “search” and is largely focused on ANSWERS, rather than just linking to a 3rd party’s site with their answers.

Tip: One way to help mitigate this massive change is by getting serious about video. YouTube is not going to disappear anytime soon. Some people will always want to watch a video about a topic rather than read about it, and that’s one of several options to help respond to this big change.

If you have questions about any of this, whether it’s about AI, Google Gemini, SEO, search ads or video, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll be happy to help where possible.