In the last 12 months ChatGPT has become one of the 10 most visited websites in the world. It’s already a go-to for people asking things like, “Who’s the best X in my area?” and it’s only just getting started.
While Google still has 21x the traffic, there’s no doubt more and more users will incorporate use of LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini into their everyday life.
In addition, platforms like Google’s AI Overviews provide answers to informational queries directly in search results, meaning less traffic to things like news articles and blog posts.
This raises a key question for every business:
‘If user behaviour is changing, how do we keep our business visible and growing?’
AI is changing how people search, but in my view, the foundations of a strong business presence won’t change – if anything, they’ll become even more important.
How do LLMs recommend products and services
Let’s look at an example of an ecommerce retailer selling shoes.
If a human goes to ChatGPT and asks “what are the best, long lasting women’s marathon shoes in black?” the AI has to build an understanding of the question and the possible answers so that it can provide a list of recommended products.
To (over) simplify:
- The AI uses the data it was trained on or web search (depending on the tool/model used) to look at the options that fit the basic criteria we have provided
- It looks at the information and data that has been provided about a range of products, and identifies which products match
- It looks at structured data such as price, product descriptions and reviews from a range of sources
- It looks at industry articles and news sources that discuss similar themes
- It uses reasoning and provides a recommendation based on its findings
When I ran this query myself, ChatGPT used sources such as womensrunning.co.uk, rtings.com, telegraph.co.uk, reddit.com, 30+ other articles, as well as the aggregate product ratings, descriptions and pricing from specific retailers.
Obviously this is oversimplified to provide an example, but it does highlight some important considerations for maintaining and building business/product visibility.
(And while I have focused on a retail product, this approach also applies across other industries and segments as well.)
How do we stay visible
I don’t want to pretend that we (or anyone else) knows all the answers yet.
But as we learn more, monitor results and test different approaches, important foundations certainly arise.
To maximise visibility moving forward, businesses need to continue to do the fundamentals well. But they also need to evolve how these fundamentals are implemented:
- As AI systems sift through websites for answers, your business website will still be the home of your brand online. It’s where people go to learn who you are and what you do. It’s also where AI platforms look to understand who you are, what you offer, and your point of difference.
Hence, the content on your website is becoming even more important. To help AIs (and humans) find, value and recommend your products, you need to provide deep insight and clarity on what you offer.
Making your content richer and more thorough will give you the advantage over competitors who have only done the basics. This means embracing the challenge of product/service descriptions, FAQs, driving product reviews, rich imagery and videos and ensuring it is structured and presented in ways that machines can easily interpret.
- In addition, reviews and online reputation have always mattered, but now they’re also feeding into how AI understands you, your track record and whether you get short listed. Genuine feedback from real customers has never been more valuable. If your business doesn’t have a strategy to generate reviews across key platforms, now more than ever, it’s time.
- AIs like ChatGPT are also using online references from news articles, blogs and forums to build a rounded understanding of your industry, company and products. Being mentioned favourably or as a source of information is becoming more important. This means increasing content about your business, products and services both on your own website and across the web.
At first the changing face of marketing and business can seem a little daunting, but the more we lean into the challenge / opportunity, the more fundamentals become important:
- build a great business that provides great products/services and customer service and;
- provide an incredible online presence incorporating detailed content, imagery, videos, reviews and reputation.
If you’re interested in further reading on the ecommerce product example, ChatGPT’s own articles also provide a simple summary of how products are selected (I’ve highlighted the text below in bold to emphasise):
When determining which products to display, ChatGPT considers:
- Structured metadata from third-party providers such as the retail websites or product aggregators (e.g., price, product description) and other third-party content such as product review websites, articles (e.g., reviews).
- Model responses generated by ChatGPT before it considers any new search results. As in, ChatGPT’s existing memory.
- OpenAI safety standards.
How Gorilla is changing, and how we can help you
At Gorilla, we’re really excited about how AI is changing the game.
As always in business and marketing, the companies that embrace and adapt quickly will be the biggest winners.
Some of the key areas we’ve focused on over the last year include:
- Embracing an AI first mindset
- Embracing AI tools and building them into our workflows and knowledge sharing
- Challenging our teams and people to deliver more, better and faster. And hence;
- Faster execution and results, with the same high standards
- Ensuring we are on top of the evolving landscape and using tools to monitor and understand it
- Appointing AI leaders across our various teams
- Setting AI KPIs for all team members
Our goal is to bring our clients along on this ride and help them capitalise on the changes ahead. For us this means, helping you grow in a changing world, but also sharing our knowledge on our progress so you can take advantage too.
And it’s not just about marketing. We’re evolving our entire business including operations, finance, team structure, hiring and systems to move fast.
