Marketing Leaders Must Adjust Web Content to Succeed with GenAI-Powered Search.- Gartner
Chief Marketing Officers and their teams need to adjust their web content strategy to adapt to search engine’s evolving algorithms and appear in GenAI-powered search results.
Kassi Socha, at Gartner
We spoke with Kassi Socha, Senior Director, Analyst, and Noam Dorros, Director Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, who gave us an overview of the current challenges and strategies for maintaining and growing search traffic amid evolving search engine algorithms and AI advancements.
Q: What strategic changes are necessary for organizations to adapt and drive search traffic growth?
Kassi: Marketing organizations need to adjust by upskilling or hiring search and content talent with experience utilizing AI. These associates need to not only create content that is both creative and insights-driven, but they must be able to analyze content performance.
Q: Should CMOs abandon traditional search fundamentals in favor of new AI-driven strategies?
Noam: No, CMOs should not abandon traditional search fundamentals. While adapting to GenAI-powered search is important, foundational search principles remain relevant and provide stability. These fundamentals help content adapt to both current and future algorithmic shifts, ensuring continued growth and success.
For example, in 2024, we conducted an analysis of Google search data, and we saw a heavy correlation between content that was previously in Featured Snippets appearing in AI overviews, as well as content in the top 3 search engine results pages appearing in AI Overviews. This proves that following Google’s foundational experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness principles, and overall search best practices still applies.
Q: Should CMOs plan for AI driven search platforms, like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Perplexity, to surpass longstanding search platforms, such as Google or Bing in 2025?
Noam:
CMOs and their teams should not get overexcited about one platform over another, and instead closely follow the traffic and behavior patterns of their key customer segments, while creating budget and time to test new capabilities or opportunities in the broader search landscape.
We are closely monitoring both direct traffic patterns to each of these platforms, as well as the referral traffic they send to enterprise organizations, alongside consumer preferences for search. Intent and conversational search, often what’s associated with GenAI powered search results, is certainly picking up speed from both a user adoption and traffic standpoint.
It’s worth pointing out that we still see innovation, evolution and continued behavior that occurs on established platforms.
Q: What actions or next steps should CMOs and their teams take right now?
Kassi:
Invest in search and content talent with AI skills and a deep understanding of search operations.
Regularly audit website content to identify changes in referral source behavior and optimize for current search best practices.
Ensure paid search investments lead to traffic growth and positively impact the customer journey. Regularly audit paid search strategies for effectiveness.
Continue to prioritize long-standing search principles to ensure stability and provide a path to growth amidst evolving search landscapes.
To learn more, visit: www.gartner.com