Google’s Just Launched AI Mode Will Shrink Search Traffic to Legal Publishers : Don’t Panic
Editor and Publisher’s Robert Tornoe reports Google has quietly launched AI Mode—a conversational search feature powered by Gemini 2.0 that delivers direct answers to complex queries. Think OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
No need to click through to a blog post, article or alert. Just answers, scraped from across the web, presented in chatbot form.
Google is careful to describe AI Mode as an “experiment,” but so was AI Overviews, a default feature now appearing on the top of every Google user”s search results page.
AI Mode is separate from search mode for now, but Platform’s Casey Newton said on The New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast, which he co-hosts with tech columnist Kevin Roose, that if it succeeds if it succeeds, he suspects it will gradually merge into the main Google search results page.
I think Google realizes this is a once-in-a-generation chance to reinvent the search experience, and that is going to mean a fundamentally different way of presenting information
Will traffic shrink?
In The Rebooting latest research report, a survey of 97 publishing executives conducted in partnership with Omeda, the findings weren’t shocking. Half of publishers reported search traffic declined over the past year, while traffic from social media platforms continued to shrink.
Legal Publishers Should Not Panic
Search results are nice but with the growth of all the junk on Google, including the content marketing of lawyers and law firms, search results have already declined, significantly.
Recognize the greatest returns for legal publishing are not coming from search.
Lawyers have built must read niche publications browsed to directly, subscribed to via email subscription, delivered via syndication sources and shared on social media.
In the process, lawyers, without relying on search, have achieved thought leadership status and established relationships, resulting in large books of business.
Rethink traffic dependency. Think like many lawyers have for a long time, search traffic is a “nice to have” instead of a reliable and required funnel. Build direct readership by becoming must read publishing in your niche.
More than ever, establish and build your own niche publication on its own domain and site that gives you control, attribution, and brand presence. Think a magazine you publish and own. It is the only way you can have people following your publishing directly.
No doubt Google AI will shrink traffic, but like the best and well known lawyer publishers, do not look at search as the most impactful source of building a name and growing business.