{"id":141821,"date":"2020-08-21T13:34:47","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T13:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=141821"},"modified":"2020-08-21T13:34:47","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T13:34:47","slug":"what-the-commoditization-of-search-engine-technology-with-gpt-3-means-for-google-and-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/08\/21\/what-the-commoditization-of-search-engine-technology-with-gpt-3-means-for-google-and-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"What the commoditization of search engine technology with GPT-3 means for Google and SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google\u2019s technological edge has always come from its computational power.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This edge is no longer special. AWS, Microsoft, and other cloud services now give us access to essentially unlimited computing power on demand.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) technology is the largest most advanced text predictor ever. It will eventually be available as a commercial product.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We may see big players like Apple enter the search engine market.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Founder and CTO of LinkGraph gives you foresight into the sea of opportunities ahead.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The tech-world recently geeked out after its first glimpse into <a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/gpt-3-the-5-things-seos-digital-marketers-need-to-know\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">OpenAI\u2019s <\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GPT-3 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">technology. Despite some kinks, the text predictor is already really good. From <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/analyticsindiamag.com\/open-ai-gpt-3-code-generator-app-building\/#:~:text=Now%2C%20in%20the%20latest%20news,the%20JSX%20code%20for%20you.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">generating code<\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0to writing <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/frantzfries\/status\/1288589540865843200\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GoogleAds copy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jsngr\/status\/1284511080715362304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1284511080715362304%7Ctwgr%5E&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Flinkgraph.io%2Fgpt-3-the-5-things-seos-digital-marketers-need-to-know%2F\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">UI\/UX design<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the applications of GPT-3 have sparked the imaginations of web developers everywhere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This changes everything. \ud83e\udd2f<\/p>\n<p>With GPT-3, I built a Figma plugin to design for you.<\/p>\n<p>I call it &quot;Designer&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OzW1sKNLEC\">pic.twitter.com\/OzW1sKNLEC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; jordan singer (@jsngr) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jsngr\/status\/1284511080715362304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 18, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But they should also be sparking the imaginations of search engine optimizers. In its debut week, we already witnessed a developer <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/paraschopra\/status\/1284801028676653060\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">build a search engine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on top of GPT-3. It can hardly rival Google\u2019s product, but the potential is clearly there. OpenAI plans to turn GPT-3 into a commercial product next year, meaning any brand could use the technology to create their own search platform.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The implications would be significant for the SEO landscape. More brands innovating their own search engines would create new opportunities for digital marketers and the brands we help build. For Google, though, the potential is far more nerve-wracking. GPT-3 has shown that Google\u2019s core technological advantages &#8211; natural language processing (NLP) and massive computing &#8211; are no longer unique and are essentially being commoditized.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>GPT-3 challenges Google\u2019s technological edge from all directions<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Few have monetized NLP and machine learning as well as Google, but their technological edge has always been computational power. Google\u2019s ability to crawl billions of pages a day, its massive data centers, and its extensive computing across that data, have cemented their status as the dominant search engine and digital advertising market leader.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But AWS, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud services now give us access to essentially unlimited computing power on demand. A decade of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investopedia.com\/terms\/m\/mooreslaw.asp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moore\u2019s Law<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has also reduced the cost of this computing power by one-to-three orders of magnitude.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Additionally, open-source software and advances in research have made it easier for developers to access the latest breakthroughs in NLP and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/12\/06\/improving-personalization-with-machine-learning\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">machine learning<\/a> technology. Python, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), Pytorch, and Tensorflow are just a few that have granted developers access to their programming and software innovations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/03\/05\/six-key-seo-recommendations-that-matter-in-2020\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Google still has BERT<\/a>, which shares similar architecture with GPT-3. But GPT-3 is slightly larger (by about 175-billion parameters). GPT-3 also doesn\u2019t need nearly as large of a training data set as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/bert-googles-largest-update-in-years\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google\u2019s BERT<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-141825\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/bert-and-gt3-relevance.png\" alt=\"BERT and GPT3 relevance\" width=\"582\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/bert-and-gt3-relevance.png 582w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/bert-and-gt3-relevance-300x180.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not only will GPT-3 add value to those businesses and applications that are already using AI and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/futureinsights.com\/10-real-life-examples-of-machine-learning\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">machine learning<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with a newer, larger, and significantly improved NLP model, it would also equip Google\u2019s biggest Cloud competitors with the ability to pair that technology with their own computing power.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Other players will soon be able to build massive search engines like Google did<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to build a <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/03\/05\/mojeek-alternative-to-google\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">search engine<\/a>, you need to be able to retrieve many different types of information: Web results for one, but also maps, data, images, and videos. Google\u2019s indexing power is what catapulted them to be the primary retriever of all web knowledge.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to building that massive information retrieval system, Google monetized on those economic searches through advertising. But the majority of searches Google doesn\u2019t actually earn any money on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OpenAI built its own information retrieval system GPT-3 so that it could create superintelligence. If OpenAI wanted to, they could build a competitor to Google. But the hardest part would be bringing this to a massive audience. Bing\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oberlo.com\/statistics\/search-engine-market-share#:~:text=US%20Search%20Engine%20Market%20Share&amp;text=Next%20on%20the%20list%20of,and%20Yahoo!%20with%203.51%20percent.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">market share<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is only 6.5% while Yahoo\u2019s is 3.5%.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-141826\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/search-engine-market-share-1024x524.png\" alt=\"Search engine market share\" width=\"640\" height=\"328\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/search-engine-market-share-1024x524.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/search-engine-market-share-300x153.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/search-engine-market-share-768x393.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/search-engine-market-share-1536x785.png 1536w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/search-engine-market-share.png 1760w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s been a long time since the search engine market was a realistic place to compete. But what if a GPT-3 commercial product equipped a new competitor with an equally-matched technological edge, market share, cloud service, and devoted customer-base to enter the search market?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s say a competitor like Apple. They launched a newly <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/newsroom\/2020\/01\/apple-delivers-a-new-redesigned-maps-for-all-users-in-the-united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">redesigned Apple Maps<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> earlier this year. They already announced they are indexing the web through <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2015\/05\/06\/apple-search-engine-applebot\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Applebot<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. When it comes to launching the next best search engine, Apple is well-positioned.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How could Apple change the SEO landscape with its own search engine?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most likely, an Apple search engine would use <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/linkgraph.io\/google-algorithm-update-history\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ranking factors similar to Google<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The app store ecosystem would equip Apple with greater use of<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/app-indexing-new-frontier-seo-apple-search-ios-app-indexing-223880\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in-app engagement data<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We could also see a greater reliance on social signals from Facebook and Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All android devices currently ship with Chrome + Google Search as the default search OS. Apple\u2019s devices ship with Safari and you can select your own preferred search OS. It could easily do what Google has done and default to its own search engine. With just one iPhone model launch, Apple could transition its massive customer-base away from Google through its technological edge and dominance with devices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But what would be most troublesome for Google is how Apple could disrupt Google\u2019s massive ads ecosystem. 71% of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/266249\/advertising-revenue-of-google\/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20advertising%20accounted%20for,percent%20of%20the%20company's%20revenues.\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google\u2019s revenue<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> comes from advertising. With Google Ads now being <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.business2community.com\/seo\/why-seo-not-google-ads-is-still-the-best-choice-for-your-business-02323917#:~:text=SEO%20Requires%20Creativity.,once%20their%20budget%20runs%20out.\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the most expensive<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (and competitive) place to advertise on the internet, many advertisers would welcome a disruption. It\u2019s possible we could see billions of dollars of advertising revenue shift to Apple.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For SEOs and digital marketers, it\u2019s fun to imagine. We could see entirely new markets for search, creating more need for our expertise and additional platforms our customers can use to grow. We\u2019re not quite there yet, but SEOs and digital marketers should be prepared for what advancements like GPT-3 could potentially mean for our industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i>Manick Bhan is the founder and CTO of\u00a0<\/i><i>LinkGraph<\/i><i>, an award-winning digital marketing and SEO agency that provides SEO, paid media, and content marketing services. He is also the founder and CEO of\u00a0<\/i><i>SearchAtlas<\/i><i>, a software suite of free SEO tools. He is the former CEO of the ticket reselling app Rukkus.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LinkGraph\u2019s CTO, Manick Bhan predicts that with GPT-3 technology, the biggest disruption to Google search may soon be on the horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":141828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[249,705,549,27916,37,6142,18849,27882,3529,27451,22,27376],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-141821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-seo","tag-alternative-search-engines","tag-apple","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-generative-pre-trained-transformer-3-gpt-3","tag-google","tag-industry","tag-insights","tag-machine-learning-ml","tag-market-share","tag-natural-language-processing-nlp","tag-seo","tag-seo-insights"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/What-the-commoditization-of-search-engine-technology-with-GPT-3-means-for-Google-and-SEO-scaled.jpg","category":"Industry","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141821"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=141821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}