Search Engines vs Answer Engines and Automotive SEO
Google is a ‘Search Engine’ and people use it to search for answers to queries they have. In relation to shopping for a car those queries typically are ‘Honda Civic Nissan Sentra comparison’ and ‘When To Change Jeep Wrangler Oil’ generally speaking.
AI or specifically for this example ChatGPT is a brand new tool that delivers answers, aggregated from data across the Internet, in one prompt and is more like an ‘Answer Engine’ for the user. An example in relation to shopping for a car would be ‘Tell me the key differences between a 2020 Honda Civic and a 2020 NIssan Sentra’
A ‘Search Engine’ and an ‘Answer Engine’ sound the same right? They are and they are not. An answer engine and a search engine are similar in that they both provide information in response to a query. However, there are some key differences between the two:
Purpose: The main purpose of a search engine is to help you find web pages that match your search query. A search engine provides you with a list of links to relevant web pages and leaves it up to you to determine which one best answers your question. An answer engine, on the other hand, is designed specifically to provide you with a direct answer to your query.
Information Source: Search engines index billions of web pages, while answer engines often use a combination of web pages and structured data sources, such as databases and knowledge graphs, to provide answers.
Query Format: Search engines typically require you to enter a keyword-based query, while answer engines may allow for more natural language queries and may even understand the context of your question to provide a more accurate answer.
Presentation of Results: Search engines present results as a list of links, while answer engines present the answer directly on the results page, often with accompanying information to support the answer.
While search engines and answer engines both have their uses, answer engines are designed to provide more specific and direct answers to queries, while search engines are better suited for more general information discovery.
How does this impact Automotive SEO?
Most SEO packages from major Automotive website providers like Dealer.com or DealerInspire are based around content creation (x amount of blogs or landing pages per month) and keywords. Even most of the digital marketing agencies that support the Automotive industry that don’t provide cookie cutter packages still heavily rely on content creation with the idea that a person will come to your website to seek information and hopefully submit a lead. If that person is using an ‘Answer Engine’ they get the answer they want in one prompt and don’t ever make it to a website, specifically the dealers website. They might not even make it onto bigger websites like Motor Trend, Edmunds, or others. Take a look at a simple example below.
ChatGPT prompt comparing models
Here is a prompt typed into ChatGPT asking for a simple comparison between two models. A search done millions of times per month for people in the market to purchase a new car and a type of search that generates traffic for a car dealership. Having a consumer hit a dealers website for an answer gets the store branding in front of that consumer and also gives the store a chance to retarget them if they have a campaign setup to do so.
Google Search comparing models
This is what a person sees right now when doing research through a Google search query. If you notice Battison Honda is ranking high for this comparison page and has been generating traffic on it for years. You also have Worldcar Nissan in the mix along with The Car Connection (research site) and Motor Trend (publication) who are organically getting eyes all over their merchandise or content. This is ‘free’ traffic and is always the highest converting traffic for any website whether it’s e-commerce focused or not.
Notice the ChatGPT sums it up very thoroughly in one prompt giving an answer and keeping the consumer from having to jump around between multiple pages and redundant content. That also means the user is not seeing Baltison Honda or Worldcar Nissan’s websites. That comparison page while still useful now, may not be in the future.
At some point we may be seeing AEO and SEO together as a package because AI adoption has been lighting fast. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is currently the fastest growing website of all time beating out social media juggernauts like Instagram in getting people to sign up for the service. This is not something that the Automotive industry should take lightly.
