• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 18, 2024

BrightEdge has evaluated thousands of keywords spanning nine unique industries and a variety of markets to determine a change that is coming to search advertising and marketing. The change is based on Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) supported by generative artificial intelligence (GAI).

BrightEdge estimates that once it is fully rolled out, SGE will impact more than $40 billion annually in ad revenue for marketers across Google’s network.

“This is the first-time search engines will start providing an opinion,” said Jim Yu, CEO at BrightEdge, which supports organic search, content and digital marketing automation.

Previously, when people searched for a vehicle such as a BMW X3, for example, results would return 10 blue links, Carfax report, and perhaps BMW’s website. The results in time became more informative through Google Universal Search.

Google’s SGE results are powered by GAI. This means a person may see a review that aggregates information on a variety of data such as high maintenance costs, limited supply of parts or uncomfortable interiors. It might even estimate annual maintenance costs.

“The change will fundamentally change marketing,” Yu said.

BrightEdge released the data Thursday a day after Cathy Edwards, VP and GM of search at Google introduced a tool she calls Circle to Search, an AI-powered gesture search feature for mobile. The tool is made possible by GAI. The data from BrightEdge highlights the significance of GAI and SGE, which is expected to become generally available soon.

The data shows an estimated 84% of queries on Google Search will get a boost from GAI. Healthcare, ecommerce and B2B technology will see the greatest impacted, the data shows.

The percentages include:

• Healthcare: 76% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• Ecommerce: 49% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• B2B Tech: 48% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• Insurance: 45% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• Education: 44% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• Restaurants: 36% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• Entertainment: 36% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE
• Travel: 30% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE 
• Finance: 17% of queries analyzed were impacted by SGE

Business is on the brink of a massive shift powered by GAI, which is expected to completely change how brands market and sell products because it will have the ability to analyze context, sentiment, intent and nuances for each individual search.

Results of each query will respond with an opinion, telling users what to consider and care about.