• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 15, 2025

Click-through rates have declined in Google Search, but that just suggests people are interacting more inside AI Overviews and that gets them further down the funnel.

What will this fragmentation do for ad revenue at Google, Microsoft and others? Jim Yu, BrightEdge CEO, said there will be more ad inventory to monetize.

Search revenue is not declining, Yu says, and the quality of the clicks that go through are increasing the conversion value for some.

Marketers need to understand how each engine works, as well as key strengths and weaknesses.

People will begin to use different search engines for specific types of queries. It will become a seismic shift in the search industry. This shift led to Google’s global search market share dropping below 90% during the final calendar quarter in 2024.

BrightEdge data explains this fragmentation and why Statcounter's December estimate for Google's global search market share dipped to 89.73%, falling below 90% for the first time since 2015.

“Whole new markets will be created because people will start to use different engines more, whether AI search for direct queries or AI assistants,” Yu said. “It will influence how you shop, travel, buy software, and more.”

The concept of niche engines — which is not entirely new, but spotlights the expertise of many — led me to ask Yu’s opinion on existing and upcoming Google antitrust cases, and how the Department of Justice continues to allege unfair competition.

“Part of it is a chicken-and-egg thing,” he says. “You remember after the antitrust case started heating up, Yelp went hard on Google based on location data. ChatGPT, the search service, began citing Google Maps. They would use YouTube data to train AI for video. It created questions around public data and information assets.”

Should all engines have access to that public data? Perplexity struggles with not having access to location data. 

Yu believes this brings up a point that some information assets should be open for all to use from an antitrust. Then innovation could occur on top — what he calls a level playing field.

That doesn’t mean these AI engines will not have their expertise. Yu says public information should be made easily accessible to the entire AI and search engine market, and expertise can then be built on top of that data.

BrightEdge will release a study that looks at each engine and the top nine industries to determine which engine to use for each. The benchmark shows the best engines to use for each sector based on information each including local availability of products.

ChatGPT search is now free for everyone, and one of its strengths is returning a complete and detailed answer for most queries. If someone queries a MBA degree it goes beyond basic facts like job prospects.

Perplexity combines explanations with visuals. When it describes a complex concept like data modeling, it will pair it with a clear explanation and visual examples.

Google AI Overview does an effective job of organizing complex information into clear sections. When asked about a certain credit card, it will break down the information, covering the basics, benefits and where to apply.

“Last year it was all about the ramp up, but this year it’s all about AI-driven search,” Yu says. “You will have multimodal advancements, AI search engines, and marketers will need more of an adaptive strategy based on a specific engine.”