Search Disrupted Newsletter (Issue 2)

ChatGPT “Deep Research”

We’re seeing research tools emerge as their own category on top of “base” AI search.

The latest is ChatGPT’s “Deep Research” mode, which pulls in hundreds of distinct sources and then synthesizes them into a report.

It operates similarly to Google’s “Gemini Advanced with Deep Research” tool (honestly, could they not name these better?).

I posted a hands-on tour of Google’s tool over on my LinkedIn if you want to see it.

In other words, this whole category is about “doing the Googling for you” and then synthesizing the results into a report, a summary, or a spreadsheet.

To me, this is pushing SEOs + marketers to think more deeply about what their prospects are trying to accomplish and move up the search journey from trying to satisfy “search intent” to trying to directly help with “task intent.”

More Accounts More Problems

ChatGPT no longer requires an account to use its free tier.

This isn’t a radical change, but it’s a sign of the further mainstreaming of AI and search and will boost usage.

SEO’s Prefer ChatGPT to Google?

Jessica Malnik and I co-hosted an online workshop earlier this week.

Part of this included a poll on what AI search tool folks preferred, and the results were way more lopsided than I expected.

Thanks,

Mike

p.s. It would really help me out if you could Follow me on LinkedIn