Search Disrupted Newsletter (Issue 5)
Deep Research is the Agent we've been looking for, Apple + Gemini are friends, Business Amplifier Chat, Knowatoa Integrations, ChatGPT Saved My Life, and Chegg is mad
Agents are among us
There’s no one definition of an “AI Agent”, and as I’m a practical man with things to do, I’m not going to debate the minutiae of it.
That being said, everyone else on the internet is wrong.
The proper pivot point for what differentiates an “AI Agent” from an “AI tool” is whether or not it’s making a series of decisions on your behalf (“discernment”).
On that basis, the most popular AI agents out there right now are the deep research tools that all of the major AI players have released.
ChatGPT (used by 1 out of every 20 people on the planet weekly) has now enabled “Deep Research” tools for all plans, including free, so you should stop reading this and try it out.
Examples
Check out the following to compare standard ChatGPT vs ChatGPT with Deep Research for a question about wedding planning in Virginia Beach (my in-laws are having a vow renewal wedding for their 50th this year, so it’s been top of mind).
ChatGPT query with Deep Research
Apple Intelligence & Gemini sitting in tree
I’m always keenly watching what Apple is doing with its AI integrations to date as:
1st - It’s been bad.
2nd - It won’t be bad forever, as they’ve invested a lot of money into behind-the-scenes AI work that hasn’t been released as formal products yet.
So this week’s leak that a future version of Apple Intelligence will be integrated with Gemini (and likely comes with a truckload of money from Google ala their existing search deal) is still a “meh” from me.
Things are really going to crack open when Apple releases their own AI models that run locally on iPhones, and everyone walks around with a Siri search engine in their pocket.
Business Amplifier Chat
Andrew Laws and I sat down and talked about three very specific ways that AI is changing search. If you’re reading this, you’ll like our discussion.
Knowatoa Integrations (first steps)
Using BigQuery or LookerStudio to report to your clients on SEO performance?
You can now add Knowatoa data about how client sites rank for their high-intent commercial questions in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini from Knowatoa.
We’ve added an “Export Data” button to the Knowatoa rankings report so that you can draw data using your preferred reporting tool.
- Available on all plans (even the free no-CC plan)
“Trust” vs. the “Good Enough”
A mistake I often find myself making is comparing AI results to some scenario where I’m surrounded by Nobel Prize-winning experts on any conceivable topic.
It’s important to keep that in mind when reading accounts like this where someone likely saved their life by using ChatGPT to diagnose their condition.
ChatGPT wasn’t the best expert in the world, but it was the best expert available.
Chegg v Google AIO
Chegg is a company that makes money (let’s say “allegedly” because this is just my outside opinion from looking at their website) by selling “study guides” aka “homework help” aka “slide us a dollar and we will do your homework for you” and they’re not happy that Google is now doing the same thing in AIOs.
In particular, their business model is to:
- Get students to ask questions on their site
- Rank those questions in Google
- Upsell site visitors on those pages to pay for access and to get the answer to the question.
Here’s an example from Chegg’s site about shear stresses in a connected beam
And here’s a picture of the AIO for that exact question.
Again, let me stress that this isn’t a general solution to handling this category of problems.
Google gives a step-by-step solution using the values from this specific query.
AI answers in all forms are undoubtedly having a significant impact on Chegg. They’re suing (as best as I can understand) Google not for copyright infringement but for violating an in-kind sales agreement where the deal was that Google could index their content and then use it to send traffic to Chegg.
Thanks
I really appreciate both Rich Tatum and Aimee Jurenka for providing feedback on our SEO Payrank report.
If you haven’t gotten the report yet, you can still find it at https://knowatoa.com/payrank.
Chat with you next week,
Mike
p.s. It would really help me out if you could Follow me on LinkedIn