Are AI Chatbots Replacing Search Engines?

— A Veteran SEO’s View on Change and Continuity published on Sin Chew Daily on the 18th of June, 2025

I have been involved in e-commerce promotion for over 20 years and have witnessed the evolution from Yahoo to Google to today’s ChatGPT. For those of us who create content, ChatGPT brings a major shock. SEO, once a highly valued and technically skilled job, is now seen as facing extinction. Whether to continue in this career has become a serious decision for manypractitioners.

But the truth is, in the age of digital transformation, most business goals remain unchanged. Customers still search on Google, and even if they turn to ChatGPT, their purpose remains the same. The tools may change, but the essence does not.

So, what is the real impact of AI chatbots on SEO? What has changed, and what remains unchanged?

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Data Comes First: AI traffic is surging, but search still dominates

A report by OneLittleWeb shows that global search traffic continued to grow steadily from March 2023 to April 2025.

• AI chatbot traffic only grew 90.92% over the period, reaching 552 million.
• Google search volume remained strong at 1.867 billion, three times that of AI.

Even though ChatGPT and other chatbots have generated a lot of buzz, they still cannot fully replace traditional search engines in terms of information accuracy, trust, and timeliness.

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AI and Search Play Different Roles: Real-time vs. Depth

AI chatbots offer real-time interaction and are good at summarizing answers. However, for users who want to explore deeply or verify information, traditional search still provides more credibility and broader sources.

Generative AI enhances the experience of search rather than replacing it. Google’s integration of SGE (Search Generative Experience) and Microsoft Bing’s integration of Copilot show that AI is becoming a new layer of search, not a replacement.

So, SEO is not dead, but it must evolve into “AIO” (AI + SEO).

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SEO isn’t dead, but it must evolve into “AIO”

Many people mistakenly think AI is just another form of “copywriting.” In fact, the future of SEO is more about scenario design, logic-based interaction, and AI-enhanced experiences.

Examples include:

• Scenario Design (e.g., travel guides, small business Q&A)
  → Instead of simply writing articles or FAQs, design entire conversation flows.
• Content Structuring for AI Indexing
  → Content must be formatted so AI can understand and refer to it, such as question-based formats.

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Are We Over-Relying on AI to Write Content?

A common mistake today is letting AI write low-quality content in bulk. This might temporarily help rank pages, but in the long term it lowers user trust and damages the brand.

Even if you use ChatGPT to generate a large amount of material, it still needs to be manually checked, localized, contextualized, and made emotionally resonant to be effective.

So, don’t fight AI—work with it. Find the best integration point for your brand and message.

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The Future of SEO: It’s Not Just Keywords, But Emotion, Logic, and Sensory Experience

The future of SEO won’t be about keyword stuffing, but rather multimodal expression that engages multiple senses.

For example:

• Telling a brand story (emotionally engaging, like a mini-drama)
• Interactive design (e.g., quizzes, guided stories)
• Assistive visuals (images, videos, infographics)
• AI interaction (letting users “talk” with your brand)

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New SEO Tools You Should Use Now:

1. Embrace Multimodal Media (Podcasts, voice summaries)
   This is what’s called Multimodal SEO—future content must not just be “written,” but also “spoken,” “heard,” and “felt.”
2. Prepare Your Company with an SEO + AIO Strategy
   • Update your FAQ pages and match them with potential user queries.
   • Invest in structured content and rich snippets that AI can index (Knowledge Graph).
   • Maintain Google indexing while also optimizing for AI-generated answers.
3. Integrate AI Services and Content Learning Tools
   Tools like ChatGPT API, Dify, and Chatbase can help turn your static content into dynamic AI chatbots.

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How Should Traditional Enterprises Prepare for the AI Search Era?

1. Dual Strategy: SEO + AIO promotion
   Traditional SEO still works for search engine traffic.
   AIO helps you appear in AI-generated summaries and personalized content.
2. Restructure Content for AI Readability
   • Break content into logical paragraphs with clear headlines.
   • Use simple sentence structures and consistent formats.
   • Add structured data that AI can understand.
3. Develop Internal AI Knowledge Tools
   Use APIs and AI engines to build internal knowledge bots to assist customer service and staff training.

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Conclusion: AI is a tool, people are the soul

AI is here to stay. But SEO is not dead—it’s simply evolving into a new form.

The most important thing is: AI cannot replace your understanding of your users.
AI can be used to help, but not to replace the unique human insight you bring.

In the future, SEO professionals must become designers of content experiences, guiding users through a journey with logic, emotion, and technology.

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Columnist: 多點AI — Michael So (Adjunct Assistant Professor, Lingnan University)

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