Search Market Predictions

Posted on by Brendan

Coming off OpenAI’s announcement last week about adding more links out within its answers, I am going to spend the blog post trying to predict what the search market will look like in 5 years which will take us to the year 2029. At the end, I’ll give my thoughts on how to think about building skills now to be relevant in this potential world I am predicting. 

I am trying to remember to take a step back more often and think about what this means for the businesses I help and the career trajectory I am on. Here’s the predictions I have: 

LLM powered AI assistants become used for deep researching or more intimate feedback or help (e.g. writing essay, memo, or idea generation). 

Traditional search like Google has LLM technology embedded into it basically becoming another SERP feature. 

The lines between AI assistants and traditional search get blurred. You may use traditional search then move into the AI assistant experience. Rand Fishkin touched on this in a post. He was torn on categorizing OpenAI as productivity or search. 

I predict these blurred lines will result in search becoming more fragmented over the next 5 years. Google keeps the majority share but loses the 90% share it has today. Imagine something like 60 to 70% and the other 30 to 40% is spread across search engines and AI assistants. 

To date, search has been a winner-take-all market but I don’t see it staying that way with the rise of LLM technology and the momentum of others in the space. 

At the end of the day, this is all about consumer behavior and if people have incentives to make the switch. I remember when my ridesharing behavior changed in 2017. Prior to that, I stuck with Uber to avoid more apps on my phone. I favored simplicity. But in 2017, I started using ridesharing a lot more than usual while doing my part-time MBA. When class finished at 9PM, a rideshare was much easier than public transit. I downloaded Lift and was committed to finding the cheaper option for each ride so I would switch between apps and order the ride that had the lower price.

My incentive was a lower price. What may be the incentive for consumers to switch their search engine preferences? I think the incentive will be that the alternative options could be that much more helpful to have in your phone and at your fingertips.

An iPhone user would need to download a second app and not use the Safari browser. An Android user would do the same and avoid the Google search bar likely prominent right on their home screen. 

What this means for businesses with target customers using search is that I predict organic search traffic becomes more fragmented. It will come from more sources. Google still has majority share in your organic search but not the 90%+share it has today – something a bit lower than that and you see organic traffic coming in from AI assistants that begin to get more usage.  

For people building careers in search today, I recommend leaning into these changes by leveraging the skills you’ve built to date and following the users. Specifically, the way you’ve understood customer behavior and then figured out how to act on it in accordance with what Google rewards. You can apply that to other platforms as well. Build strategies and business cases that provide a compelling reason to invest and go execute. 

In a fragmented search world, managing the strategies and performance on more platforms will be challenging but also will mix things up in fun and interesting ways.

No matter the platform, I believe sending traffic out for users searching is fundamental to helping users finish the task. OpenAI’s announcement supports it. We’ve learned a while ago from answer boxes that it might not always be needed but it will continue to be a big part of search. 

Do you think this might happen or something else? Hit me up. I’d love to hear your thoughts and why.

What Did You Want To Be Growing Up?

Posted on by Brendan

I connected with someone at my company yesterday as part of a peer networking program that we’re trying in 2024. I found it fun and refreshing to have a conversation with someone in my company world but has a very different remit. We connected on a few things: coaching, team building, values are a few. At the end, he asked an interesting question which was, “when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?” 

I recently read a book that argues against asking this question to kids since it sets expectations and boxes them in. I love that. But as an adult, I also enjoy thinking back on the question. 

I wanted to play professional hockey. When I was 5, I went to my first NHL game. Not in Boston but in Hartford, CT where the Whalers played.  They happened to be playing the Bruins that day. My dad took me, and he knew someone who worked for the Whalers so we got to go to the locker room for autographs. That was my intro to the NHL. From there, I played the sport for about 20 years. I loved playing street hockey and mini hockey in the basement as a kid. Then when I became a teenager, I started to put more serious time in with coaches one on one. In high school it helped me build discipline that serves me today. 

The NHL dream never faded but of course was less and less a reality over time in high school. I learned about division III athletics from a family friend. I was very interested in being able to play competitively but also pursuing academics and having more of a social experience.

That’s what I got to do at Skidmore College. I couldn’t have been happier with that decision. As the academic pursuit led me to what I do today for work.  

The NHL dream lives on. I gave up hockey for 10 years after college for a few reasons but one had to do with the dream never becoming a reality. It hurt a bit for sure. I started playing again and am loving it. Just needed a little time away after it being such an important part of my life for 10 years. 

I think the value of this question in part lies in how you are applying that dream of what you wanted to be to your life today. Is it that you do the activity tied to that professional to still scratch the itch? Do you exhibit qualities and characteristics needed for that profession somewhere else in life? Are you fully at peace with that professional dream fading and don’t care at all? That is okay too.  

Leveling Up Weekly & Daily Prioritization

Posted on by Brendan

The biggest mistake I see people make in the first 3-6 yrs of their career is not getting good at weekly/daily prioritization that supports their team/business. I needed to improve at this myself at various times of my career. It became hard to make time to truly prioritize work. The truth is you have more autonomy over what you decide to do than you think. It starts with organizing your weeks in a way that works. As you organize, share bits and pieces of that organization with your manager and team. Make your personal weekly planning trickle into updates so you are putting it into action. There’s research that telling someone you are going to do something increases the odds you will do it – you become more accountable to doing it. Here’s a few other habits to build for good weekly/daily planning: 

  • Make time every Monday morning to plan your week.
  • Make big rocks and put tasks under the big rocks. Big rocks should be things that tie to the team’s strategy. 
  • Do not share laundry lists with your manager. You aren’t doing anything to make things easy on them. They probably want to know about all these things but you need to present in a more organized fashion. 
  • Always remember it is okay to roll tasks over into the next day. 

Thankfully, I have learned the lesson of owning my priorities and calendar and hoping to help others get there too. When you find what works for you, you will feel the right amount of control and autonomy you want with spontaneity mixed in. 

Levels of Complexity

Posted on by Brendan

Progressing in your career to higher level roles often means the levels of complexity that you are dealing with increase. I’ve found the best product and marketing leaders are the most effective because they’re handling their levels of complexity in ways that produce value to their organization. You will know someone handles levels of complexity well from working directly with them and seeing it yourself or hearing from others how good that person is at breaking down a complex problem or opportunity in a compelling way and influencing people to solve it. 

Individual Contributors Remit:

  • Weekly Tasks 
  • Manager Communication
  • 1-3 Stakeholders 

Leader’s Remit:  

  • Direct Team & Cross-Functional Team 
  • Stakeholders and Peers 
  • Multi Year Strategy & Quarterly Execution 

The contrast in these two remits shows the added complexity a leader takes on. Each bullet requires leading & managing more people. The strategy is critical to nail down and get support on, then the execution needs to be done by others and you need to find effective ways to check in and add feedback. You will also need to pick the places where you get your hands dirty which has to be chosen wisely. 

When my remit started to get broader, I was pretty bad at managing layers of complexity. I was able to lean on my expertise in my domain which helped but I had to learn a lot of important lessons and still am regarding management, relationships, and strategy. Here’s a few:

  • You can’t do all the execution anymore. Practice delegating and specifically asking for things. It’s okay to be really prescriptive and let people give you feedback to pull back. 
  • Ask really thoughtful questions to get better answers.  
  • Set up a mechanism for weekly project updates that are used in weekly discussions to highlight progress and blockers. Makes convos more fluid. 
  • Set up 1:1s with key people and have 1:1 docs to riff on ideas during the call…it is good to put the notes in a place both people can read them. 
  • Have a robust weekly/daily planning process for yourself. Allow room for flexibility but stick to getting the high leverage stuff done each week. 
  • Prioritize high leverage tasks in a week such as strategy document, project document or test spec. 
  • Don’t be all business all the time. At the end of the day, it’s about the relationships and skills you’re developing that is important.
  • Make time to innovate and think.

I remember early in my career working on a client project that was going off the rails a bit in terms of many deliverables on deck and there was a bit of chaos brewing. The client lead came into the room where myself and a team member were trying to talk out what’s going on. The leader diffused the problem and simplified the actions with command. That’s a micro moment but great example of a leader handling levels of complexity well (multiple team members, multiple deliverables, and the clients success and happiness). 

What have you found to be helpful in managing levels of complexity in effective ways that add value?

Today’s Priority

Posted on by Brendan

My son is 3 years old today. I remembered last year feeling very happy and excited to celebrate his 2nd birthday. I love the prep that goes into it. Wrapping gifts, picking up food, making dessert, setting up, etc. Then the day is pure presence and fun. I realized last year it was the similar feelings of anticipation and excitement I had when my birthday rolled around as a kid. This is a perfect example of seeing and feeling the world through your kids as a parent which happens daily.

Knowing this was something I enjoyed a lot last year, I made it a priority today even though it’s Tuesday. I worked till about 11AM and stopped. It will be there tomorrow. I went to surprise Jake at his school as a mystery reader and then helped set up our yard to have a few friends over later. We will have sushi at night because it’s Jake’s favorite.

Hoping I can take my kids’ birthdays mostly off from work until they’re off doing something they don’t want me at.