Worried about ChatGPT replacing search—and the traffic you get from it?
Don’t be, says Wil Reynolds, founder of Seer Interactive. People aren’t yet comfortable with these new tools.
Instead, use Generative AI tools to solve complex problems quickly.
Wil used ChatGPT to answer a years-old data question—in a matter of minutes.
Hear how he did in this video clip from B2B Forum 2023 or read Wil’s transcript below.
Wil wasn’t the only presenter to share incredible marketing insights to B2B Forum attendees. Hundreds of B2B marketers attended dozens of sessions in 2023—and B2B Forum returns in 2024 with all new insightful sessions, inspirational presenters, and whats-working-now strategies designed to upgrade your marketing mind. Join us this November in Boston for B2B Forum—details and tickets are available now.
So often we’re like, “the robots are coming for us!”
It’s not the robots.
It’s the CEOs. It’s not the robots.
So let’s talk about adoption of new technology. Let’s root ourselves in something that’s not ChatGPT AI.
Baja, elevator operators in 1900, they had the first automated elevator. It took people 50 years to get comfortable with the technology. That is very important for all these people jumping off the bridge going, “oh my God, it’s tomorrow.”
It’s like, no. People aren’t using that crap.
They’re still searching on Google. And our job is to understand our customers enough to know when they are making that transition.
I’m going to show you some ways I’m trying to do that using ChatGPT.
By 1970, automated elevators were ubiquitous. We had 33 more years before we saw the job of an elevator operator pretty much done. So that’s a long time.
Now I think… We’re in the digital world, so I don’t expect it to take us this long. But my bet is actually five to 10 years before we get to maybe 20% of people replacing search with these things. And I’m going to show you today exactly where Bing is seeing that happen because they’ve disclosed—with some of their data—what kind of queries are the ones that are going to lead to it. And I’m going to show all of you how to be relevant when that happens.
Y’all are my friends now. Everybody knows… other sessions? We’re going to toast them. They’re not going to learn what we’re about to learn. They’re going to be like, “oh my God, they automated my job.” I’m like, “you picked the wrong fucking session!”
So people, getting comfortable takes time. That’s an important thing in our world. It’s like, “oh my God, ChatGPT!” But it takes time for people to get comfortable. Look at how bad Bard is, that now when you search for something on Bard, Google now has a feature that goes, “do you want to Google search this to fact check what you just put into our version of ChatGPT?”
That’s how bad Bard is, that Google has turned their bug into, like a, “hey, we now are going to let you just one-click-and-validate our bad answers with our answers that we know are right on search.” Right? That’s how bad they are.
Alright, this is my little phrase about what these tools enable. You have to go back through things people told you were not possible last year, and question that. Because it’s like biking somewhere versus flying somewhere.
There are things people said, “well, that can’t be done,” because last year there were no airplanes. This year there are. Shouldn’t we go back and see the things that we’ve been told no to, and validate them?
The biggest problem with the tools that we have today to do our jobs—paid SEO, social, whatever—is that we’re usually a little bit… We have different use cases for those tools. Then those tools are giving back to us.
You’re like, “I wish it did this.” Oh, I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands. We all have tools that we use that we go, “I wish it did this.”
With ChatGPT, you can change that wish into a reality without learning how to code.
Good luck getting devs. We’re all begging for developer resources. We’re begging for data engineers.
You don’t need those folks as much anymore. You don’t need them to get your “noes” into “yesses.”
So what does “no-to-go” actually sound like?
Three years ago, in a chat thread on December 17th, I found out that all Wikipedia traffic data is publicly available. Three years ago, I sent this back into my inbox over and over and over and over again—every month—because I said, “someday I’m going to test the hypothesis with Wikipedia traffic data against some other traffic source that I have to validate a hypothesis for my clients as it relates to search.”
Two and a half years. Guys, two and a half years, this same message came back into my inbox every month. Because I said, “someday I’m going to have the time to work on this thing and learn some Python,” or whatever these people call it, “to program something to validate my hypothesis.”
Well, guess what happened?
I never did it.
And then guess what happened? ChatGPT came along and I said, “I hear that Wikipedia traffic data is stored in BigQuery.”
(You know how these people are like, “prompt engineering! Look how bad that prompt is!” Right?)
And ChatGPT goes, “yes, [Wikipedia traffic data] is [stored in BigQuery].”
So you’re like, “okay, that’s… an answer.”
But then it starts using big words that I don’t know, like BigQuery. Now I know what BigQuery is, API, Python, R. I’m like, “oh, now you lost me.”
I knew that, when I got it the first time, I was going to have to put it on a server somewhere. Don’t know how to do that. I was going to have to install it. A bunch of libraries? Don’t know how to do that. I don’t know Python. I don’t know R. I’m back to where I was!
ChatGPT is like, “well, just give me your Wikipedia URLs and I’m going to go and build the code for you to go get that question you had two and a half years ago. Right stinking now.”
I went, “no, really?”
It said yes. “Here’s all the traffic data by day for the URLs you just gave me.”
It built the Python code for me. It took a no from two and a half years ago, and a reminder every month to someday work on this hypothesis, and it did it for me. In 15 minutes.
I’m going to show you how to do this, over and over and over again, today.
Notice that prompt. If you’re like, “but can I type in those crazy prompts Will is showing? I hear that Wikipedia traffic data is stored in BigQuery. Is that true?” That’s where it started. It then said this.
And I said, “can you write the code to execute it using a plugin for ChatGPT-4 called notable?”
That’s the only thing you need to know. Go to ChatGPT-4, go to the plugin section, ask it to install notable, and it will automatically write the Python code for you, for whatever your hypotheses are.
Published March 20, 2024
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