😸 Google Search isn't dead yet

gm legends. It’s Sunday funday.

In this edition: why Google Search is going full Monty Python on AI, how to hunt for a job without hunting for a job, handing over the launch codes, and the most popular products that went live this week. 

We’ve got a lot to share, so fill the Yeti and let’s get going.

P.S. Launching soon? We’d love to hear about it → editorial@producthunt.co 🫶

You can bury the premature predictions of Google Search’s death at the hands of AI. Turns out, LLMs have been a boon for the advert–er, search, company. 

According to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal, search revenue from April through June was up 12% from the same time last year, making it Google’s best quarter ever.

What’s going on? At least three things:

• Users are digging Google’s AI Overview tool, which grew from 1.5 billion monthly users in the first quarter to 2 billion monthly users in the second.
• Ummm, it owns the world’s biggest browser, in case you forgot. Why navigate to ChatGPT for everything when you can peck something into your search bar and get back a decent AI response? (Which is why OpenAI and Perplexity are releasing their own browsers.)
• It can pay for whatever it wants. In the past, it’s purchased Android to stay relevant for mobile search, doled out dollars to Apple to have Safari default to Google search, and, oh yeah, spent a ton on AI computing to head off Microsoft.

But Google’s always adjusting its formula (just ask any sad content creator who would’ve been rich if that pesky algorithm hadn’t changed). This week, the company unveiled an experimental feature called Web Guide. It’s like a hybrid of Search and AI—you still get the links front and center like the Google of old, but they’re organized using generative AI. It may just mean that the thing that finally kills the Google algorithm is…Google.

Enough about Google—what about me?

Under the calm, crystalline waters of Google’s dominance, there’s a lot of churn. Per the WSJ, although users are being exposed to more links, they’re clicking on fewer revenue-generating ones.

Downstream, then, SEO tools as a category is in a state of flux. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush still dominate if you want to rank for SEO, but an increasing number of SEO tool launches on Product Hunt are explicitly referencing AI (and sometimes not even bothering with the search engine). In the last six weeks we’ve seen:

• Search Console Audit, which scans your Google Search Console and tells you how to get more traffic on both Google and ChatGPT
• Blogwald, a newsletter tool that optimizes for Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT searches
• LLM SEO Report, which lets you see what AI assistants think about your brand

So, hold off on the obituaries for now. Google Search and SEO tools aren’t dead yet. They’re just getting facelifts.

The promise of AI—in addition to making it possible to pull up synopses of Star Trek: TNG told in the voice of Data—is that it will put all of us out of a job. (Not you, Brent Spiner, you’re irreplaceable.) 

But what if, instead of putting you out of a job, AI helped you find one instead? And not just any ol’ job making meatloaf for the elderly or, bleck, teaching children, but one matched to your skillset. Of course, we hope you never have to use it, but it did just raise a $3.2 million seed round last month. And it was our top product launch in July last year.

Can you name the product?

Nika wants to know: “How do you warm up the community (potential voters) before the Product Hunt launch?”

In other words, how do you put yourself in position to land at #1?

As a marketer with a few Product Hunt launches under her belt, Nika’s got a list of the basics, including social media posts and reminder emails. We’re on the hunt for a few more tactics.