AI Turns Search Engines Into 'Yellow Pages'

Remember when the Yellow Pages -- the massive, printed book with local business names, addresses and telephone numbers -- was the primary resource for this information? Search engines are on their way to becoming this fossil, according to the CEO of a global digital marketing agency.

Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO at VaynerMedia, told Bloomberg TV: “We are in the early stages of the search engine looking like the Yellow Pages."

Many companies in the Fortune 5000 are in trouble, he said, because a huge percentage of their business relies on search. They managed to get their Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio (LTV:CAC), and that’s what they use to drive intent.

Google and others like Microsoft are trying to replace and update that search with AI to keep that business. But companies, especially Google, will never again have the opportunity to control as much market share as search, he said.

Many companies -- from Meta to OpenAI and Perplexity -- will replace what Google once had. AI will turn search into a fragmented ecosystem.

"People who have been lazy and overpaying for their brand value on search need to understand they are in trouble and need to start creating demand, [as well as] learn how to win the SEO game in AI," he said. "AI optimization is about to become a whole new game."