It’s been a big week/month/year for self storage SEO! With AI taking a huge leap into the market, Google being legally declared a monopoly, and Bing still just Bingin, is there anything that hasn’t changed?
Well, yeah. Lots of stuff hasn’t changed - but it’s good to keep a finger on the pulse. Google is the main source of rentals for a lot of businesses, and anything that affects Google will affect you too.
We’re going to keep this one short and sweet. We’ve got three topics to cover, and we’ll end them each with a “What does that mean for self storage SEO?”
Here are the self storage SEO developments you should know about:
Read more: Search Engine Journal
The Department of Justice has recommended that Google be forced to sell its web browser, Chrome. Google has maintained a search monopoly partially because it has data from millions of Chrome users - data that other search engines do not have access to.
At the moment, we have no idea whether this will actually happen. The DOJ (the prosecution in this case) have recommended this as a potential solution to the problem. The judge overseeing the case will take their recommendation under consideration, but is not required to agree.
There’s a good argument to be made that forcing Chrome to be sold would hurt consumers as a whole, because Chrome is given away for free. Any company that bought Chrome would need a way to make money off of it, which could mean charging for the browser, adding more advertisements, etc.
Google doesn’t need to make a ton of money off of Chrome right now because it can use Chrome data for its search engine. No other search engine has the reach necessary to make use of that data the way Google does.
So, from that angle, it seems unlikely that the judge will force Google to sell Chrome - but she still could! There’s a lot going on in this case, so it’s hard to speak with certainty about any of it.
What does that mean for self storage SEO?
We don’t know enough right now to take any action - but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on! If Google does sell Chrome, SEO will become even harder and more important. Right now, Google can track user data to see which sites are satisfying users and which are not. Without that data, Google will need to rely on other metrics, which probably won’t be as accurate or intuitive as user data.
If Google sells Chrome, I would expect backlinks, site optimization, technical SEO, and all the other old SEO stuff to become even more important.
At the end of October, OpenAI launched SearchGPT, their AI-powered search engine, and it’s doing really well!
More people are using SearchGPT than are using Bing, Facebook, Perplexity, LinkedIn, and other search engines combined, according to Rand Fishkin.
Does that mean Google finally has a real competitor? Do we need to start focusing on AI-SEO instead of only caring about Google?
Not really.
SearchGPT has a bunch of users, but it seems that those users are not abandoning Google to use SearchGPT. Instead, people are using SearchGPT in addition to their pre-existing search habits.
Google is not losing searchers, users, or revenue. Instead, Google is growing at the same rate it has been for the past five years.
What does that mean for self storage SEO?
Nothing much, but it is cool! In general, people are using AI like SearchGPT for more information, educational queries instead of looking for a nearby business. That could change, but for now our renters are still using Google.
You’ve probably seen AI Overviews before. They show up in approximately 15% of Google search queries (though recently that number seems to have shot way up for me).
Instead of giving links or calling out text from web pages, AI generates an answer to the question you’ve posed. It looks like this:
This can be useful for informational queries (provided the AI doesn’t hallucinate), but it also does not send any clicks to the website.
If you get the answer to your question in the AI overview, there’s no reason to click into the pages that are cited, right?
That seems logical, but researchers aren’t seeing a big decrease in traffic yet. Google’s algorithm is always fluctuating, so it’s possible that the effect is just hard to find, but for most websites, traffic is not noticeably down.
However, many industry thinkers expect AIO to take a significant share of search traffic. I’ve seen estimates that AIOs could take up to 30% of total traffic - but even if that happens, I’m not worried for our self storage operators.
What does this mean for self storage SEO?
Not much - theoretically. Storage operators want to find searchers that are looking for storage. If they’re looking for storage, an AI Overview won’t help them, because they need a business offering a real product.
If AIOs take all of your traffic except those who want to rent a unit from you, that’s fine. If you only get 10 visitors a month but all 10 rent storage units? Fantastic!
This has been a big year for self storage SEO! AI has moved forward in massive leaps, Google has been ruled an illegal monopoly, and new search engines are entering the game.
All of these developments could potentially shake up the way we do SEO. Some of them could change digital marketing altogether!
But none of them have yet. These are all developments to keep an eye on, but none of them should change your approach.
Our SEO advice remains the same as it always has been - do a great job for your customers, have a self storage website that works, and focus on getting rentals, not rankings.
Here are some of my other favorite posts to check out!
At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
