Seznam has given its first real usage figures for its chatbot. The answer is “hundreds of thousands a week”, which is modest but not nothing in a country of under 11 million people. In a blog post published on 15 October, the company said Seznam AI (formerly Seznam Asistent) is used each week by “vyšší statisíce”, or higher hundreds of thousands, of users. Those users have “nižší miliony”, or low millions, of conversations a week. The post’s URL goes further and says “více než půl milionu uživatelů týdně”, more than half a million users a week. The published text stops at “hundreds of thousands”. Seznam also says answers now arrive twice as fast as they did a quarter ago.
The more important news for search marketers is what the assistant is being connected to.
Seznam AI is wiring in the whole ecosystem
Seznam AI already draws on Seznam Search, the group’s news sites, Zboží.cz (shopping comparison), Firmy.cz (business directory) and the TV listings. It now adds Sreality.cz, the country’s dominant property portal. By the end of the year Seznam plans to add Mapy.com, Kupi.cz (retail flyers and deals), Sauto.cz (cars) and Horoscopes. Seznam’s example is a house hunt. The assistant can list available properties from Sreality and at the same time pull in nearby amenities from Firmy.cz.
“Our aim is to offer users a simple way to get to the information they need in everyday life,” said Radoslav Mikeš, Product Lead for Seznam AI. “The advantage is that we have this information directly in our ecosystem and can connect it into one useful experience.” Peter Pekarovič of the Seznam AI division stressed that all data stays in the Czech Republic and is handled under EU rules.
Local tech press filled in the rest. Lupa.cz notes the assistant runs on SeLLMa, Seznam’s in-house language model, in Seznam’s own Czech data centres. Seznam is buying new servers with Nvidia AI chips and preparing a third data centre near Prague. Cnews.cz reminds readers it only launched last November.
Why it matters
This is the Naver model, in Czech. Naver keeps AI Briefing citations inside Naver Blog, and it has shut outside AI out of its own content. Seznam’s pitch for its assistant is likewise built on data it already owns: listings, prices, business records, maps. Seznam says it also uses “other sources from the internet” through Seznam search. But each new integration answers more questions from Seznam’s own verticals before the open web is consulted.
What this means for Czech SEO:
- Your Seznam verticals are now your AI visibility. If you are a business, your Firmy.cz profile has gone from directory listing to data source. If you are an e-shop, so has your Zboží.cz feed. The same will apply to Sreality listings for estate agents and Sauto for car dealers.
- Independent portals are exposed. A property site competing with Sreality, or a car marketplace competing with Sauto, now competes with a portal that is wired directly into the main Czech search company’s assistant.
- Measurement is unclear. Seznam hasn’t said how Seznam AI sends traffic out, or how that will show up in analytics. Ask your Seznam account manager before you need the answer.
Seznam’s AI has also moved past chat. Earlier this month it set out plans for AI agents checking out at thousands of Czech e-shops by year-end. Hundreds of thousands of weekly users is small next to ChatGPT. Still, Google isn’t the only search engine Czech marketers have to plan for. And for now Seznam is the only one that also owns the listings and the map data.