Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently spoke about the future of search, affirming the importance of websites and search engines (good news for SEO), but also acknowledging the place for AI chatbots like Gemini. This may seem contradictory, since AI is supposed to make search engines obsolete, but there are ways to achieve a future where both run in parallel.
Search vs Chatbot vs Generated Search
There is a lot of discussion about AI search, but what is often missing from that discussion is agreement on what it means. This is important because he has three schools of thought on what is being discussed.
- Search engine (traditional search with backend AI)
- Chatbots (Gemini and ChatGPT)
- Generative Search (a chatbot stacked on top of traditional search engines like Perplexity.ai and Bing)
The phrase traditional search is outdated
We still talk about traditional search and organic search as if they’re the same things we’ve been talking about for the past 20-plus years. The reality we must recognize is that traditional search no longer exists. Given that AI is powering search from start to finish, maybe it’s time to stop talking about traditional search and recognize what we’re dealing with: AI-powered search. not.
AI-powered search
Sundar Pichai says Google has been using AI for years, and systems like RankBrain, SpamBrain, and Helpful Content System (also known as HCU) use AI to detect fake reviews in local searches and many other ways. We know this to be true because we do. . AI is involved in nearly every step of Google Search, from the backend to the ranking process to the frontend of search results.
Google’s 2021 documentation on SpamBrain describes how AI is used at the crawling and indexing level.
“First, we have systems that can detect spam as we crawl pages and other content. …Some content that is detected as spam is not added to the index.
These systems also work for content discovered through sitemaps and Search Console. …spammers hack into vulnerable sites, impersonate the owners of those sites, verify their identity in Search Console, and use tools to force Google to crawl and index the many spam pages they create. I watched him ask me to do something. Using AI, we were able to pinpoint suspicious verifications and prevent spam URLs from entering our index. ”
Google describes the latest March 2024 core algorithm update as complex and is still not complete in April 2024. I think Google has moved to a more AI-friendly infrastructure to accommodate things like the integration of AI signals that were previously associated with AI. Incorporate HCU and review systems directly into core algorithms.
SEOs say that “AI search” will eventually become an AI search engine, as if Google isn’t already doing that with Featured Snippets and Knowledge Graph search results, or as if Google wasn’t already an AI search engine. He says he will only be answering questions, which is disconcerting.
Let’s be honest: Traditional search doesn’t exist anymore. Google is more accurately described as an AI-powered search engine. This is important to recognize because it relates directly to Sundar’s Pichai’s vision of what search will look like in 10 years.
See also: Google CEO talks about what search will look like in 10 years
Blended hybrid search, also known as generative search
What people now call AI search is also a misnomer. A more accurate label is generative search. Bing and Perplexity.ai are generative AI chatbots stacked on top of the search index, and in between there is something that mediates between the two, commonly referred to as search augmented generation (RAG). Masu. This is a technology created by Facebook AI researchers in his 2020. .
chatbot
There are a variety of chatbots, including ChatGPT and Gemini. There’s no need to elaborate on this point. Okay, let’s move on.
Search vs. Generative Search vs. Chatbot: Who Wins?
Generative Search is a clumsy combination of a chatbot and a search engine, with a rather complex interface. It’s annoying because it asks you to do your homework and gives you the phone number of a local restaurant, but both are mundane. But even if generative search improves, does anyone really want a search engine that can also write essays? These clumsily coupled features will fall away and eventually become more similar to the Google that already exists. is almost a given.
Chatbots and search engines
This leaves chatbots and search engines for the foreseeable future. Sam Altman said AI chatbot searches that serve ads are dystopian.
Google is pursuing both strategies by building its Gemini AI chatbot into Android as an AI assistant that can make phone calls, call local restaurants, and suggest the best pizza in town. . CEO Sundar Pichai is on record as saying that the web is an important resource and that he wants to continue using it.
But without chatbots displaying ads, Google’s ad revenue would drop significantly. Despite this, the SEO industry is convinced that SEO is dead as search engines are replaced by AI.
At some point, Google could make a lot of money from its cloud services and SaaS products, and if everyone moves to AI chatbots, it could move away from search-based ad revenue.
Ad-worthy queries
But if there’s money in search ads, why not bother crawling the web, developing the technology, and monetizing it? Who’s going to keep the money on the table? Not Google.
There is a search engine algorithm called Query Deserves Freshness. The algorithm determines whether a search query is trending or newsworthy and selects web pages about fresh, recently published topics.
Similarly, I believe that at some point, chatbots will be able to differentiate when a search query is worth advertising and switch to search results.
Google CEO Pichai refutes the SEO narrative of the decline and extinction of search engines. Pichai says the future of search will also include websites because search requires the diversity of opinion that is inherent to the web. So where is this going?
Google Search already provides answers to queries about non-monetary information, such as weather and currency conversion. Google doesn’t lose anything by displaying your informational queries with a chatbot, as these queries don’t display ads.
However, for shopping and other transactional type search queries, the best solution is an ad-worthy query.
If a user asks for a shopping-related search query, there will come a time when the chatbot “successfully” determines that the query is ad-worthy and switches to the search engine’s inventory, which also includes ads.
This may explain why Google’s CEO sees a future where the web coexists with AI, rather than being replaced by it. So, if you think about it, Query Deserves Advertising may be a way for search engines to maintain a profitable advertising business in the age of AI.
read: Why Google SGE remains at Google Labs and what’s next
The query is worth searching
As an extension of this concept, you can think about search queries that need to display comparisons, user reviews, expert reviews, news, medical, financial, and other queries that require human input. These types of queries may also switch to search results. The results may differ from the current search results, but they are still the search results.
People love reading reviews, reading news, reading gossip, and other human-generated topics, and that’s not going away. Insight matters. Individuality is important.
SEO worthy queries
Therefore, the knee-jerk reaction among SEOs that SEO is dead may be premature. We are still in its early stages, and as long as we can make money from search, there will still be a need for websites, search engines, and SEO.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Shchus
