Six months ago, Google didn’t appear remotely worried about its search business, but the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and OpenAI's ChatGPT has ignited a conversation about the future of SEO. Now Google is making moves to stay ahead…
Last year, OpenAI released ChatGPT and revolutionised the tech industry by showcasing the immense abilities of generative AI. The platform, which has been used by over 100 million users, has demonstrated how AI can transform information consumption and creation and poses a significant challenge to Google’s core business.
During their recent annual I/O conference, Google unveiled plans to incorporate AI technology into essentially all their existing tools, including search.
“Seven years into our journey, we are at an exciting inflection point. We have an ability to make AI even more helpful,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. “We are reimagining all our core products, including search.”
Will AI affect Google’s reputation?
While these AI applications have the potential to enhance both creativity and productivity, they are not without their hurdles. Errors and biases, which Google has already seen after the release of their AI chatbot Bard, could impact Google’s goal to provide reliable information.
So far Bard has only been available to people accepted from a waitlist, but it will soon be available in over 180 countries and in more languages.
Shortly after its release, the platform was generating incorrect answers, and although Google has been working to improve this experience, some users are still apprehensive about what this means for their other AI tools.
To avoid incorrect information being shared, Google has said that the new AI search engine will not answer queries when it’s not confident about the trustworthiness of its sources or when it comes to certain subject matters such as medical dosage information or developing news events.
What does Google’s new search engine look like?
Although the display looks familiar in many ways to what we experience currently, the new search works in fundamentally different ways and is by far the most drastic change to the search engine for over 20 years.
When a user enters a search query, Google will show a few results in grey boxes before displaying a large AI-generated block of text. This text should provide the information the user is searching for and will be made up from sources across the internet. Google will still list links relevant to your search but will also prompt you to go deeper by asking suggested follow-up questions and encouraging you to ask your own.
Then, when you click on the text in the AI result, Google will also provide links to the website that Google has pulled this information from.
The leading digital marketing agency in Birmingham
As an SEO agency based in Birmingham, it’s important to remain at the cutting edge of technology. That’s why we’re constantly adapting to the advancing needs of our industry.
If you’re worried about losing traffic to your website as this unfolds, or what this update to search means for your business, contact us at hello@clevercherry.com to find out how we can help you with our SEO services.
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