What will Google Search look like with artificial intelligence?

You've heard of and may be using ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing AI, and even Google Bard. These are chatbots that communicate with the outside world with the help of artificial intelligence. These language models have literally exploded in popularity. While ChatGPT and Google Bard are standalone chatbots, Microsoft has gone in a more integrated direction. Unknowingly, or perhaps intentionally, he set off a red alert in Google. With Microsoft integrating artificial intelligence into search results themselves, Google's main source of income, all the alarms went off on the Google dashboard.

Somewhat lazily, or perhaps very cautiously, Google went about integrating artificial intelligence into its search engine. After months of rumors and speculation, Google has finally revealed its latest artificial intelligence, Search Generative Experience (SGE), at the I/O 2023 event.

This is currently in the experimental phase, but an early test is already underway in America as part of Google Labs services. Let's take a look at the first impressions of how Google will change search and SEO optimization.

How will Google's Generative Search Experience (SGE) work?

At first glance, the Google search engine has remained relatively the same. You will enter your search words or questions in the familiar window. But when the results start to show, the first changes start to be noticed.

At the top of the page, above all other results, a shaded section appears showing what SGE's generative AI has found. Google calls this a snapshot and it contains key searched information with relevant links for deeper research. It's all done with Google's language models, which draw information from the entire web.

A big focus of Google's generative AI is that users have the ability to see what resources are being used. "As part of their answer, we want language models to tell us what resources we can use to dig deeper," says Liz Reid, vice president of Google Search.

SGE works very similar to what you are used to with other chatbots. If we have browsed the web using keywords so far, with SGE we will be able to search with full questions and also talk to the search engine. For example, Reid asked the AI a question about which Bluetooth speakers to use at the beach. The search engine first generates classic results, followed immediately by artificial intelligence results. As expected, you will first get listed a few features that are important for using speakers on the beach (water resistance, battery life, robustness...). More importantly, SGE will remember your question, and when you want to add something like "Which Bluetooth speakers under €100 are good for the beach?", you'll get a more personalized answer.

It's all powered by Google's latest language models, including PaLM 2 and the Multitask Unified Model (MUM), which they use to understand different forms of media. The experience will be most pronounced on mobile devices. On smaller screens, the AI results will occupy almost the entire surface, which could cause a lot of problems for classic SEO optimization.

Also (at least for now) you won't get answers to every question. SGE will avoid sensitive topics such as finance and health.

At the same time, Google officials say their mission is to change how consumers approach web searches. Artificial intelligence should direct us to richer questions, which in turn lead to more concrete answers. Classic searches with keywords (best phones, cheap computers, Facebook, Slovenia...) remain unchanged, although they will probably lose their importance over time. Those more articulate questions (What should I see in Ljubljana over the weekend, Which restaurant is the best in Gorenjska...), for which Google has not had rich answers so far, will finally get a more concrete form.

A quick snapshot of how AI search will work.

Trained to pull data from all over the Internet, large language models can help answer these questions by performing many different searches at once and then combining that information into a few sentences and a few links.

Google is very confident that SGE will deliver verified facts and not a mixture of basic false facts and literal lies. ChatGPT, Bing and Bard often deliver false information. The PaLM 2 language model should improve this statistic, but it certainly won't solve the problem entirely.

What will happen to SEO optimization?

The SEO community has long been concerned about what will happen to content, especially after the launch of Google Bard, which served up very few or no links in its responses to the sites it pulled content from. Websites and Google have always been in a symbiotic relationship, tied together by SEO. After the presentation of the SGE, which will display certain links.

But now other questions arise.

• How will SGE affect the click-through rate?
• Which websites and hits will it include in the AI results?
• How will this change keyword analysis?
• Will there be a dedicated search AI console?

It's too early for answers. There are many guesses, but it is difficult to predict in which direction the Google search engine will develop. The fact is that the competition in the field of SEO content will further intensify.