It was only a matter of time before the competitors came up with their own solutions after the introduction of the Google AI Overview: OpenAI announced SearchGPT last week, which essentially means the ability to search for information in real time on the Internet built into ChatGPT. The current prototype combines the company’s AI models with web search, answers questions through dialogs and returns results, as OpenAI puts it: “provides up-to-date information with links to relevant resources.”
Microsoft also lined up in the field of generative search, after a few days ago announced, that the Bing search engine is also being expanded with generative functions. The function, which is currently only available to a small group of users, is based on a combination of large and small generative models (the company did not specify which ones), aggregates information from the Internet and generates a summary in response to search queries. Similar to Google’s AI Overview, the use of the function is optional, so it can be turned off, so the generated summaries can be removed from the top of the search results list.
After the emergence of generative AI, integrating the technology into the search engine became the next battleground, despite the fact that the initial results are far from perfect and the situation is complicated by copyright concerns. Screenshots of users using Google’s AI Overview function, which was launched in May and is currently available in a limited circle, flooded social media after the expansion of availability, as in some cases the service not only gives false or misleading, but also quite bizarre answers and advice.
AI summaries also run the risk of cannibalizing traffic to source pages, and although Google vehemently denies this, one study found that by up to 25 percent can cut back publishers’ traffic, if links to their articles fade into the background. For its part, Microsoft insists that it tries to maintain the balance even after the introduction of generative search, so that the publishers’ traffic does not decrease, but so far it has not been able to provide any details or statistics in this regard.
Will artificial intelligence really turn the market upside down as experts expect, what does Google say about it and how does the SEO profession see it all? Also, is the statement that the Google search engine began to decline even without AI years ago valid? We talked about this topic in relation to Google earlier in our HWSW Weekly broadcast.
Source: www.hwsw.hu
