The demo was beautiful. At Google’s I/O developer conference this week, the company showed off an experimental version of its search engine that handles almost unimaginably difficult queries. When asked whether families with children under the age of 3 and dogs prefer Arches National Park or Bryce Canyon, Google scoured the Internet and returned a long and detailed answer. The magazine notes that while only Bryce has dog-friendly trails, the rock formations at Arches may be popular with children, and that Arches still has plenty of dog-friendly campgrounds, shelters and roads. It pointed out.
“Now search does the heavy lifting,” said Cathy Edwards, vice president of Google Search. Behind her, AI-generated search responses took up her entire browser window.
While this new search product is certainly attractive, it probably comes at a price. Today, when people search on Google, they visit dozens of websites, gather information, and synthesize it. This process is a bit cumbersome, but depends on the website you visit to survive. By doing the “heavy lifting” itself of saving users one more click with a chatbot-like interface, Google takes these primary sources out of the equation and their ability to remain independent. , or may not even exist.
Now, the already volatile digital publishing business is preparing for its aftermath. For his more than 2,500 digital publishers Parsely covers, analytics providers found that 29% of his traffic came from search last year. And now, with social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter moving away from timely news content, the decline in search engine visitors could cause existential damage.
Rasmus Kreis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Journalism Institute, said search is a more stable source of traffic and partnerships for publishers than other technology platforms, although it is not without some pain and friction. “the prospect of [search engines] It can be daunting to have far fewer links following social media,” he said, “especially for publishers who don’t have a strong, direct relationship with a loyal, returning audience.” Told.
In a way, digital publishers have invited this moment themselves. They created a content farm and published an undifferentiated article, “When is the Super Bowl?” to win Google’s never-ending traffic sweepstakes. In the name of SEO, I can no longer browse the website. They write their recipes to a buried, uninterested, amorphous reader, and lose sight of their relationship with them. We ended up letting search engines dictate our products instead of understanding our own. And search engines have followed suit.
When ChatGPT came out last fall, it began to fulfill Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, sometimes better than Google itself. (The problem, of course, was the nasty habit of hoaxing.) It reshaped the information on the website rather than just sending people there. And people love it, making it the fastest growing consumer application ever. After OpenAI and its backer Microsoft threatened Google’s position with generative AI experiences, the search giant had to respond. And it was enforced this week. It’s an AI-powered ‘search generation experience’, still in ‘lab’ preview, but almost certainly in the future.
The reality for publishers trying to adapt to this future is declining search traffic. Google and Bing do Our generative AI products include links to websites, but clicking those links is no longer as important.
What should I do then? Publishers that minimize their reliance on search traffic will be better off in the long run. Email, podcasts, and other subscription media seem to be in great shape. Ironically, fears that ChatGPT will flood the web with crappy websites looking for search traffic may be a bit exaggerated, as generative search would destroy the business model anyway. There is a nature.
As far as search engines are concerned, as long as there is content available on the web, their generated products should work very well. Google’s demo relied on content from the National Park Service, tour guide websites, and possibly other sources on the web.that needs This content is required to function. Also, if you don’t send readers to web publishers or otherwise ensure that they maintain their ability to pay, you’ll get less information as AI generates responses. Without a primary source, that beautiful demo can be empty, even if it’s a great user experience. shell.
