Tech

Will search engines be a thing of the past soon?

Will search engines be a thing of the past soon?

AI is here

Actually it's been here for a very long time but all of a sudden the hype... Thanks to ChatGPT going viral and hitting over a million registered users in the blink of an eye.

If AI (such as ChatGPT) provides faster and more accurate answers than Google, do we even need search engines anymore?

Search engines struggle delivering an efficient and accurate answer. They point to low quality websites and heavily rely on content created by others. A lot of moving parts in a very uncontrolled environment. How far can that model go?

''Search is quite frustrating''

Don't agree? Well, that's why there are thousands and thousands of SEO professionals working to make it less frustrating. I've been one of them as a part of my marketing career.

Death of search engines

One prediction many are making right now is that search engines as we know them will die and many other services will either follow the suite or go through an evolution.

Simpler will always win

This applies to almost everything in life. Humans are lazy by nature. If there are two solutions and one is much simpler and quick, we go for it. I've also written about why "convenience beats privacy'' before which is something I learned throughout the years.

Google became a success by making search simpler and quicker. Google never stopped evolving and probably the main reason of their success is that they never gave up on their motto, treat users with respect and make them feel empowered. But... it's a hard game. Current model has been struggling big time despite huge budgets and the super skilled workforce Google has.

One of the ''killer'' ideas Google executed...

You probably heard about the  ''zero result pages''. If you google 'how is the weather' on your phone and instead of showing you a bunch of links Google just answers it. Nobody gets a click. No traffic generated. Google consumes the answers, shows it to their user.

Though zero result pages are not great for Google's business model. They can't completely replace the search with it.

Even Google struggles with quality search results

Existing model of search engines is very costly. Improving search with gazillion algorithm updates have been moving towards improving the quality of results so that users find value in googling things. On the other hand it's been getting a lot more complex for website owners with an ever increasing competition in SEO. We are still seeing crappy websites with not very helpful content ranking while they really should not be.

Content creators hate the marketing processes to drive traffic

From content creator's perspective, having to apply Pareto's law in a way to build content marketing is one examples of an annoyance as well. 20% of time to be spent on creating content and 80% to market it, so that your content could have a chance to rank and receive traffic from uncle Google. Why?

There is a huge cost to providing a ''high quality'' search engine service and our constant battles to optimise and rank our content.

Creators are burning a lot of calories like an inefficient muscle car from the 70s when the modern ones with 2 litre engines consume a fraction of the fuel and able to hit similar speeds in comparison to their older relatives.

Is there a solution to this?

Perhaps the AI has a more feasible alternative to a very expensive battle we've been fighting over two decades.

To find answers if you had an AI assistant on your phones / desktops that just gave you the answer you are looking for while providing it in the forms of

  • Simpler
  • Faster
  • Accurate
  • More private

ways...

Do we need Google anymore?

Let's not be too unrealistic. Google other than a search engine that answers your query does actually provide a lot more. It will take longer for AI to truly shine. In a nutshell it would not be an overnight switch from using a search engine to using a chat ai bot.

However, if the advantages of Google start disappearing one by one expect the migration to become super noticeable in a short period of time.

Also, I've got to note that Google might as well come up with their alternative that combines years of search experience and provides a better route to answers than competition in the AI sector. If that happens and Google also evolves their revenue models, I see no reason why they could not remain in the market and continue dominating what they do best. Will they though?

What's next?

I expect to see side by side comparisons of real life situations where many experts will look into whether it is better to ''just google it'' or 'just chatgpt it''.

If we keep hearing AI wins again and again a new era will begin.

And then, only after then, instead of ''ifs'' it will be time to ask ''when?''

#ai #google #searchengines #chatgpt

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