Google vs. AI — Whiteboard Friday

Key Takeaways

thank you happy Friday Moss fans today I want to talk about some of the threats posed to Google by recent advances in large language models and natural language processing and chat Bots and this kind of thing and I want to talk about how Google might react to some of these threats because that's obviously going to affect us whatever happens as seos now the lens that I want to to look at this through is think about some of the different kinds of query that we currently use Google for really it it's kind of a an artifact of Google's dominance in the last decade or two that we use Google as the go-to tool for such a varied set of of users so I've got some example searches here and obviously this is just some random things that came into my head this is not representative of everything people use Google for which is even more varied but got like a commercial query running shoes 50 pounds so a lot of people have known now and the data's been around for a few years Amazon is actually a bigger product search engine than Google in the US more product search Journeys start on on Amazon than on Google so that's that's not anything to do with um with large language models but that's sort of some context to to this scenario for for Google and then we've got things like pancake recipe sort of very informational uh uncontroversial where yeah actually a chat AI can do a pretty good job just sort of aggregating all the different recipes that it's consumed in its training set covet symptoms way more Authority sensitive query right so at the moment this is kind of a strong point for Google because weirdly enough we actually do trust as consumers We Trust Google more than we might trust something like a an NLP right now an NLB an NLP model right now and then Moz blog so this is your bread and butter navigational web search where really a web search engine this is what they originally set out to be good at right and they are the sort of natural tool for for a problem like this whereas for some of these other ones it's not obvious that what I want is a website at all let alone a web search engine now I think the interesting thing here so I talked about how Amazon was probably the natural competitor for some of these product queries but it's a more complex picture than that so though Google is trying to compete directly with this threat with things like the product updates I'm making sure they are a good product search engine and if you want to be a bit conspiratorial you could say well you know maybe they're trying to make sure that Amazon Affiliates aren't too dominant in the in the serps it's also the case that you know these are Big Money terms for Google in terms of AdWords but like I said before we're using Google for for everything these days and have done for some time and part of that is making sure that you're locked in with these kind of queries you get in the habit of using Google you're in their ecosystem so you're more likely to use them for for this kind of thing now in I've written lost leaders here and I think that's an interesting concept an interesting way of thinking about this in retail you might have a lost leader which would be a a product that the store does not make much money on or it might even lose money on but they've got you in so you're gonna buy the high margin products as well so these kinds of query these are not so obviously easy to monetize right but there can be lost leaders to get us engaged when we do make these high high margin searches now that's kind of why I've included this search here because I want to explain why these searches which might seem like they are not you know met something like a chateau I response to this is actually very expensive to to produce relative to how easy it is to monetize you can kind of see that with how Amazon and Google have both struggled to make money on their sort of Home chat devices you know Alexa and I think it's called Google home they both sort of struggle to make money on those because these kinds of query are hard to to monetize but they are lost leaders that will engage you for for this kind of thing so that's why they're important and obviously for this kind of query this is the one where Google is most obviously threatened by things like the new Bing and things like chat GPT and that kind of Technology as an alternative to a search engine for now so how might they respond to that well obviously if you can't beat them join them Google is launching Bard and their original announcement on February 6th and most sorts of uh most sort of logical predictions are that will suggest that it was going to end up in the serp sooner or later at the moment it's a separate interface to set but it seems like it will end up looking like a cert feature sooner or later and then we should expect to see more and more sort of Knowledge Graph results at the moment there are a lot of things you can search for on on Google where you won't see a website as a result right if you search for something like five liters in gallons then you won't see a website as a top result you'll see a Knowledge Graph result and I'd expect that to become more and more common because that is a better answer for these kind of queries often than showing a website now what about covert symptoms what about the more authority authority sensitive great well I'd say the threat here is kind of the other way around it's not that Google thinks you might use a chat bot to to ask for covert symptoms although in time you might it's more that if Google's own results are not high quality if Google's own results were written by AI then they've lost their differentiator right at the moment we trust Google more than we would trust some of these new technologies more than we would trust some other search engines they need to maintain that edge and the way they maintain that edge is by making sure that their results are written by people and all but at least by authorities or at least checked by authorities whereas some of these alternatives are not so that's why you see things like helpful content update which now looks extremely prescient that was late last year and also core updates you know core updates are Google refining and improving its algorithm over time making sure they stay ahead of the game and similarly that goes to these kind of queries too right they have to make sure they're still the best at this kind of thing at the moment things like Bard and things like the new Bing the the chat interface on new Bing don't really work for web search but in time there's no reason why they they couldn't so Google has to maintain an edge in this area as well so that was a quick uh Whistle Stop tour through how I think Google might react to to some of these new threats let me know what you think on on Twitter or on Mastodon or or any other or LinkedIn or Facebook I'd love to hear more people's opinions about these kind of emerging trends