From plain information to intelligence with a capital I: searches in the age of AI
With the advent of AI, searching the internet ceases to be a mere collection of information and mutates into a collection of intelligence.
When generative AI first emerged in late 2022, making it clear that it harbored an unprecedented innovation poised to revolutionize the tech industry, some predicted (perhaps prematurely) that Google and its renowned search engine would be the biggest victims of the revolution looming on the horizon.
However, despite AI inevitably hindering advertising on Google’s all-powerful search engine (as users feel a much less pressing need to click), Brendon Kraham, Vice President of Global Search Ads and Commerce, Business & Product Strategy at the Mountain View company, asserted a couple of weeks ago at the Online Marketing Rockstars (OMR) event that AI was actually the best thing that had ever happened to search engines. Why? Because with the arrival of this technology, searching the internet ceases to be a mere collection of information and evolves into a collection of intelligence.
While Google previously limited itself to searching for keyword matches, the famous search engine (conveniently enhanced with Gemini, the internet giant’s AI) now operates based on a logical reasoning system. And Gemini takes the trouble to break down complex user questions into different sub-questions, providing a complete answer to each and every one of those sub-questions and then synthesizing them into a coherent response, explained Kraham.
Google no longer simply indexes; it also reasons.
Before the era of AI in search was formally inaugurated and Google launched its «AI Overviews,» or synthetically generated summaries, users were forced to open up to ten different tabs to compare data. However, all that research and data comparison work is now handled by Gemini, which also prioritizes the most relevant information, Kraham emphasized.
In addition to this «superpower,» there is another, by no means insignificant, power: the ability of AI (Gemini in particular) to conduct searches that go beyond text, also relying on images and even videos. If someone experiences a bicycle breakdown, for example, they can record a video of the malfunctioning part so that Gemini can identify the problem and offer a detailed solution.
The integration of AI into searches also adds fluidity to the online shopping experience. Gemini can, ultimately, act as a «personal shopper» and recommend, for example, dresses for a beach wedding with remarkable accuracy (since it filters the available information not only based on text tags, but also on the visual style of the images and reviews from other users).
Towards Higher-Quality Web Traffic
In this new context, when users decide to click on a particular webpage, they typically do so based on a much more mature (and better-informed) decision, resulting in higher-quality traffic to the originating websites, Kraham emphasized.
During his presentation at OMR, the Google executive also highlighted that the «AI Overviews» include very clear links to the original sources from which their answers are drawn. And since AI merely piques the user’s curiosity, this encourages them to click on more specialized sources to expand their knowledge in a given area.
Furthermore, aware of the sensitivity of the information provided to users in areas such as health and finance, Gemini also uses filters to prevent potential misinformation.
According to Kraham, the combination of data from traditional searches with the context and reasoning provided by Gemini transforms the raw information once offered by Google into useful intelligence. And this useful intelligence ultimately explains why Google’s search engine not only maintains its power but becomes even more indispensable to the user, Kraham emphasized.
Source: www.marketingdirecto.com
