Google, search and artificial intelligence

Summary

It's unclear whether Google really thought this through, or is just rushing out a product to keep from falling behind in the AI horse race ...

I recently shared this discussion prompt with my web design students:

You’re learning web design in a tumultuous time for website owners, particularly in the field of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — a big part of the alphabet soup that is this web design course. Google, the top search engine, has always been known for tweaking the rules. They determine how high or low a website ranks in search engine results pages (SERPs), and judge websites based on many, many factors – loading speed, usability, mobile device performance – the list goes on and on …

The latest upset comes in the form of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which Google is throwing into the mix on their SERPs in the form of “AI Overviews.” AI, of course, has the potential to disrupt or transform pretty much any industry or profession right now. Google’s AI Overviews are making waves this summer for several reasons: they’re often wrong — hilariously or even dangerously wrong; they insert a barrier between your search query and the website that answers it; the website owner loses out on link traffic because their question is getting answered in the overview and you don’t have any incentive to click through to the site that did all the work to answer it; and the website owner doesn’t get compensated and loses any incentive to research and develop new content. It’s unclear whether Google really thought this through, or is just rushing out a product to keep from falling behind in the AI horse race …

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