Microsoft, Google, and other search engine companies have started to add AI to the search results. Google is rolling out AI Overviews to search. This feature displays AI generated content at the top of the results.
This change has severe implications for the World Wide Web. In this article, I’m making four predictions about the future of the WWW.
Not all sites and services will be around in 5 years
AI generated results will keep a portion of searchers on the search engine’s website. The answer may suffice for a good percentage of user searches.
This impacts sites that rely on traffic from search engines. Google says that sites listed by its AI Overviews feature have received more clicks, but it is too early to tell whether only a tiny percentage of sites really benefits from it. In any event, sites on the second or third party of results will likely get less traffic.
The same may be true for certain services. Search engines like Google added more and more tools and features. You can check the weather, convert currency, get translations, do calculations or directions right from Google.
In any event, the drive towards showing more information directly on search results pages will push lots of sites out of business.
Good news is that this may level the search playing field. Companies like OpenAI may create their own search engines, which threatens the dominance of Google.
AI favors large sites and data sources
Generative AI relies on data created by humans. Without that data, it would not be able to produce any results.
For search engines, large data sources are of greater interest than smaller ones. Giving the AI access to the entirety of Wikipedia or Reddit is better than having to parse millions of smaller sites for the information.
Larger sites benefit from this, as they may sell their data to AI companies. Smaller websites do not have the means to broker deals with these companies, which means that they won’t get any compensation for their data. While they may opt-out, this also means that they won’t receive any links when the AI includes them as a source.
Ultimately, small sites are at the receiving end again when it comes to this, while large sites have a new revenue source at their disposal.
Trust will play a major role
Can AI results be trusted? AIs may hallucinate, which means that they make things up. There is also the question about the actuality of data. Since AIs rely on human generated content, they may return content that is out of date or also incorrect.
Say, you search for instructions on making a change to your Windows system. AI may return instructions that work on older versions of Windows. While you may adjust the query, there is a chance that out of date content is returned.
Trust will also play a major role in the survival of websites. Trusted sites will continue to do well, as many searchers will favor them over AI generated content. Sites that have a loyal followship may also survive.
Personality and authenticity remains important
Bland sites that just rehash news stories will have it difficult in the future. They do not really provide much value, but the business model worked, especially for established sites that can rank for pretty much any topic they write about.
Information returned by AI has no personality. It is just a robot returning information. Your favorite reviewer of video games, movies, software applications, or cars, on the other hand, may have more to offer than just the information.
This personality and authenticity of writers, podcasters, or video creators drives users towards services and sites, and may make them follow certain sites or services.
These will continue to do well, as AI cannot compete with that or mimic it satisfyingly.
Now You: what is your take on AI integrations in search, or entirely AI-powered search engines?
AIs main purpose is to generate profit for Google, M$ and the like, not to help the end user. Making anything easier for us is just a means to an end.
“If your not paying for a product, you are the product.”
For the time being, my relationship with AI in the scope of search engines is :
1- I already avoid Microsoft (Bing) and Google search engines, so their AI as well.
2- Among the 14 search engines I use, 3 have integrated what is perhaps an ersatz of AI : Brave Search, DuckDuckGo and Qwant. I have disabled AI assistance/intervention in each.
My conception of a Web search engine is that it provides a list of Websites where my query applies, no more no less. I do not want a search engine to digest results, to summarize them, to prioritize them, to value them : I want a list, nothing but a list and an as far as possible extended list. I have never used — in the old days before I banned Google — their search engine’s ‘I’m feeling lucky’ feature, I like scrolling and scrolling to discover more than a search engine’s first results. From there on, AI assisted search engines is totally out of my interest.