Who knew? Google's ChatGPT competitor won't destroy search after all

Ever since people saw ChatGPT’s power as a search engine, anticipation has been building about how Google will respond. The company is known to have a working AI tool, but there’s been little to no information about how it will work or what it will do.

That all changed yesterday. In a blog post on its website, the search giant showed us the first glimpse of its Chat GPT competitor called Bard. The post says the company has opened the tool up to testers and that it will get a wider release in the coming weeks. 

Here's what marketers need to know about the upcoming tech, and a look at its potential impact on search.

Google is working on two different products

The post provides some interesting information about what we can expect when the AI tool is released. The main thing is that the tech powers two different products.

First is a ChatGPT-like bot. The article shows the tool explaining James Webb Space Telescope discoveries in a way a 9-year-old can understand. It’s a competent answer, although you wouldn’t expect anything less in a press release.

The second example shows a featured snippet-like text box answering a search query about whether a guitar or piano is easier to learn.

Google’s AI essentially responds with "some say guitar, some say piano" an answer that while comically indecisive, is also probably correct.

The implementation of this tool is both good and bad news for SEOs and people in content marketing.

On the plus side, answering queries like this should keep people using Google Search. Adding AI to search means people are less likely to abandon the tool for a GPT-like chatbot, at least in the short term.

On the downside, it could seriously reduce the number of searches that result in a click on an organic search result, a number that SEMRush says already stands at just 45.1% for desktop searches.

Google won’t show sources

Notably, the image doesn’t include any source boxes explaining where Google’s AI got the information. Instead, the search results have a read more box that provides further information about the topic.

This is potentially good news for SEOs as it is likely to encourage clicks. Competition for that first box will be intense. 😬

This is a different implementation to the Bing search beta that was recently spotted, which did appear to include links highlighting where the information came from.

The implementation Bing is testing, with a chatbot appearing at the top of the search page, is also way more innovative than Google's. This is probably because Microsoft's search engine has far less to lose.

The tool will use recent content

Perhaps the biggest difference between Google’s version and ChatGPT is that Google says it will “draw on information from the web to provide fresh answers.”

This is something that ChatGPT in its current form can’t do due to a limited data set. Not even your most recent posts will be safe from AI aggregation!

Not long to prepare

Google says the hyped-up featured snippets will begin rolling out soon, while the chatbot will be released in the coming weeks. I think the latter is the version Google will push because it’s an easy implementation into its current search offering.

It will keep people on its search platform, thus continuing to bring in the ad dollars that are so central to its business model. If this happens it will be potentially good news for content marketers and those in SEO as it will keep people using the search results.

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