Google Search will continue to evolve in the direction of the generative search experience. That’s according to Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who recently spoke about AI, search and more at the 2024 Business, Government and Society Forum at Stanford University.
The future of information and answers. AI has been transforming Google Search for years. Google hasn’t been “10 blue links” for a long time, Pichai said, adding:
“When mobile came along, we knew Google Search had to evolve a lot. We call it highlights, but for nearly 10 years you’ve been going to Google to ask a lot of questions, we’ve been using artificial intelligence to answer them . We call it Web Answers internally. … We’ve always answered questions where we could. But we’ve always heard when people come looking for information. People, in certain cases, want answers, but they also want the richness and diversity of what’s out there in the world and it’s a fine balance that we’ve always thought we’ve struck that balance pretty well.” To me the only thing that’s different is that the technology that you can respond to is advancing. We’ll keep doing it. But this evolution has been underway in research for a long, long time. “We’ve been doing all of this in Google Search for a long time and people like it, people engage with it, people trust it. I see it as a natural continuation. With LLMs and AI, I think you have one more tool powerful to do that, which is what we’re putting into Search with Search Generative Experience, and so we’ll continue to evolve in that direction as well.”
Answers vs. search Google’s mission has been to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Historically, Google has done its best to reflect what’s on the web and provide reliable, high-quality information.
Pichai mentioned that the search reviewer guidelines are a way that Google represents the point of view of its user base. And we know from Pandu Nayak’s testimony in the antitrust trial that evaluators’ information satisfaction (IS) scores are a key metric for evaluating search quality.
But the advent of Google SGE and AI-generated responses has caused many brands, SEOs and content creators to worry that searchers were no longer clicking on websites, because they got the answer directly from SGE. Since introducing multiple types of web responses, Google has tried to strike a balance, Pichai said.
“There are times when you answer – ‘what’s the population of the United States’ – yes, it’s an answerable question. There are times when you want to bring out the breadth of opinion that’s out there on the web, which is what the search does and it does it well. Just because you say we’re summarizing it at the top doesn’t mean we’re deviating from those principles. The summary can still tell you the range of opinions out there,” Pichai said
AI improves search. Pichai has long said that AI is deeper than fire or electricity. What excites Pichai about AI is how it can help improve search.
“I feel the weight that people come to look for in very vulnerable moments. … Trust is hard earned, easy to lose. We have to win it back all the time… “It’s hard to do consistently in everything that humanity seeks, which is what excites me about seeking and providing information and knowledge and it’s what I see as the opportunity. AI is an exciting technology that will allow us to do better than before. But it’s a technology that we need to deploy carefully so that we’re responsible as we do so.”
Why we care AI has radically reshaped Google Search and SEO over the past year, and we expect more big changes in the coming months. It’s always good to understand where Google Search is going, rather than where it is or was. Also, it goes without saying that Pichai’s interview rings a little hollow, especially in light of the many valid criticisms about the quality of search results and SGE responses we’re seeing right now.
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The interview You can see it here.
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