A report based on independently verified accounts notes that Apple’s Safari 18 will include a smart search feature that summarizes web pages in response to search queries, and there may be a new feature called Web Eraser that allows users to permanently remove text, images and advertisements from web pages. .
The potential for disruption by Apple AI Search
Apple has been collecting website data for years through its Internet crawler that uses the user agent, Applebot. The data collected has been used in the past in the context of Apple’s Spotlight Suggestions feature and Siri.
Many in the search community have been aware of Applebot and welcomed the prospect of a new search engine from Apple, but despite constant crawling, Apple has not released a search engine. One reason Apple hasn’t launched a standalone search engine may be that it’s become clear that the best way to challenge Google Search is with technology that replaces search engines entirely, like the Apple’s iPhone made digital cameras obsolete.
The latest news coming out about Safari 18 seems to confirm that supplanting Google is Apple’s strategy.
The approach Apple is taking has the potential to disrupt not only search engines, but also the search optimization and publishing industry, which has been waiting years for an Apple search engine. But the extent of that disruption depends on how Apple implements its AI web search digest.
Summary of the web page
While the news reports didn’t provide details on how the new search results summaries will appear, it seems reasonable to speculate that Apple will offer attribution in the form of a link to websites for users to click through to the website.
That’s what it was reported:
“With the release of Safari 18, Apple is expected to introduce article summaries via a new Smart Search feature, meaning users will have the option to generate a short summary of any page web currently on the screen.
Apple’s built-in AI software can analyze keywords and phrases in a web page or document and generate a short summary that contains only the most important information.
SEOs have been giddy at the prospect of an Apple search engine for years. Now it looks like the Google Killer they’ve been waiting for might result in less search query traffic, but to what extent it’s impossible to know at this point.
One search marketing expert opined in a private chat that if Intelligent Search summarizes more than it links, it may signal that it’s time to start selling the domain names they’ve invested in.
On-device processing
An interesting feature of the text digest is that the technology that creates the digest (called Ajax) resides on the mobile device itself. What Ajax does is extract keywords, entities and use the data to identify the topic and a loose summary of a web page which is then turned into a text summary for the user.
This is how the functionality is described:
“When analyzing texts, the software takes into account all relevant information available. It can recognize and classify entities such as companies, people, and locations. For example, if a name appears at the top of a text, the software is likely to recognize the name as belonging to the author of the text.”
Apple also plans a web eraser
As if an Apple search summary wasn’t bad enough, Apple reportedly has a “Web Eraser” functionality planned for Safari. Web Eraser is a feature that removes content from web pages so that site visitors don’t have to look at it anymore. Things like advertising, videos, comments, suggested reading, and maybe even pop-ups could be permanently blocked with Web Eraser. Once a user “deletes” a block of content from a blocking webpage, it remains deleted for the site visitor on subsequent visits.
According to the a report on the Apple Web Eraser:
“The feature is expected to build on existing privacy features in Safari and allow users to delete unwanted content from any web page they choose. Users will have the option to delete banner ads, images, text or even whole page sections, all with relative ease.”
Technological disruptions
It is a natural response to experience anxiety in the face of change. For many, the emergence of AI Search is their first experience of major change. But those of us who have been in research for over 25 years have experienced and grown accustomed to sudden, transformative changes that disrupt publishing and SEO. I have a feeling that Apple’s implementation of an AI search engine that summarizes websites will be disruptive, but not to the point where it hurts websites. It’s in Apple’s best interest not to disrupt the Internet to the point of extinction.
Featured image by Shutterstock/frantic00
