{"id":85437,"date":"2024-03-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/26\/heres-why-ai-search-engines-really-cant-kill-google\/"},"modified":"2024-03-26T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T12:00:00","slug":"heres-why-ai-search-engines-really-cant-kill-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/26\/heres-why-ai-search-engines-really-cant-kill-google\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s why AI search engines really can\u2019t kill Google"},"content":{"rendered":"


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AI is coming for the search business. Or so we\u2019re told. As Google seems to keep getting worse, and tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot seem to keep getting better,<\/a> we appear to be barreling toward a new way to find and consume information online. Companies like Perplexity<\/a> and You.com<\/a> are pitching themselves as next-gen search products, and even Google and Bing are making huge bets that AI is the future of search<\/a>. Bye bye, 10 blue links; hello direct answers to all my weird questions about the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the thing you have to understand about a search engine is that a search engine is many things. For all the people using Google to find important and hard-to-access scientific information, orders of magnitude more are using it to find their email inbox, get to Walmart\u2019s website, or remember who was president before Hoover. And then there\u2019s my favorite fact of all: that a vast number of people every year go to Google and type \u201cgoogle\u201d into the search box. We mostly talk about Google as a research tool, but in reality, it\u2019s asked to do anything and everything you can think of, billions of times a day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The real question in front of all these would-be Google killers, then, is not how well they can find information. It\u2019s how well they can do everything Google does. So I decided to put some of the best new AI products to the real test: I grabbed the latest list of most-Googled queries and questions<\/a> according to the SEO research firm Ahrefs and plugged them into various AI tools. In some instances, I found that these language model-based bots are genuinely more useful than a page of Google results. But in most cases, I discovered exactly how hard it will be for anything \u2014 AI or otherwise \u2014 to replace Google at the center of the web.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People who work in search always say there are basically three types of queries. First and most popular is navigation, which is just people typing the name of a website to get to that website. Virtually all of the top queries on Google, from \u201cyoutube\u201d to \u201cwordle\u201d to \u201cyahoo mail,\u201d are navigation queries. In actual reality, this is a search engine\u2019s primary job: to get you to a website.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In actual reality, a search engine\u2019s primary job is to get you to a website<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For navigational queries, AI search engines are universally worse than Google. When you do a navigational Google search, it\u2019s exceedingly rare that the first result isn\u2019t the one you\u2019re looking for \u2014 sure, it\u2019s odd to show you all those results when what Google should actually do is just take you directly to amazon.com or whatever, but it\u2019s fast and it\u2019s rarely wrong. The AI bots, on the other hand, like to think for a few seconds and then provide a bunch of quasi-useful information about the company when all I want is a link. Some didn\u2019t even link to amazon.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I don\u2019t hate the additional information so much as I hate how long <\/em>these AI tools take to get me what I need. Waiting 10 seconds for three paragraphs of generated text about Home Depot is not the answer; I just want a link to Home Depot. Google wins that race every time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The next most popular kind of search is the information query: you want to know something specific, about which there is a single right answer. \u201cNFL scores\u201d is a hugely popular information query; \u201cwhat time is it\u201d is another one; so is \u201cweather.\u201d It doesn\u2019t matter who tells you the score or the time or the temperature, it\u2019s just a thing you need to know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Perplexity\u2019s answer seems helpful \u2014 but this wasn\u2019t last night\u2019s game.<\/em><\/figcaption>Screenshot: David Pierce \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Here, the results are all over the map. For real-time stuff like sports scores, the AI is not to be trusted: You.com and Perplexity both frequently gave me outdated information, though Copilot usually got it right. Google not only gets it right but usually pops up a widget with other stats and information, which is better than the others. Ditto anything requiring your specific location or context \u2014 Google probably has that information about you, but the AI bots mostly don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When it comes to more evergreen information like \u201chow many weeks in a year\u201d or \u201cwhen is mother\u2019s day,\u201d everything I tested got it right. In many cases I actually preferred the AI answers, which add a bit of helpful context. But I\u2019m not sure how often I can trust them. Google told me there are 52.1429 weeks in a year, but You.com explained that actually it\u2019s 52 weeks and a day, plus an added day on leap years. That\u2019s more useful than just 52.1429! But then Perplexity told me that actually, a common year is 52 weeks, and a leap year is 52 weeks and a day \u2014\u00a0before directly contradicting itself two sentences later. Here\u2019s the whole answer; just try to make sense of it:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A common year has approximately 52 weeks, while a leap year has 52 weeks and 1 day. In more precise terms, a regular year actually consists of 52.143 weeks, which means there is one additional day in a normal year. On the other hand, a leap year, occurring every four years except for certain exceptions, has 52 weeks and 2 days. This difference in the number of weeks is due to the extra day in a common year and the additional day in February during a leap year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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After doing some more research, I am now confident that the answer is what You.com said. But this all took too long, and forcing me to fact-check my searches kind of defeats the purpose of helpfully summarizing things for me. Google continues to win here on one thing and one thing alone: speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There is one sub-genre of information queries in which the exact opposite is true, though. I call them Buried Information Queries. The best example I can offer is the very popular query, \u201chow to screenshot on mac.\u201d There are a million pages on the internet that contain the answer \u2014 it\u2019s just Cmd-Shift-3 to take the whole screen or Cmd-Shift-4 to capture a selection, there, you\u2019re welcome \u2014\u00a0but that information is usually buried under a lot of ads and SEO crap. All the AI tools I tried, including Google\u2019s own Search Generative Experience, just snatch that information out and give it to you directly. This is great!\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now <\/em>that is how you answer a question online.<\/em><\/figcaption>Screenshot: David Pierce \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Are there complicated questions inherent in that, which threaten the business model and structure of the web? Yep<\/a>! But as a pure searching experience, it\u2019s vastly better. I\u2019ve had similar results asking about ingredient substitutions, coffee ratios, headphone waterproofing ratings, and any other information that is easy to know and yet often too hard to find.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This brings me to the third kind of Google search: the exploration query. These are questions that don\u2019t have a single answer, that are instead the beginning of a learning process. On the most popular list, things like \u201chow to tie a tie,\u201d \u201cwhy were chainsaws invented,\u201d and \u201cwhat is tiktok\u201d count as explorational queries. If you ever Googled the name of a musician you just heard about, or have looked up things like \u201cstuff to do in Helena Montana\u201d or \u201cNASA history,\u201d you\u2019re exploring. These are not, according to the rankings, the primary things people use Google for. But these are the moments AI search engines can shine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Like, wait: why were <\/em>chainsaws invented? Copilot gave me a multipart answer about their medical origins, before describing their technological evolution and eventual adoption by lumberjacks. It also gave me eight pretty useful links to read more. Perplexity gave me a much shorter answer, but also included a few cool images of old chainsaws and a link to a YouTube explainer on the subject. Google\u2019s results included a lot of the same links, but did none of the synthesizing for me. Even its generative search only gave me the very basics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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My favorite thing about the AI engines is the citations. Perplexity, You.com, and others are slowly getting better at linking to their sources, often inline, which means that if I come across a particular fact that piques my interest, I can go straight to the source from there. They don\u2019t always offer enough sources, or put them in the right places, but this is a good and helpful trend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One experience I had while doing these tests was actually the most eye-opening of all. The single most-searched question on Google is a simple one: \u201cwhat to watch.\u201d Google has a whole specific page design for this, with rows of posters featuring \u201cTop picks\u201d like Dune: Part Two<\/em> and Imaginary<\/em>; \u201cFor you\u201d which for me included Deadpool<\/em> and Halt and Catch Fire<\/em>; and then popular titles and genre-sorted options. None of the AI search engines did as well: Copilot listed five popular movies; Perplexity offered a random-seeming smattering of options from Girls5eva <\/em>to Manhunt <\/em>to Shogun<\/em>; <\/em>You.com gave me a bunch of out of date information and recommended I watch \u201cthe 14 best Netflix original movies\u201d without telling me what they are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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AI is the right idea\u00a0but a chatbot is the wrong interface<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In this case, AI is the right idea \u2014\u00a0I don\u2019t want a bunch of links, I want an answer to my question \u2014\u00a0but a chatbot is the wrong interface. For that matter, so is a page of search results! Google, obviously aware that this is the most-asked question on the platform, has been able to design something that works much better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a way, that\u2019s a perfect summary of the state of things. At least for some web searches, generative AI could be a better tool than the search tech of decades past. But modern search engines aren\u2019t just pages of links. They\u2019re more like miniature operating systems. They can answer questions directly, they have calculators and converters and flight pickers and all kinds of other tools built right in, they can get you where you\u2019re going with just a click or two. The goal of most search queries, according to these charts, is not to start a journey of information wonder and discovery. The goal is to get a link or an answer, and then get out. Right now, these LLM-based systems are just too slow to compete.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The big question, I think, is less about tech and more about product. Everyone, including Google, believes that AI can help search engines understand questions and process information better. That\u2019s a given in the industry at this point. But can Google reinvent its results pages, its business model, and the way it presents and summarizes and surfaces information, faster than the AI companies can turn their chatbots into more complex, more multifaceted tools? Ten blue links isn\u2019t the answer for search, but neither is an all-purpose text box. Search is everything, and everything is search. It\u2019s going to take a lot more than a chatbot to kill Google.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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AI is coming for the search business. Or so we\u2019re told. As Google seems to keep getting worse, and tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot seem to keep getting better, we appear to be barreling toward a new way to find and consume information online. Companies like Perplexity and You.com are pitching themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":85438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-85437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}