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Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

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Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#111

Post by rozap »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #100
rozap wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the AI is trained on a vast quantity of data therefore it is less likely to be manipulated vs a single editor that may have ulterior motives. Therefore it's much harder to manipulate. A corporation which represents many shareholders' interest has its own reputation on the line, which would be seriously damaged if they were caught doing anything like you suggest. But this can only be understood within the context…

> Yes, the AI is trained on a vast quantity of data therefore it is less likely to be manipulated vs a single editor that may have ulterior motives. Gemini was caught stuffing prompts with "custom" keywords on certain requests, so there is still an editor between you and the AI.

Read my whole comment :)

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#112

Post by bcoates »

awongh wrote: post #70

I was considering starting a business where the main traffic source would be SEO based, but based on all the gloom and doom around search I decided to hold off. Hard to say exactly how bad it’s getting right now. Lots of horror stories out there.

Honestly that might be a mistake, when the consensus is greedy get scared and when it's scared get greedy

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#113

Post by MyPasswordSucks »

In the old days - back before smartphones, back before widescreen monitors, back before broadband - the "Links" section was always a key part of any site. After spending time on a site, a visitor could find links to other pages - some of them on the same topic, some of them simply enjoyed by the creator of the site they were on. If one were to visualize the concept, they might well say that this formed a "web" of sorts.

The big publishers were the first to really reject the "Links" page. If it's not a link to our content, or the content of our sister publications, then why should we include it? Instead, they threw their resources into optimizing their placement on search engines. This took the "web" and turned it closer towards a hub-and-spoke system, as smaller sites withered and died.

Now, people have found a way to retrieve various pieces of information they're looking for that doesn't involve a search engine. It may not be perfect (gluey pizza, anyone?) but objectively, it's certainly more efficient than a list of places that have used the same words that a person is searching for, and honestly probably at least "nearly-as" reliable as said list, because the average Joe Sixpack always has, and always will, be a lot better at asking a question and getting an answer than he will be at finding an answer to his question within the confines of a larger story.

This devastates the large publishers' traffic.

I'd come up with a conclusion here, but I'm too distracted wondering where I placed my violin. It's really small, it could probably be anywhere...

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#114

Post by gkanai »

I do a lot of product searches in Japanese and there is a ton of SEO spam on domains (.br but also many others) that are basically irrelevant to Japan. Google should be blocking all of that SEO spam but they can't seem to walk away from the ad revenue. There's no good domestic Japanese search engine so it's a defacto monopoly of bad search.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#115

Post by ipsum2 »

gkanai wrote: post #114

I do a lot of product searches in Japanese and there is a ton of SEO spam on domains (.br but also many others) that are basically irrelevant to Japan. Google should be blocking all of that SEO spam but they can't seem to walk away from the ad revenue. There's no good domestic Japanese search engine so it's a defacto monopoly of bad search.

Is Yahoo Japan not good?

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#116

Post by rglover »

iambateman wrote: post #63

If the vast majority of Google revenue comes from search, and search is under siege, why is the stock so unfazed? It seems like the market thinks Google will be just fine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Market

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#117

Post by yibg »

jaredwiener wrote: post #7

Honest question as I try to wrap my millennial brain around this -- for those of you who search for news -- with or without an AI -- what are you searching for? So much of news is finding out the unknown, it seems unsearchable by nature? Or are you asking for updates to a specific, ongoing story?

I've been taking a look at my own news consumption patterns and how they've changed. One thing I noticed is previously, news was going to a paper / news site and seeing what's "new". Lately I more and more find myself first getting a glimpse of the topic from other sources (e.g. Tiktok) first, and then going to a new site to either get more details or confirm (since it's hard to tell now if a piece of content is reliable or not).

So basically news sites for me is now less about finding out new information, but rather as a secondary source to get more details or a more "professional" account of something.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#118

Post by waldrews »

ajross wrote: post #83
juujian wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one way forward for them would have been to maintain their quality, but they decided to cash in on their monopoly instead. Peak short-termis.

Seems to my untrained eyes like Google's AI search is actually the best on the market, no? Seems like a lot of HN users have trained themselves not to type queries into the search prompt anymore and then complain about the quality of a product they don't use.

The model that's doing AI Summary for search results - that presumably needs to be fast and cheap because of the scale - is still sufficiently bad as to give people a bad taste. Presumably they're frantically working to scale their better models for this use case. If you could get Gemini Pro on every search result the experience would be effectively perfect (in the sense of better error rates than what a non-specialist educated human reading the top results and summarizing them would achieve). That's years away from a scaling/cost/speed perspective.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#119

Post by zdragnar »

waldrews wrote: post #118
ajross wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to my untrained eyes like Google's AI search is actually the best on the market, no? Seems like a lot of HN users have trained themselves not to type queries into the search prompt anymore and then complain about the quality of a product they don't use.

The model that's doing AI Summary for search results - that presumably needs to be fast and cheap because of the scale - is still sufficiently bad as to give people a bad taste. Presumably they're frantically working to scale their better models for this use case. If you could get Gemini Pro on every search result the experience would be effectively perfect (in the sense of better error rates than what a non-speciali…

I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality of the answers, but they've been wrong enough that I'll never not double check them anyway.

Re: Chatbots are replacing Google's search, devastating traffic for some publishers

#120

Post by DaSHacka »

bamboozled wrote: post #49
Tarsul wrote: post #6

Anyone surprised? I mean that's just what Google does and did from the very early days. I am more ashamed that politicians worldwide have done basically nothing to help media companies in the last 25 years. We can always ask ourselves: What is more important for our society: independent media or our search overlords?

Politicians hate Media companies, sometimes they deserve the hate but there is almost no reality where having accurate, objective news reporting is beneficial for politicians.

> there is almost no reality where having accurate, objective news reporting is beneficial for politicians.

Well it's a good thing for politicians they haven't had to deal with that for a long, long time.

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