For years already google has had integrations and more 'intelligent' responses for things like weather, shopping, answers to queries etc. This hardly changes any of that (most of the 'features' are inside AI Mode). For 'regular' uses this changes nothing. Avoid AI Mode most of the time. Double-check most automated overview options. And still not using any kind of chat interface when searching for sites, things, images, whatever. Hardly changes anything. And Google is still the destination for all lookups. With little to no reason to go looking for a different service especially not from any other AI-related firm.
Google changes its search box
331–340 of 961 posts
Re: Google changes its search box
#332I've noticed this since yesterday when i tried to do a site:url search, it gave me an AI chatbox and answer
Same, came to google after DDG failed to locate a string that I suspect would occur (error message on Factorio forums). Google then gives me some LLM hallucinations about what the error might indicate, also when you specifically don't click the "use AI mode" button (that the search button automatically turns into) but the "search" button. You don't get any search results whatsoever. After it started wasting energy on hallucinations, you're allowed to click "all", meaning "web search, please" (should be obvious to anyone)
Why in the world would it specifically do this for site:https://example.org "exact string" queries?! I know what I'm looking for and where it can be found!
It's like redirecting my phone call from ISP support to a librarian because maybe the library contains the answer to a dysfunctional SIM card they've sent me
Re: Google changes its search box
#333Re: Google changes its search box
#334What scares me about this new AI mode thingy is that every answer sounds like a systematic literature review, but only for the results. For example, if I look for users feedback about a specific product, it says "People think that..., but also that...; It's important to notice that some people ..." where with 'people' it means just a random comment on a random website just because it thought it was a good contributio…
And half the time, the sources turn out to be sarcastic jokes on reddit.
Re: Google changes its search box
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
The web as we know it is over. Websites will die on the vine if LLMs intermediate all the content. The "website" of the future will be an API optimized for LLM crawlers, serving plain-text content that no end-user will ever view directly. The SEO game will change to LLMAO.
Here is what I think the future web may look like: 1) Sites will have mcp / APIs for LLMs. So that when I ask my AI Agent du jour. It can call any of the sites where I have subscriptions for information. 2) Sites that are passion projects will be harvested by our LLM overlords. 3) Sites that people don't type into their web browser and need ad revenue will die. 4) SEO will finally die.
> SEO will finally die.
On the contrary, it will flourish. It’s just that it’ll shift to whatever can trick LLMs into recommending your product.
https://www.anthropic.com/research/small-samples-poison
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260218-i-hacked-chatgpt...
Re: Google changes its search box
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how is this sold to the customer? With adsense it is quantifiable, you set your max per click, per conversion etc, and can clearly see which you won and lost against competitors. This becomes very murky when paying for 'ai to like your product' vs 'ai to really like your product'.
Same per click, it obviously includes links when looking for products, but impression could also be counted and arguably especially if present in the first few sentences it is a valuable impression. But then the separation of ads from content is lost so it becomes useless as product search, so maybe it isn't that trivial indeed. But it's not like even 10% of users is gonna find some other "search" engine and switch.…
I think also they have the issue that now the google search box is just an ai prompt, what differentiates it from any other ai prompt like gpt or claude?
Did they just devalue their unique search product by pushing it into another category already dominated by other big players?
Re: Google changes its search box
#337Where are the PageRanks of yesteryear?
Re: Google changes its search box
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read some of the article and skimmed the rest, and didn't see anything about old-fashioned search no longer being an option. Is the idea that by making the new AI chat UX the default, that's how they're forcing people into it and making them not able to search? Or is there something I'm missing?
Second paragraph: > Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. So basically you'd get redirect into a chatbot interface, rather than letting you browse search results as normal, "AI-powered interactive experience" tends to be euphemism for chatbot UIs, is my experience at least.
>at times
Yes, that is what every user ever wanted! A UI that just randomly changes!
Re: Google changes its search box
#339Hopefully they don’t kill tbs=li:1, or I’ll get pretty angry.
Re: Google changes its search box
#340I understand why they are doing this. My Google search usage is easily down 50%+. I doubt I am unique here. While there are times where I want pure search (Kagi, Old Google) I mostly use LLMs to search now and have them provide me links for source data. When I do use LLMs as a search engine I always want it integrated into my AI workflows with access to tools and scripts etc. I never want to have a conversation with…
For me down 99%