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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

#201

Post by Eisenstein »

arunabha wrote: post #194
Eisenstein wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the conclusion is that changing your business model in a reactive way to internet developments is a bad idea if you want to have a stable business. If you want to run your business that way, you better be on top of everything and you better be lucky. They rode the social media wave and lost, and now they are going to try to ride the AI wave because they don't have anything to fall back on. They are going to l…

> People will pay for it. I would love it if it were true, but sadly, the data doesn't support this. A lot of local newspapers did real journalism relevant to their communities. However, the local newspapers were the hardest hit by the social media wave and few remain today. Fast forward to now, you cannot get any real local news easily. The avg person never really valued real journalism to begin with and the hyper t…

People get sick of it. Most people don't like living in a constant state of anger, ready to get into an argument all the time. We would rather have a shared notion of truth and a common bond. You can't predict the next 'thing' but you can usually count on it not being more of the same. Something new is going to take hold, and I would like it to involve substance and critique of narratives.

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

#203

Post by chneu »

malnourish wrote: post #195
chneu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to like Kagi but the UI is awful and the results were often way off from what was relevant. Then the limitations were pretty lame.

What's wrong with the UI, what limitations have you experienced? I've found my searches relevant and haven't noticed any limitations.

The paywall. I'm not against paying, but their free tier limitations are way too low.

The UI is just horrible and a huge waste of space. I had to use a user style to make it a non-headache to use.

Kagi routinely lacks results that every other search engine I use get no problem. I can't give any examples but I found myself going to page 5+ more often on Kagi than any other service.

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

#204

Post by oliwarner »

Google's demise is self-inflicted.

They broke search by prioritising ads, then trusting the wrong, big publishers (eg every listacle from a big media network), broke their advanced search controls (domain blacklists, quotes that mean quotes, plus-and-minuses to alter things).

Then they added their own LLM's analysis to searches, admitting that that their SERPs are dead. They were in this death-spiral well before LLMs became an alternative. I won't pretend that SEO wasn't making traditional search untenable, but the vector Google chose will make their key product obsolete.

The thing I worry about is what they'll do to retain revenue. They have knowledge systems that cater to a lot more than what we normally search on. They have address data, know where people physically are right now, have live communication data on billions of users, know their shopping habits, and a thousand etceteras. Meta too. They have communication data on billions of people. How are these older software companies going to monetise the data they've amassed in an age when they are getting close to being able to replicate personas, model actual human behaviours?

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

#205

Post by wraptile »

MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #113

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 sor…

The publishers were just chasing traffic just like everyone else. Link pages were replaced by inline links which were preferred by both search engines and users. The goal was to provide relevant resources on relevant context rather in one big bucket dump no one's going to dig through anyway.

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

#206

Post by im3w1l »

msgodel wrote: post #51
spankalee wrote: post #21

Google's damned if they do and damned if the don't here: - If they don't make search AI centric, they're going to get lapped by AI-first competitors like Perplexity, OpenAI, etc. We saw many people here predict Google's pending demise from this. - If they do make search centric, they're unfairly consuming they world's content and hoarding the user traffic to themselves. Since no reasonable company is just going to st…

For anything important I always ask LLMs for links and follow them. I think this will probably just create a strong incentive to cover important things and move away from clickbait. It's probably a win for everyone in the long run although it means news sites will have to change. That's going to be painful for them but it's not like they're angels either.

One thing I did once with great success was asking chatgpt something like "I'm trying to find information about X, but when I Google it I just get results about the app named after X. Can you suggest a better query?"

X was some tehnical thing I didn't know a lot about so it gave me some more words to narrow down the query that I would not have known about myself. And that really helped me find the information I needed.

It also threw in some book tips for good measure.

So yeah I can highly recommend this workflow.

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

#207

Post by david-gpu »

rebuilder wrote: post #198
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #113

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 sor…

The ”not perfect” part really kind of ruins it for me. I can’t trust the LLM search’s answers and have to go find the source anyway, so what’s the point? I’m seeing people in chats post stuff like “hey I didn’t know this word also means this!” when it really doesn’t, and invariably they have just asked an LLM and believed it.

You can't blindly trust sources, either. Or, sometimes, you ability to understand the sources correctly.

I think of LLMs as bookworm friends who know a little bit about everything and are a little too overconfident about the depth of their understanding. They tend to repeat what they have heard uncritically, just like so many other people do.

If you don't expect them to be the ultimate arbitrer of truth, they can be pretty useful.

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

#209

Post by graemep »

Eisenstein wrote: post #201
arunabha wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will pay for it. I would love it if it were true, but sadly, the data doesn't support this. A lot of local newspapers did real journalism relevant to their communities. However, the local newspapers were the hardest hit by the social media wave and few remain today. Fast forward to now, you cannot get any real local news easily. The avg person never really valued real journalism to begin with and the hyper t…

People get sick of it. Most people don't like living in a constant state of anger, ready to get into an argument all the time. We would rather have a shared notion of truth and a common bond. You can't predict the next 'thing' but you can usually count on it not being more of the same. Something new is going to take hold, and I would like it to involve substance and critique of narratives.

> Most people don't like living in a constant state of anger, ready to get into an argument all the time

They may not like it, but that does not mean they are motivated to break away from it. I do not think they are aware why they feel like that - they are more likely to blame the other people than the platform.

There is also an addictive element to it.

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

#210

Post by rickydroll »

Eisenstein wrote: post #150
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #113

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 sor…

I think the conclusion is that changing your business model in a reactive way to internet developments is a bad idea if you want to have a stable business. If you want to run your business that way, you better be on top of everything and you better be lucky. They rode the social media wave and lost, and now they are going to try to ride the AI wave because they don't have anything to fall back on. They are going to l…

>People will pay for it.

I'm willing to pay, but not by individual subscriptions per news organization. I'm more interested in following journalists than news organizations.

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