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Google Search Bard, It’s ChatGPT Feature, To Trusted Testers

Published

1 year ago

February 7, 2023

Well, we knew it was coming and here it is, Bard – Google’s answer to ChatGPT. Google is now having its trusted testers test out Bard and will soon roll it out more widely to users in Google Search and others products in the coming weeks, Google announced. It is not called Apprectice Bard but rather Bard.

I covered this when the news broke at Search Engine Land and as I pointed out, right now, Google does not have an answer for how to attribute or link to answers Bard generates – yet. But I do suspect Google will have some answer for it. I also mentioned that Google has been writing knowledge panels using AI and other methods since 2018 and said then it is not stealing. So it will be interesting to see what Google ends up doing here.

Bard is Google’s experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, where Google can answer questions that might not have one right answer. Google said they will roll this out more widely in the coming weeks but for now, only trusted testers (who is outsourced to a third-party company) will be able to play with it.

Google said, “Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner. These new AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon.”

Here is a screenshot they shared of how it might look in Google Search:

This is how it might look like in Google Search (without the attribution part…).

This is the Bard direct interface, not in search:

I am super excited to see how this evolves at Google, Bing and others.

It is not too far off from the leaks of the Bing ChatGPT interface.

Here is Sundar Pichai’s tweets:

2/ Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Today we’re opening Bard up to trusted external testers. pic.twitter.com/QPy5BcERd6
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023
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4/ As people turn to Google for deeper insights and understanding, AI can help us get to the heart of what they’re looking for. We’re starting with AI-powered features in Search that distill complex info into easy-to-digest formats so you can see the big picture then explore more pic.twitter.com/BxSsoTZsrp
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023

5/ Developers can soon try our Generative Language API, initially powered by LaMDA with a range of models to follow. Over time, our goal is to create a set of tools and APIs that will make it easy for others to build more innovative applications with AI.
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023

Here is some of the SEO community reaction:

Yeah you would think that making statements like “some say this” and “others say that” would be substantiated with, IDK, a link to the source. Just an idea. https://t.co/P5xvGvAv1V
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) February 6, 2023

Bard sounds like 🤮
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) February 6, 2023

Bard: What you get when you let AI name itself. https://t.co/todOZBbnCE
— Greg Finn (@gregfinn) February 6, 2023
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Oh, bizarre. When the ChatGPT buzz began, I remarked that we’ll never get the Irish bards again with robots doing the thinking for us. How glib is Google naming this after humans who spent 7 years training to recite hundreds of poems + stories? And how weird for me to see it.
— Miriam Ellis (@Miriam_Ellis_) February 6, 2023

Attribution is a must – I hope this is not where Google is heading – this is not the way https://t.co/PRH2LSKjR7
— Mordy Oberstein 🇺🇦 (@MordyOberstein) February 6, 2023

ESPECIALLY if the AI model charges for its services.
No, you can’t have my written work to use as you see fit for your paid service.
Or even to train your models. It’s my work? My written words?
The tech moves so fast this stuff takes time to catch up, but it’s important.
— Julie F Bacchini (@NeptuneMoon) February 6, 2023
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It’s a little concerning to see that the screenshots Google shared do not show websites as sources used for the AI generated answer.
This is likely because the answer is generated from “the breath of the world’s knowledge.”
Drawing from the knowledge graph perhaps? pic.twitter.com/OVwuWScnDt
— Dr. Marie Haynes🐼 (@Marie_Haynes) February 6, 2023

Content creators that monetise via page views might be the biggest losers
— @[email protected] (@davidiwanow) February 6, 2023

Feel sorry for the dude who wrote the great in-depth article on what’s the easiest to learn, the guitar or the piano!
— Matthew Marley👨🏻‍💻 (@matthewmarley) February 6, 2023

Why would anyone want to publish blogs after that?
What’s the point of publishing original articles ?
Google will crawl my article, learn from it , serve the solution to its customers as its own. https://t.co/wSwTld3qRJ
— Fardun (@FardunRahman) February 6, 2023
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In a world of AI search engine wars, the brand, unique perspective and insights & quality fact checking with references are becoming key to survive. Structured data & information have now become a commodity https://t.co/IpcRQFy56e
— Dennis Goedegebuure (@TheNextCorner) February 6, 2023

Google Bard – a rival to ChatGPT
The end of SEO websites maybe. https://t.co/ZWowpV5DUg
— Liaqat Hussain 🇵🇰 (@Edwardian842) February 6, 2023

And from now on, whenever I hear “Google Bard,” I’ll think of the OG. #LegendOfVoxMachina #Criticalrole https://t.co/PuYfJaHaAE pic.twitter.com/SCr1YWsUZO
— Ian Lurie 🇺🇦 @[email protected] (@IanLurie) February 6, 2023

Going to be a busy few months… #GoogleBard https://t.co/aEKFLlmMeF
— Will O’Hara 👨🏽‍💻 (@willohara) February 6, 2023

I think Bard is just an iteration of Lambda and at last year’s Google product expert summit the product manager of Google brain did a presentation of lambda and it was awesome. It was like Google maps times 10
— Molly Youngblood (@mygeigermeister) February 6, 2023
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Brain buzzing with all the search news and announcements this week! SEOs cannot sleep. What a time to be alive! The future is bright 🚀
— Fabrice Canel (@facan) February 7, 2023

It’s too early to say, and your feedback can help to shape the next steps. What would you find useful and appropriate?
— johnmu is a ranking factor and so are you 🐀 (@JohnMu) February 7, 2023

Make sure to send feedback. With bigger changes like this, it’ll probably take a few iterations before things settle down.
— johnmu is a ranking factor and so are you 🐀 (@JohnMu) February 7, 2023

Also, make sure to check out the roundup at Techmeme.

Forum discussion at Twitter, WebmasterWorld.

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SEARCHENGINES

Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important

Published

15 hours ago

April 22, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”

Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”

I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:

I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024

Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.

Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.

Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.

Forum discussion at X and image credit to @n_minkov.

SEARCHENGINES

Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More

Published

2 days ago

April 21, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More

For the original iTunes version, click here.

The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings in the search results. Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy will be fought both algorithmically and through manual actions. Google responded to The Verge mocking its search rankings over best printer. Google Search Console has a new unused ownership tokens page. Some sites may see the Google Indexing API work for a limited time on unsupported content types. And having two sites won’t result in your sites search ranking decline. BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will test Zstd compression soon. Google Search is testing thumbs-up and down buttons for product carousels. Google is testing new sitelinks designs. Google Notes on Search may not go away in May. Google Maps no longer supports draft reviews. Google Maps released a bunch of new maps, directions, travel and EV features. Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns now support AI image generation. Google Ads is testing a similar product carousel. Google Ads reminds advertisers that ad customizers are going away. Google Ads is testing a new horizontal ad card format. Google AdSense has these new ad intent formats. Google AdSense publishers are reporting lower RPM earnings since mid-February. Google threatens to drop links to California news publishers amongst link tax bill. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

SPONSOR: Wix Studio lets digital marketing agencies get all of the benefits Wix has to offer from best-in-class SEO capabilities to 99% up-time with the added value of an extensive client and team management system baked right into the platform.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

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SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024

Published

3 days ago

April 20, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google is testing more ad formats for its search ads. BingBot is testing new compression methods. Google said it is unlikely your rankings would drop just because you have two or more sites. Google says the indexing API might work for unsupported formats. Google said hyphenated domains are not bad by themselves. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More

The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings…

Google Tests More Google Ad Card Formats

Google is testing another ad format, another card like format, for its search ads. We previously saw the vertical and tall ad cards, then the carousel horizontal card format and now here are just plain horizontal ad cards.

Google: It’s Unlikely Your Rankings Dropped Because You Have Two Websites

Google was asked if having two websites and Google finding out about them would cause the websites to drop in rankings. John Mueller from Google said that is “not likely,” adding that many people have several websites and that is fine.

Google: Indexing API May Work For Unsupported Content But…

Gary Illyes from Google said in the recent Google SEO office hours the Google Indexing API may work for unsupported content formats, but that you shouldn’t be “surprised if suddenly it stopped working for unsupported verticals overnight.”

Google: Are Hyphenated Domains Are Bad For Google Ranking?

The topic of using hyphens in domain names is one of the oldest SEO topics we have in this space. Heck, in 2004, SEOs said there was a specific Google ranking algorithm that filtered out domains with hyphens in them (Google did not by the way).

Bingbot To Test Zstd Compression After Fully Gaining Full Brotli Compression

Fabrice Canel from Microsoft announced that BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will soon be testing zstd Zstandard compression, a lossless data compression, for its crawler.

Google Cloud Socks

Google loves to print socks for its various swag and here are two variations of socks from the Google Cloud team. I like the white socks because they look more retro but here are nicer versions as well.