The arrival of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT late last year kicked off a race between Google, Microsoft, and others to see who would be the first to bring conversational AI to the search space. ChatGPT is an astonishing technology, but it has a significant limitation: It knows nothing about events that happened after 2021, when its transformer-based large language model (LLM) was trained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A search engine that can\u2019t digest new information and generate relevant results from the web is unlikely to be a great success, but the state of the art has moved beyond static models. With OpenAI\u2019s help, Microsoft was first off the blocks with a new conversational interface for Bing, its search engine. Bing\u2019s AI can integrate search index data into results with a technology called Bing Orchestrator<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Google is yet to release its spin on AI-powered search, but it has given us a sneak preview of Bard<\/a>, its answer to ChatGPT and Bing\u2019s AI. It\u2019s worth remembering that the transformer-based language model tech behind OpenAI and Bing search was initially developed by AI scientists at Google and first discussed in their research paper, Attention Is All You Need<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bard is based on Google LaMDA<\/a> (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), an advanced conversational AI, although it uses a lightweight version of LaMDA to make Bard more scalable: LLMs require much more computational processing power than traditional web searches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So what is the Bard search experience likely to look like, and what does it mean for search engine optimization? Conversational search queries have been top-of-mind for SEOs since voice search went mainstream, but Bard will take conversational search to the next level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bard preview demo shows queries as natural language questions and responses as a text summary that draws from relevant web content. Beneath the summary are featured articles, \u2018people also ask\u2019 questions, and the traditional blue links. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One way of looking at the Bard-powered search results is as an AI-boosted version of the featured snippet<\/a> that often appears at the top of search results. Except that instead of featuring content from a favored article with a link, Bard synthesizes a unique response to the query.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s impossible to say exactly what impact Bard and Microsoft AI will have on search. It seems likely that modern SEO advice will continue to hold true: Focus on creating comprehensive, accurate, and Q&A-friendly content that covers a wide range of topics and topic clusters. Pick topics that are likely to interest your target audience, and don\u2019t be afraid to go broad and deep in your content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re in the early days of AI search development. Bing was first out of the gate and, as a result, the Bing AI experience is a mixture of useful<\/a>, bizarre<\/a>, and somewhat scary<\/a>. The fun the media is having at Bing\u2019s expense is likely one of the reasons Bard has yet to see the light of day. Google is leery of turning the world\u2019s biggest search engine and Google\u2019s main money-spinner into a hallucinating chatbot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Bard will be integrated into Google Search at some point soon, not least because less hesitant search platforms will quickly rise to dethrone Google from its dominant position. A couple months ago, Bing was a little-used also-ran. Today, it’s the biggest story in tech. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIs Bard the Future of Search?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n