Google’s Martin Splitt and Nikola Todorovic discussed the impact of AI on search, revealing that there’s a new wave of people that are doing things with Google search that is markedly different than in the past and that this is an upward trend.
Martin Splitt noted that AI in search is not new and that it had always been there behind the scenes assisting in the organic search results. It’s only recently that it’s been moved to the forefront where it is now assisting users with increasingly complex multimodal search queries. Funny thing about AI search is that whereas AI plays a role in the background of organic, organic search plays a role in the background of AI search.
Martin asked if AI Search is evolutionary or a revolutionary change:
“Yeah, because I think everyone is talking about AI in search as if it’s a new thing, but it has been there behind the scenes, so to speak, before that.
- So what makes these AI features that people are using now and that are progressively enhancing the search experience for them so different from the features we had before?
- Would you consider these new features revolutionary and completely different from what we’ve been doing so far?
- Or is it more like an evolution of what we have been doing in the past?”
Google’s Nikola Todorovic, Director of Software Engineering at Google Search, answered that it’s revolutionary and that search today is very different from what it was ten years ago. he also noted that current AI-driven search behavior is changing because users are becoming increasingly confident about the kinds of questions that Google is able to answer.
Todorovic replied:
“I think the way they are being used, and I think it is a revolution that they’re speaking of right now. But clearly in the whole process, there’s like small steps. But if you compare search now and search 10 years ago, it’s a very different product. So I would say yes, this is like a big step change and it is absolutely changing the way the users are searching.
So if you think about it, any feature is changing in some way. For example, if you bring like more images, videos, etc, then it is bringing this kind of experience. So people are going more to image search. For example, when we added what we call the image universal blocks on the main page. Now that this new wave is also changing the way the users are searching because they are uncovering that search can actually answer to more complex questions.
And for that reason, we do see that user queries or you call them prompts now, so they’re getting longer. They become more detailed and the average query length is growing.
So we do see the new traffic and this new wave of traffic is a consequence of users being able to see, aha, there is something new I can do over here. That’s from that perspective, it is revolution, but it is obviously a bunch of steps in between that happened and have been improving search all the time.”
Key insights about search behavior today:
- User queries are becoming longer and more detailed.
- Users are discovering new things they can do with search.
That last one is important and may partially explain where some of the traffic is going. People are doing more complex searches, plus as noted in a podcast interview of Liz Reid, people are using multiple AI chat services.
While some SEOs say that AI Search is longtail now, that’s not really what’s happening behind the scenes because Classic Search is still happening behind the scenes because the AI is splitting complex queries into simpler fan-out queries. “Keyword-ese” queries are still happening to a certain extent but now they’re components of a larger query that itself is longtail.
Takeaways
- AI in search is not new, but AI at the front of the search experience is changing how people use Google.
- Google says search today is a different product than it was ten years ago because users are asking longer, more detailed, and more complex questions.
- Users are discovering that search can handle questions they may not have tried before, which is creating new search behavior.
- AI Search may look like longtail search on the surface, but Google can break complex prompts into simpler fan-out queries behind the scenes.
- Classic Search still matters because AI Search depends on retrieval. Organic search has not disappeared. It has moved into the background of the AI experience.
- Keywords are not dead. They may now function as smaller pieces inside larger prompts and more complex search sessions.
- Content has to work at two levels: retrievable for classic search and useful for more complex AI Search behavior.
The important insight is not that users are writing longer queries, but that users are learning what search can do now. As AI Search solves more complex queries, SEO begins to feel more uncertain. It may be useful to consider that simpler fan-out queries are what is being optimized for. But also see the insights about Browsy Queries.
Listen to Search Off The Record
Featured Image by Shutterstock/takasu
