6 ms·

Predicted 25% Drop in Search Volume Remains Unclear

20 points by taubek 3y ago

dotcoma 3y ago
Someone thought 25% drop looked impressive. A few years from now we will know if it’s true. If true, they get to look like visionaries. If not, nobody will remember anyway. It’s a no-brainer.
lettergram 3y ago
I really appreciate that DuckDuckGo has managed to get 2.5% of US search traffic. Frankly that is impressive. It now equals that of yahoo, while obviously a tiny fraction of the overall market it’s likely enough to sustain it Regarding generative AI for search. Brave and Google already do this to a large extent. I don’t see myself switching. That said, these AI models are far better when you’re looking for code and recipes, etc so perhaps I’m speaking too soon.
- queuebert 3y ago
  DuckDuckGo has generative search now too. Both in LLM chat form and in a beta results box at the top of the results called DuckAssist.
shiandow 3y ago
> Using the next two charts to illustrate this point Good on you for using graphs to make your point, but if you don't label your axes or caption your figures I haven't the faintest clue what I'm looking at.
LanguageGamer 3y ago
I use LLMs to answer certain questions, but those are often questions that I wouldn't have bothered using a search engine for in the past, rather I would have asked a colleague or just thought through the question on my own. And when I try to ask an LLM questions that search engines are good at, I'm most often disappointed. In other words, it's not clear to me LLMs are going to eat into the market share of search engines, rather than just providing a tool with largely orthogonal use cases. But we'll see how the tech develops from here.
- queuebert 3y ago
  As a person with reading comprehension skills, I'm still not sure what a use case is for LLMs for me. Everything I try feels like outsourcing a homework problem to a middle schooler. There is so much more you can pick up by reading a text yourself, even quickly, than comes through when an LLM summarizes a text or answers a complicated question. The way the text is written, the language chosen, the punctuation, the sources chosen, etc.
- edgefield 3y ago
  I strongly disagree. As a simple example, just this week I was looking for ice breaker questions for a work team event. I started with Google and was wading through a myriad of pages stuffed with ads and noise. I happened to have Claude open for an unrelated work experiment and thought to ask Claude for ice breaker questions. It provided 10 good questions and I selected the first two. It’s just a matter of time until we retrain our brains to first use LLMs before Google and then Google’s usage is going to drop like a rock. LLMs for many use cases is simply better, providing better results with far less noise.
  - TillE 3y ago
    That's pretty much the ideal use case for LLMs, as a tool for creative brainstorming where the question of accuracy is irrelevant. I've used them like that frequently for help in writing/worldbuilding. But I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of Google searches are looking for factual information of some kind. I can see LLMs as an interface on top of search, but not replacing it.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Until a few more years from now, the AI firms need to make profit and Claude has some special offers to upsell you before giving you a response. Lol
toddmorey 3y ago
I’m sure I’m an outlier, but ChatGPT has cut my Google searches in half, no question. I no longer search for “answers”: definitions, explanations, code examples, recipes, or household tips… all of those were SEOed to hell. It’s not because of how good AI is (it struggles) but rather how bad search had become. No one from the search provider to the website you land on wants you to have easy access to an answer because there’s no profit motive. With paid AI services, providing better answers faster IS the profit model. I think something like Claude + Kagi (paid search) would be killer combo. I’ve actually been kind of nervous about seeing more & more free AI services because that compute is expensive & I’d hate to see the market dynamics that ruined search happen all over again. I want to pay for services with my $ rather than my attention & my data.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Providing better answers faster was the original advantage that Google had over the likes of Lycos, Yahoo, AltaVista, etc. We're in the "early Google" days of AI when it's actually a nicer, better experience at least for some queries. When they figure out how to monitize it, it will become the same ad-optimized spam cesspool that we have with traditional search and web pages today.
  - toddmorey 3y ago
    I hate how right I think you are. The optimist in me thinks consumers have more tolerance to pay for AI tools vs search & media.
- rez9x 3y ago
  Claude 3 + Kagi is the exact combo I use. Claude has been my go to since discovering it didn't have the same level of curation / censorship models like ChatGPT and Gemini have. I picked up Kagi the day they released their $10/mo plan and I don't see myself dropping it unless their quality degrades or price increases substantially. The search result I want is typically in the first few results, while Google was just ads the first few results, SEO spam, and then MAYBE the result I want near the end of the page.
rsynnott 3y ago
> While we wouldn’t go so far as to claim AI search is a fad — because it’s not — the data does hint at a potentially hidden bubble that needs to be investigated further. Okay, so it’s potentially a bubble, but is axiomatically not a fad? Eh?
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  I think the law they're drawing is that a fad passes on and there is 0 remnant, whereas a bubble pops and leaves the "true", uninflated value behind.
dougb5 3y ago
"...conventional wisdom that AI, while good at providing fast answers, is terrible at referring users to where they want to go" I don't understand why we'd care about referral metrics in this context. Do people use chatbots do "go places"? And the leading chatbots are not designed to refer people off-site, or even to attribute the source material at all, so it should not be surprising that they don't generate a lot of referrals.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
penjelly 3y ago
notable: meta has put an AI assistant in insta search bar recently
mountainb 3y ago
This is one set of speculations trying to counter another set of speculations. Here is my speculation to add to the pile. Google tolerates but does not particularly like sending traffic to external websites. To the extent that Google can scrape the useful content from websites (and other sources owned by third party rights owners) and provide it to users without those users leaving a Google property, they will do so. LLM chatbots make it easier to scrape this content while gaining plausible deniability when it comes to copyright infringement by creation of derivative works. So, this does not have to be driven by user behavior. The user wants plausibly good enough responses to queries. The user typically wants to pay as little as possible in terms of time and money for those responses. To the extent that Google and other Google-likes can satisfy those users without sending traffic to or paying third party site operators and rights owners, they will do so. Think about it in terms of a speculative video search tool. The user searches Youtube for an answer about a type of tax credit. Above the fold, Google offers to render on the user's machine an LLM generated video answer to their tax question. The video agent will also answer follow up questions without refreshing the page. Below the fold, Google places the Youtube videos. To the extent that users pick the AI result, Google does not need to pay for the third party videos or the traffic costs. At the end of the AI generated video, Google places an inobtrusive paid ad for TumboTax.
BobbyTables2 3y ago
In the past few years, I’ve noticed google search results are mostly useless. I’m adept at using quotes and “+” and “-“ for keywords on queries. For about 20 years, if something existed, I could find it easily. What amazes me now is not so much the sponsored/SEO crap listings at the top — it is there is nothing else as one works their way to the “bottom”. Too often, things that should be easy to find just don’t show up. I feel like they have entirely given up on indexing. It’s a sad state of affairs when Bing does better…
xbpx 3y ago
Corporate Web is SEO Ad hell but it's got nothing on the future that awaits us. Let me present AI Ad tech 2030 All commercial websites contain meta tags with vector embedding links. Vector embedding services are standard offerings in the big Cloud. Everyone selling something uses them. All commercial LLM products consume meta data and RAG the global vector embedding index. LLM-SEO is big business as companies fight to game the LLMs with their content. Generative AI Ad tech inserts Ads into relevant LLM output and is trained on the conversion success of successful Link follows and subsequent purchasing decisions. May I present Alpha-Ad. It's on the way folks.
moomin 3y ago
Let me ask a different question: is AI a threat to StackOverflow? Because if it is, it will be like a parasite killing the host it depends on.

20 points by taubek 3y ago

Someone thought 25% drop looked impressive. A few years from now we will know if it’s true. If true, they get to look like visionaries. If not, nobody will remember anyway. It’s a no-brainer.

lettergram 3y ago

I really appreciate that DuckDuckGo has managed to get 2.5% of US search traffic. Frankly that is impressive. It now equals that of yahoo, while obviously a tiny fraction of the overall market it’s likely enough to sustain it Regarding generative AI for search. Brave and Google already do this to a large extent. I don’t see myself switching. That said, these AI models are far better when you’re looking for code and recipes, etc so perhaps I’m speaking too soon.

queuebert 3y ago
DuckDuckGo has generative search now too. Both in LLM chat form and in a beta results box at the top of the results called DuckAssist.

shiandow 3y ago

> Using the next two charts to illustrate this point Good on you for using graphs to make your point, but if you don't label your axes or caption your figures I haven't the faintest clue what I'm looking at.

LanguageGamer 3y ago

I use LLMs to answer certain questions, but those are often questions that I wouldn't have bothered using a search engine for in the past, rather I would have asked a colleague or just thought through the question on my own. And when I try to ask an LLM questions that search engines are good at, I'm most often disappointed. In other words, it's not clear to me LLMs are going to eat into the market share of search engines, rather than just providing a tool with largely orthogonal use cases. But we'll see how the tech develops from here.

queuebert 3y ago
As a person with reading comprehension skills, I'm still not sure what a use case is for LLMs for me. Everything I try feels like outsourcing a homework problem to a middle schooler. There is so much more you can pick up by reading a text yourself, even quickly, than comes through when an LLM summarizes a text or answers a complicated question. The way the text is written, the language chosen, the punctuation, the sources chosen, etc.
edgefield 3y ago
I strongly disagree. As a simple example, just this week I was looking for ice breaker questions for a work team event. I started with Google and was wading through a myriad of pages stuffed with ads and noise. I happened to have Claude open for an unrelated work experiment and thought to ask Claude for ice breaker questions. It provided 10 good questions and I selected the first two. It’s just a matter of time until we retrain our brains to first use LLMs before Google and then Google’s usage is going to drop like a rock. LLMs for many use cases is simply better, providing better results with far less noise.
- TillE 3y ago
  That's pretty much the ideal use case for LLMs, as a tool for creative brainstorming where the question of accuracy is irrelevant. I've used them like that frequently for help in writing/worldbuilding. But I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of Google searches are looking for factual information of some kind. I can see LLMs as an interface on top of search, but not replacing it.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Until a few more years from now, the AI firms need to make profit and Claude has some special offers to upsell you before giving you a response. Lol

toddmorey 3y ago

I’m sure I’m an outlier, but ChatGPT has cut my Google searches in half, no question. I no longer search for “answers”: definitions, explanations, code examples, recipes, or household tips… all of those were SEOed to hell. It’s not because of how good AI is (it struggles) but rather how bad search had become. No one from the search provider to the website you land on wants you to have easy access to an answer because there’s no profit motive. With paid AI services, providing better answers faster IS the profit model. I think something like Claude + Kagi (paid search) would be killer combo. I’ve actually been kind of nervous about seeing more & more free AI services because that compute is expensive & I’d hate to see the market dynamics that ruined search happen all over again. I want to pay for services with my $ rather than my attention & my data.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Providing better answers faster was the original advantage that Google had over the likes of Lycos, Yahoo, AltaVista, etc. We're in the "early Google" days of AI when it's actually a nicer, better experience at least for some queries. When they figure out how to monitize it, it will become the same ad-optimized spam cesspool that we have with traditional search and web pages today.
- toddmorey 3y ago
  I hate how right I think you are. The optimist in me thinks consumers have more tolerance to pay for AI tools vs search & media.
rez9x 3y ago
Claude 3 + Kagi is the exact combo I use. Claude has been my go to since discovering it didn't have the same level of curation / censorship models like ChatGPT and Gemini have. I picked up Kagi the day they released their $10/mo plan and I don't see myself dropping it unless their quality degrades or price increases substantially. The search result I want is typically in the first few results, while Google was just ads the first few results, SEO spam, and then MAYBE the result I want near the end of the page.

rsynnott 3y ago

> While we wouldn’t go so far as to claim AI search is a fad — because it’s not — the data does hint at a potentially hidden bubble that needs to be investigated further. Okay, so it’s potentially a bubble, but is axiomatically not a fad? Eh?

BobaFloutist 3y ago
I think the law they're drawing is that a fad passes on and there is 0 remnant, whereas a bubble pops and leaves the "true", uninflated value behind.

dougb5 3y ago

"...conventional wisdom that AI, while good at providing fast answers, is terrible at referring users to where they want to go" I don't understand why we'd care about referral metrics in this context. Do people use chatbots do "go places"? And the leading chatbots are not designed to refer people off-site, or even to attribute the source material at all, so it should not be surprising that they don't generate a lot of referrals.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

penjelly 3y ago

notable: meta has put an AI assistant in insta search bar recently

mountainb 3y ago

This is one set of speculations trying to counter another set of speculations. Here is my speculation to add to the pile. Google tolerates but does not particularly like sending traffic to external websites. To the extent that Google can scrape the useful content from websites (and other sources owned by third party rights owners) and provide it to users without those users leaving a Google property, they will do so. LLM chatbots make it easier to scrape this content while gaining plausible deniability when it comes to copyright infringement by creation of derivative works. So, this does not have to be driven by user behavior. The user wants plausibly good enough responses to queries. The user typically wants to pay as little as possible in terms of time and money for those responses. To the extent that Google and other Google-likes can satisfy those users without sending traffic to or paying third party site operators and rights owners, they will do so. Think about it in terms of a speculative video search tool. The user searches Youtube for an answer about a type of tax credit. Above the fold, Google offers to render on the user's machine an LLM generated video answer to their tax question. The video agent will also answer follow up questions without refreshing the page. Below the fold, Google places the Youtube videos. To the extent that users pick the AI result, Google does not need to pay for the third party videos or the traffic costs. At the end of the AI generated video, Google places an inobtrusive paid ad for TumboTax.

BobbyTables2 3y ago

In the past few years, I’ve noticed google search results are mostly useless. I’m adept at using quotes and “+” and “-“ for keywords on queries. For about 20 years, if something existed, I could find it easily. What amazes me now is not so much the sponsored/SEO crap listings at the top — it is there is nothing else as one works their way to the “bottom”. Too often, things that should be easy to find just don’t show up. I feel like they have entirely given up on indexing. It’s a sad state of affairs when Bing does better…

xbpx 3y ago

Corporate Web is SEO Ad hell but it's got nothing on the future that awaits us. Let me present AI Ad tech 2030 All commercial websites contain meta tags with vector embedding links. Vector embedding services are standard offerings in the big Cloud. Everyone selling something uses them. All commercial LLM products consume meta data and RAG the global vector embedding index. LLM-SEO is big business as companies fight to game the LLMs with their content. Generative AI Ad tech inserts Ads into relevant LLM output and is trained on the conversion success of successful Link follows and subsequent purchasing decisions. May I present Alpha-Ad. It's on the way folks.

moomin 3y ago

Let me ask a different question: is AI a threat to StackOverflow? Because if it is, it will be like a parasite killing the host it depends on.