It's explicitly about writing articles to rank in search and while I don't know the results (but I feel like someone with an ahrefs account could find out 👀), they kept using it for a year and a half and no one noticed so it was presumably good enough.
Which I think is the main concern. I'm a writer and a content marketer and I've written a lot of SEO content in the past. I'm 100% confident I can write a better article than ChatGPT but given the economics of paying me, waiting for me to do the work, etc. I don't see why they'd choose me. In SEO, so much of the goal is to write to the algorithm, yes, but also to write for the "lizard brain" of the searcher, meaning that people are generally looking for answer extraction, not, like, evocative writing. Or in other other words, "good enough."
So I think you are predicting OpenAI is going to make the internet so bad from all the crap content that we'll move onto something better. So what does that look like?
A return to the Yahoo! early days of humans currating "good" content?
Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale supposedly said something like there only being two tech businesses, bundling and unbundling. Did Google "unbundle" the internet, and will what is next (AI overlords?) bundle it back up?
I wholheartedly agree that the internet as Google currently presents it is unusable in so many areas. I'm have some thoughts on what comes next and can't wait to see it play out.
if the internet gets filled with GPT content spam, isn’t google the *only* company that could sort through that to get at the authentic content? seems like google would be even more important….
People are forgetting that websites are more than just plain text. It's about Visuals, UI, different experiences for each of the websites. Google allows for multiple experiences each time, while GPT is basically a single boring gray UI that gives you answers. It's more than that people.
I dunno, I'm more inclined to think that a major change in Google's UX is nigh rather than a major shift in search engine dominance.
I agree that ChatGPT, especially a more production-ready version that can keep it's knowledge base up-to-date, has the potential to displace the Google of today.
My problem with thinking that it will is: will Google stay as it is today? Or will Google just put out their own chatty tool to compete with ChatGPT? We know they are working on something like this so I'm inclined to think they won't just wait to get replaced.
True, Google is a big company and my definitely freshman-level understanding of economics says that adjusting course to meet competition like this will be tougher for Google than for a little guy. But I don't think they need a big adjustment to fight this. They could just release e.g. "Google search v2: the chattier one" It could even be an integration into their existing search bar -- as long as it was in the ballpark of being as useful as ChatGPT then I'd expect that to be enough to keep people in the habit of "Googling" things.
Google vs. ChatGPT told by aglio e olio
Interesting example of this is CNET having recently got caught generating AI written articles for the past year and a half: https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23562966/cnet-ai-written-stories-red-ventures-seo-marketing
It's explicitly about writing articles to rank in search and while I don't know the results (but I feel like someone with an ahrefs account could find out 👀), they kept using it for a year and a half and no one noticed so it was presumably good enough.
Which I think is the main concern. I'm a writer and a content marketer and I've written a lot of SEO content in the past. I'm 100% confident I can write a better article than ChatGPT but given the economics of paying me, waiting for me to do the work, etc. I don't see why they'd choose me. In SEO, so much of the goal is to write to the algorithm, yes, but also to write for the "lizard brain" of the searcher, meaning that people are generally looking for answer extraction, not, like, evocative writing. Or in other other words, "good enough."
Nice piece.
Reminds me as well about sales outreach. So much is automated that cold outreach is really hard because of so much competition with bots
Great stuff, thank you.
So I think you are predicting OpenAI is going to make the internet so bad from all the crap content that we'll move onto something better. So what does that look like?
A return to the Yahoo! early days of humans currating "good" content?
Former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale supposedly said something like there only being two tech businesses, bundling and unbundling. Did Google "unbundle" the internet, and will what is next (AI overlords?) bundle it back up?
I wholheartedly agree that the internet as Google currently presents it is unusable in so many areas. I'm have some thoughts on what comes next and can't wait to see it play out.
if the internet gets filled with GPT content spam, isn’t google the *only* company that could sort through that to get at the authentic content? seems like google would be even more important….
Excellent article
People are forgetting that websites are more than just plain text. It's about Visuals, UI, different experiences for each of the websites. Google allows for multiple experiences each time, while GPT is basically a single boring gray UI that gives you answers. It's more than that people.
Btw you should upload this to jika.io
I dunno, I'm more inclined to think that a major change in Google's UX is nigh rather than a major shift in search engine dominance.
I agree that ChatGPT, especially a more production-ready version that can keep it's knowledge base up-to-date, has the potential to displace the Google of today.
My problem with thinking that it will is: will Google stay as it is today? Or will Google just put out their own chatty tool to compete with ChatGPT? We know they are working on something like this so I'm inclined to think they won't just wait to get replaced.
True, Google is a big company and my definitely freshman-level understanding of economics says that adjusting course to meet competition like this will be tougher for Google than for a little guy. But I don't think they need a big adjustment to fight this. They could just release e.g. "Google search v2: the chattier one" It could even be an integration into their existing search bar -- as long as it was in the ballpark of being as useful as ChatGPT then I'd expect that to be enough to keep people in the habit of "Googling" things.