Last year Google brought its new obsession with AI-powered chatbots to Google Search with the launch of the "Search Generative Experience," or "SGE." If you opted in, SGE intercepted your Google search queries and put a giant, screen-filling generative AI chatbot response at the top of your search results. The usual 10 blue links were still there, but you had to scroll past Google's ChatGPT clone to see them. That design choice makes outgoing web links seem like a legacy escape hatch for when the chatbot doesn't work, and Google wants to know why more people haven't opted in to this.
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land reports that Google is going to start pushing SGE out to some users, even if they haven't opted in to the "Labs experiment." A Google spokesperson told the site SGE will be turned on for a "subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the US." The report says "Google told us they want to get feedback from searchers who have not opted into SGE specifically. This way they can get feedback and learn how a more general population will find this technology helpful."
AdvertisementCiting his conversation with Google, Schwartz says some users automatically see Chatbot results for queries where Google thinks a chatbot "can be especially helpful." Google will turn on the feature for "queries that are often more complex or involve questions where it may be helpful to get information from a range of web pages—like 'how do I get marks off painted walls.'"
I don't think anyone has spotted one of these non-opt-in SGE pages in the wild yet, so it's unclear what the presentation will be. As an opt-in, SGE has a huge explanation page of how your search results will change. The chatbot is easily Google Search's biggest format change ever, and having that happen automatically would be awfully confusing!
It's also unclear if you can opt out of this. Today SGE is not compatible with Firefox, so that might be one way to skip Google's AI obsession for now. Google Search has recently undergone a big leadership shuffle, with Liz Reid taking over as the new head of Search. Reid previously led—wait for it—the SGE team, so the prevailing theory is that we're going to get way more AI stuff in search going forward.
SGE is not for me
Since Google is looking for feedback on SGE, let's give it some! SGE never feels like a useful addition to Google Search. Google Search is a tool, and just as a screwdriver is not a hammer, I don't want a chatbot in a search engine. Putting a chatbot in search seems to come with the bizarre expectation that every search query is a question that has an answer. To me, Google Search is often the first step toward navigating somewhere on the web. Most of my queries aren't questions with answers; they are navigational. I'm leaving and want to go somewhere. I want to go read a news article or Wikipedia entry. I want to go to a manufacturer's website to read a spec or click a buy link. I want to order some food, look at a map, or download an application and install it. A chatbot can't help with any of these things. I'm not saying the chatbot isn't smart enough and I want it to be better: I don't want the chatbot. That's not what I'm here for.
- An SGE result. Those two pink boxes are the only useful part of this, but they're also just the first two links in the search results page, which you'll see if you scroll down. The rest of it is... nonsense?Ron Amadeo
- With SGE off, you can see the normal results, which just have the same information in a better format. What is the value add here?Ron Amadeo
- Lately with SGE (which randomly chose pink today), you must now click a "generate" link to see the chatbot.Ron Amadeo
In ye olden days, Google Search was only navigational. It showed a bare minimum results page with only 10 blue links. The site was useless if you didn't click on a link! This idea that search queries have "answers" only showed up around halfway through Google.com's life with the advent of things like the Knowledge Graph. That showed some additional info either in a tiny in-line box that took up maybe 10 percent of the page or in a sidebar. It was fast and out of the way and still understood that the primary goal is the 10 blue links. One recent analysis of SGE logged chatbot responses on 91 percent of queries, so nearly everything. That just doesn't line up with how I use search, where I would probably say that 90 percent of my queries are navigational.
AdvertisementGoogle feels loading speed is so important for search that there's a time-generation readout at the top of every results page. Usually, Google Search loads in under half a second. With SGE enabled, Search loads with a blank chatbot above the results that shows a loading spinner, and it takes about five seconds, or 10 times longer, to show you chatbot information that you can begin to parse. Even if you're not waiting for the slow chatbot to resolve with a response, the lengthy load time means at some point there will be a big vertical shift in the page when you're trying to read the results.
SGE has changed a bit since launch day. It used to auto-generate a response, so those 91 percent of search results would always be preempted by a giant chatbox pushing the search results off the screen. I've had the feature turned off since shortly after launch day, but a quick check-in today, and SGE seems to only create a "generate" button that sits above the search results, so there's no big chatbot window pushing the results off the screen. If you click the 'Generate' button, the big chatbox will be created, and it will start the five-second load time. That's definitely less annoying, but it also means Google's solution to its annoying chatbot was to effectively turn it off unless you do the extra click. It's not clear if the automatic opt-in people will have to click this "generate" link.
