One of the best uses for generative AI is its ability to guide and organize the process of searching for relevant information. Some have prematurely said that it is killing traditional search, but it’s not quite time to stick it in the ground yet. AI searches still drink from the Google index, and some academic and other sources can block AI search. But make no mistake, traditional search is waning in favor of AI search, particularly with younger demographics.
There’s no denying that AI search is more attractive than traditional search. Instead of a list of links that you need to open individually, AI search offers a summary of these links, which allows you to refine your search faster so you can get the results you want more quickly.
This can save you a significant amount of time, and if you use the Gemini app you can even ask it to fact-check the provided summary for you. However, until source-blocking stops from major news organizations and academia, you’ll want to do a traditional Google search as well to make sure you’re not missing anything important.
How to Use Google’s AI Tools for Search
Google is the undeniable master of search, and this extends to its AI suite of products.
1) AI Overviews
Google now offers AI Overviews at the top of your searches with Google.com. These are very quick summaries of the content at the top of Google’s index for your query.
2) Gemini
This is where you really want to go to get the best out of AI search. Go to gemini.google.com and type in your query. You’ll get a summary with source links at the bottom which you can choose to remove if they come from competitors or you just don’t like the source.
This is where traditional search usually ends, but you can extend the capabilities way further with Gemini. You can ask it to double-check the response by clicking on the hamburger menu at the bottom of each summary and clicking “Double-Check Response.” It will then fact check your summary. You can add files to Gemini for it to use in the summary, listen to an audio version of the summary, and choose to have a detailed research report written about the summary. All of this leaves traditional search in the dust.
Try using Gemini side by side with ChatGPT, and you’ll notice that the summaries and sources are noticeably better.
NotebookLM Plus
While the information you get from Gemini is usually enough to satisfy the average search, you’ll want to use NotebookLM Plus if your searches are meant to gather information to create a project, report, or other larger task.
Once you have your preferred sources and summaries, you can create a Notebook in NotebookLM Plus with a copy and paste of the summary. There is no ability yet to add it directly to NotebookLM from Gemini. NotebookLM Plus can be used in place of the bookmarks of old, but with greatly advanced functionality. Once all of this information is in NotebookLM Plus, you can create a briefing doc, a podcast-style overview, audio overviews, and much more.
Optimizing Your Own Content For AI search
There are very few differences between optimizing for search engines and optimizing for AI. In fact, optimizing for traditional search is AI search optimization because AI searches use the Google search index as one of their primary sources.
However, there are more opportunities for you to “rank” on AI searches at the moment because quite a few high-trust sources from news organizations to academia have blocked AI search. Google is working to put an end to this since it naturally affects the adoption of AI search. It’s important to note that this doesn’t affect content that links to these sources, only content from these sources.
There’s great news here for any site that is optimized for answering questions. Google’s algorithm has liked the question and answer format for content for over a decade now, starting with its Hummingbird update up until it started listing “People Also Ask” questions above organic search results. All of this content is tailor-made for AI search, which frequently starts with questions being asked of AI tools.
How do you get all of this AI search functionality? Simple - become a Google Workspace subscriber. While most businesses use Google Workspace for its collaborative features and ease of use over other productivity suites, its AI features are a secret sauce that you could be using to vault ahead of your competition and evolve your everyday working habits - even for something as basic as search. Get in touch with us today for a demo.
Contact Us to Learn More about Transforming Your Business