How SEO Will Change With the Introduction of Bard AI

Google Bard is a new AI that answers searchers’ questions in a conversational style. Following the success of ChatGPT, this generative AI initiative could change SEO.

It’s not clear how Google plans to integrate it into search results. But it’s important for SEO professionals to understand its ramifications. Here’s how.

Keywords

Google is introducing Bard AI to search engines as a way to better understand the queries people make and answer them more accurately. It is a powerful tool that can synthesize information from across the web and deliver a personalized response to each query.

Bard is based on LaMDA, or the Language Model for Dialogue Applications, technology that Google first unveiled two years ago. It is a more advanced version of the base language model ChatGPT, which Google uses in its other products like Search, Docs, Drive and Maps.

The goal of the tool is to supplement Knowledge Graph cards by providing information on queries that have no single right answer. For example, a Bard response to a query asking whether it is easier to learn guitar or piano would provide multiple perspectives in an easy-to-understand format.

Using machine learning, it can also detect trends in search terms to improve accuracy over time. For instance, if many people are searching for information about the James Webb Space Telescope, Bard will know that is what they are looking for and deliver relevant results.

Content

Bard is designed to be an AI assistant for search engines. It is capable of understanding complex ideas and questions, then simplifying them to provide answers and recommendations. It can also answer user queries without the need to click through to a website. This could have a negative impact on SEO as it will reduce the number of visits to sites that produce informational content.

However, Google isn’t planning to completely replace the need for quality content. The company plans to use Bard for research, drafts and other tasks that don’t involve creating content itself. It will be interesting to see how Google’s quality-focused algorithm handles this new type of content.

While SEO may change with the introduction of Bard, it’s important to remember that the fundamentals will remain the same. You’ll still need to create well-written, informative content that aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines and has a robust backlink profile. If your content isn’t better than what AI can generate, you won’t get the traffic that you need.

Links

Bard is a generative AI that can accept prompts and perform text-based tasks such as providing answers and summaries. It also helps searchers explore topics by providing links to websites that offer more information.

Google hopes that Bard can be used to answer queries that a simple Knowledge Graph Card is not equipped to handle. These are known as NORA questions – “No One Right Answer.”

Bard uses a large language model to provide answers and can draw from various sources. This includes news articles and Wikipedia. However, it also draws from its own index of the web and is capable of dissecting a piece of content and producing new text that is similar to existing content.

Keen-eyed observers didn’t need to look very hard to notice that the sample response in the launch video did not contain any attribution. This gaff caused shares in Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, to tumble and showed that perhaps AI isn’t ready to take over just yet.

Time

As generative AI chatbots like Bard and ChatGPT continue to change search, SEO practices will need to adjust. Rather than prioritizing content that matches keywords, the focus will shift to providing relevant answers to queries.

While both Bard and ChatGPT are powered by large language models (LLM), Google’s Bard has the advantage over its rival as it is integrated with Google search, allowing it to access real-time data. This gives it a leg up when it comes to answering complex queries.

It’s still too early to say how SEO will be affected by generative AI chatbots such as Bard and ChatGPT. However, it will most likely change the way that SEO professionals approach content creation, shifting from SEO to AEO (answer engine optimization). As long as marketers create high-quality and relevant content aligned with Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, they should continue to see good results regardless of the emergence of generative AI. However, if they fail to comply with Google’s guidelines, they may lose visibility in SERPs.