Generative AI

The Future of Search: AI or Links?


The Gist

  • Blended approach. Yahoo and other search engines are adopting a dual search strategy, combining generative AI with traditional link-based results.
  • Intent is key. The future of search relies on accurately inferring user intent to determine when to display AI-generated answers versus traditional results.
  • Cost considerations. Generative AI answers are costly, posing a challenge for search engines like Google that rely on advertising revenue.

Yahoo is one of the most visited websites on the planet. It’s the most popular news site in the U.S., with more than 3 billion visits each month. It’s second in sports, second in email. It’s a still-kicking, veritable online hub of information. And at the very top of its homepage, it has a search bar. 

Yahoo CEO Embraces Dual Search Strategy

That highly-visible search bar presents Yahoo with a fascinating choice today: Whether to respond to search queries with AI-generated, ChatGPT-like answers, or with standard, Google-style lists of blue links. And when I asked Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone which one it would be, he surprised me. The answer is both.

“You can do both,” Lanzone said in a recent conversation on Big Technology Podcast. “For some queries, it is just generative AI. And for some, it is just a link. And every version in between.”

Related Article: What Google Search Generative Experience Means for Marketers

Search Engines Embrace Blended AI Strategy

Indeed, the narrative that we’ll either get 10 blue links or a few AI paragraphs in search results is wrong. All major search engines’ plans for generative AI today — including those that are “generative AI first” — are to infer our intent based on our queries and then provide an answer in the style fitting the request. It won’t be generative AI or old style Google. It will be both.

“Generative 100% makes no sense,” Aravind Srinivas, CEO of generative AI search engine Perplexity told me. Perplexity, he said, will show a blend of answers. 

Distant view of a small wooden bridge connecting two cliffs in Sweden in piece about AI search generative experience.
“Generative 100% makes no sense,” Aravind Srinivas, CEO of generative AI search engine Perplexity told me. Perplexity, he said, will show a blend of answers. Roger28/Wirestock Creators on Adobe Stock Photos

Related Article: Unveiling the Next Chapter in Google’s Search Generative Experience Evolution

Search Giants Vie for Intent Understanding

Along with Yahoo and Perplexity, Google and Microsoft are seeking to determine the intent of your queries before deciding which results format to show you. Bing is already including its AI-generated “Copilot” answers at the top of some results pages, with the traditional results below, a Microsoft spokesperson told me. Google is also showing its still-experimental Search Generative Experience answers only on some results.

The real forthcoming search war, then, will hinge on how well these search engines can infer our intent, and how often they’re willing to show expensive generative AI answers. “Truly understanding user intent and knowing when to fire a gen AI answer vs. just links is a hard problem too,” Srinivas told me. 



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