Here it is, Google finally announced their own AI chatbot— Google Bard. Like its presumed rivals, ChatGPT and Bing Bot, Bard can understand queries and generate human-like answers in response.

But is this the start of a new way of how we search the web in the future? 

This unveiling is just the next stage in the AI arms race between Google and OpenAI and Microsoft. And, with a recent update–and many more features to come–Google is already promising to transform the online search landscape as we know it.

Now that it’s widely available, here’s all you need to know about Google Bard.

What is Google Bard?

Google Bard is an experimental conversational AI chat service from Google that serves like a ChatGPT. It is Google’s own AI chatbot that can generate human-like responses to any prompt you wish to tell the AI. 

But unlike ChatGPT, Google Bard was initially based on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)–a family of conversational large language models (LLM). LaMDA is trained on massive data sets and parameters, which has allowed the AI to “learn” useful information, as well as our language. 

Recently at Google’s I/O 2023, it was revealed that Bard was now powered by their other, most advanced LLM: PaLM 2. This, as they stated, will allow Bard to be a highly efficient bot, and even fix previous issues (likely linked to their misinformation blunder when they first announced Bard a few months ago).

Powered by their LLMs, the result is that Bard can perform tasks such as answering questions and following instructions, and can carry a conversation with users in a surprisingly natural way. 

Aside from that, it can do what most AI chatbots nowadays can do: write and debug code, and answer math problems. A more popular use is helping with one’s writer’s block by creating outlines, collaborating on essays, or even providing more details for articles. The sky’s the limit, it seems, with a powerful AI chatbot like Bard. 

What is Google Bard used for?

This experimental, conversational AI is trained to communicate with users and provide the answers or results they’re looking for. As I said, the sky’s the limit for this kind of tech, but here are a few examples of how you can use Google Bard: 

1. Get information–Bard generally can provide easy-to-understand and factual answers to the questions you have. As long as your prompt does not violate any content guidelines from Google, Bard will respond with the information you would like to know. You can even ask strange questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” and it will give you an answer.
2. Generate different kinds of writing–from poems to emails to blog articles, Google Bard can help you with your writing. Bard’s answers can range from formal, creative, and even casual, depending on your prompt. The pieces or ideas you can get from Bard’s content responses can help you build ideas for your craft or job.
3. Translate–It can function pretty similarly to Google Translate. It even knows informal words or phrases in foreign languages, such as slang, which can be pretty useful. But, Google can only answer in English, with support for Japanese and Korean languages. The expansion of language support beyond English is planned and part of a 40-year expansion plan for Bard. 
4. Code–A more recent feature, Bard is now able to help users with simple programming and software development tasks. This includes code generation, code debugging, and explanation.
5. Summarize data–Bard can quickly digest and summarize the most important points from articles, blog posts, and web pages for you. You can also ask it to help you compare data or research.

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list of what this AI chatbot can do. You can ask it to find a recipe, write your CV, and even help you prepare for a presentation. 

It would be impossible for me to list all of Bard’s use cases here, and what you’ll use it for will depend on what you’re looking for. 

Is Google’s Bard available?

Yes, Google Bard is now available. Google announced Bard and its functions and features back in February 2023 and they announced that it is now available for everyone to use in May 2023 at Google I/O. It is currently accessible in 180 countries and territories.

How can I access Google Bard?

Bard can be accessed by searching bard.google.com, using the Google Bard Chrome Extension, or just by searching it up in any browser you use. 

When accessed, you will see this page and you can now start using and providing whatever prompts you want. 

How to use Google Bard

The user interface (UI) of Bard is pretty easy to navigate. Simply type in your prompt in the text box, press enter, and a conversation with the AI chatbot starts. 

Longer answers are broken down and can also use rich text formatting, often in bullet points or lists, which makes it easy to scan. 

If you want more information, If you’re not happy with Bard’s first response, or if you want more information, it provides the option of viewing its other drafted answers. This can provide a more detailed response or more context. You can also like or dislike the draft to let Bard know if you preferred its other answers or not. 

If you want to see other topics or look at more information online, you have the option to Google it. This shows related search topics that, when clicked, lead to organic search results.  

Is Google Bard Safe to Use?

Google Bard, while pretty powerful, isn’t infallible. 

When generating answers, Bard typically follows prompts from the user and can remember past instructions and questions (similar to Bing Bot). However, it doesn’t follow every prompt, as it has built-in safety controls and strictly adheres to Google’s content policies and AI principles. 

This reduces the chances of it producing “bad” results, such as offensive dialogue. 

That said, there’s still a chance that it can provide misleading information or potentially malicious answers. 

It’s important to understand that Google Bard is a still-developing AI tool that may at times produce bad results. Understanding this will lessen the risks for us users.

Bard is also trained to learn from its users, as it provides a way to rate its responses. On the UI, there is also the option to report legal issues with its response, which includes the following:

Are Google Bard’s Answers Accurate?

No. Bard is still considered an experimental AI, meaning that its accuracy is still flawed—Google Bard itself disclosed that it might produce false or misleading information from time to time, and encourages users to fact-check.

This statement above is important because, unlike ChatGPT, Google Bard has access to all of the internet. That means it can see information about current events and modern context, and therefore reference them in its answers. However, this doesn’t mean that the AI is fully updated with real-time information.

So while it can provide relevant answers to topical questions, it doesn’t mean that the answers it provides are 100% correct–hence the need for a disclaimer. 

Does Google Bard Cite its Sources?

As of May 2023, Bard now cites its sources. Announced by Google’s representative, Jack Krawczyk, he says this update is part of their goal to make Bard more useful, while also increasing the reach of the original publishers it gets its information from. 

This is a very welcome update for web publishers and SEOs like me and me. If Bard decides to cite your article, users can easily navigate to it, if they’re interested in learning more. But we have yet to see if this update does lead to more traffic, or if users will ignore these citations.

That said, Bard’s citations don’t seem to be successfully implemented, as of the time of writing. Bing Bot, in comparison, has been providing citations for a while now, and does so more reliably. But still, it’s a step in the right direction.

What Does Google Bard Mean for SEO?

As I hinted earlier, the release of Google Bard effectively ushers in the new age of search, which many are calling the new Search Generative Experience or SGE. 

An experimental version of search as we know, it deprioritized the 10 blue links that have defined Google’s first page for years. 

How? Well, Bard does the heavy lifting for you. Instead of sifting through several articles or pages to get the answer you want, Bard can potentially present it to you in a more concise manner. It even allows you to ask follow-up questions. 

It might be incredibly useful and time-saving for many, but it now means that users have the option to not visit multiple sites to get their answers or make their decision. These clicks are what our websites rely on–and are very important for SEO. 

What does this entail? We might see less traffic for the next few months, especially if more and more users adopt and prefer Bard over organic search. 

But, ultimately, Google will be pushed to find ways for traffic (and revenue) to continue reaching creators and their sites, so there’s still an incentive for us to create content. 

Key Takeaway

The race towards AI and the new age of search shows no signs of stopping with the official release of Google Bard. 

While appealing to many, and offering several use cases, Bard is still in its early stages and has a few limitations that we need to be aware of. 

I will continue to test Bard’s features as they are rolled out, but for now, all we know about this AI is covered in this article–and with several implications to SEO that we have to consider as the chatbot may become more mainstream in the coming months.

The post Google Bard: Everything You Need to Know About It, and How it Redefines the Way We Search appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

SEOs are once again dealing with another broad core update–the first of 2023. And this one touched down hard and fast, shaking things up more than the previous September 2022 update.

With all the fluctuations and volatility in search results before and after the update, how can you ensure your website comes out as a winner once the dust settles? 

Let me discuss my insights and a few key strategies to help you deal with the March 2023 Core Update.

What Does a ‘Broad Core Algorithm’ Update Mean?

The name is self-explanatory. It’s an algorithm update that focuses on broad changes, with no specific focus in each area.

Core updates are made to keep the search results both updated and accurate to user queries. Think of it as similar to a list of recommended restaurants to eat – year to year, there may be newer, better places for you to eat at. Updating this list every few months is pretty similar to a core update in that it keeps your list relevant and up to date. 

With each core update, there are often widespread fluctuations in ranking, which ultimately means that your website could either be positively or negatively affected. 

The information we get about these updates is limited, as you can see from Google’s official document on core updates and their announcement post. Most of the data and strategies we get from this update are through webmaster tools, expert insights, and speculations. 

How often do Google core updates happen?

Generally, they’re released every few months, with the last two being in May and September of 2022. You can check the release dates of all the core updates so far in this document.

Google tends to announce these updates a few days before, or the day of. At times, you might even start to see the effects of one a few days before it’s officially announced.

Once released, it can take several days up to a few weeks to finish rolling out for users. 

The March 2023 Core Update

Google’s March 2023 Core Update was released on the 15th of March and officially finished rolling out on the 28th of March, 07:26 PDT.

It took 13 days to roll out, and this update was more noticeable than the last one we had in September 2022. 

Here’s a quick rundown of what widely notable effects I and other SEOs have seen so far:

• Target: All types of content, as is usually the case with core updates.
• Penalty: No penalty, focused on promoting or rewarding pages that fit their new algorithm.
• Impact: Global update, impacting all regions, and in all languages. This one hit hard and fast, and we saw significant volatility in the SERPs (more on that later).
• Features: Core updates impact Google’s features, such as Discover, featured snippets, and more. 

Just like any other core update from Google, the update seems to reward websites that follow E-E-A-T, high-quality content, and improved user experience. Websites that don’t hit these criteria or practice black hat SEO will likely see significant losses.

This update does not particularly target specific types of websites in fact, the goal of a core update is to improve the quality of the search engine results and make sure every result is relevant to every user by assessing the overall content in the SERPs.

SERP Volatility

Checking the SERP sensors from our various tools, it is noticeable that there were drastic movements in the SERPs, starting from the day after Google released their new broad core update. Below is a snapshot of Semrush’s Sensor:

Diagnosing Issues Caused by an Algorithm Update

Since the algorithm changes in a core update aren’t detailed or explained in any of Google’s official documents, it can be hard to tell if your website has been hit by them.

And, because the updates are made in broader strokes than more specific changes to Google, I’ve found that pages that suddenly drop in the SERPs don’t necessarily have anything ‘wrong’ with them–it might just be that your competition better fits what Google is looking for currently. 

All in all, it can be difficult to diagnose whether the losses (or gains) you’re experiencing now are due to the March 2023 Core Update. That said, I understand that those doing less well after this rollout are feeling the need to do something about it. 

So, what SEO checklist should you look at to narrow it down? 

The Timing

First, check when your pages dropped in ranking or traffic. If it happened within a day or two of the rollout, then there’s a good chance that Google’s algorithms have changed in a way that prefers other sites’ content over yours. 

But, there are a few cases where unfortunate timing for landing page optimizations, website revamps, or any other significant changes on your site were made–which can also be the root cause of your problems. 

This is when I recommend digging around in your webmaster’s tools.

Search Console

The next step is to check your Google Search Console performance tab. This is where you can find if your impressions and clicks dropped off for specific landing pages. 

If significant drops are aligned with the initial rollout date (March 15, 2023) or the official finish date (March 28, 2023), then it’s likely caused by the Core Update.

If so, I suggest looking at the affected landing pages and keywords. You can also look at the ‘Search Appearance’ filter to see which rich results are showing for your site. Segmenting this data can help you understand what keyword clusters or specific site areas were hit by the update.

Analytics

Your Google Analytics profile is another tool I suggest you check. You can combine its data with the insights you found on Google Search Console to see what aspects or content of your website you need to work on.

Go to the Behavior category, and check on your Landing Pages report. Filter the results by ‘Organic Traffic’ to narrow down the data. Here, you can continue to dig into the issues that were revealed to you in your Google Search Console Data.

Use this to benchmark your website’s performance against previous dates, as well.

Competitor Analysis

Performing Competitor Analysis either manually or through SEO tools (such as SE Ranking, Semrush, or Ahrefs) can also highlight what your website is currently missing.

Take a look at your competitors–what are they doing that you currently aren’t? Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do they have higher quality content than what you have currently published?
2. Do they have higher-quality link-building efforts than you?
3. Do they have greater keyword coverage for the products and services you’re offering?
4. Are these things you can add to or improve on your website?

Sitewide Effects

Core updates often have a sitewide impact–which means they often affect most of your pages, though not every single page on the site. 

If you notice changes on just one page, this is probably not due to a Google core update.

How Can I Optimize My Website for the March 2023 Core Update?

Similar to previous core updates, Google did not provide any specific information about their recent algorithm changes. As a result, there is no definitive procedure on how you can optimize your website following this update. Instead, you’ll have to look at holistic changes to your website and its content.

Google mentioned in their page quality guidelines that practicing E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is one of the important things you need to consider to maintain good quality content in the SERPs. 

If you’re interested in understanding how to recover from a broad core algorithm update, I have a few key SEO practices to help you:

Improve user experience

This is one of the relevant factors Google considers since they are user-centric. Letting users navigate your website easily will make you gain a high engagement rate online. These are the vital recommendations and some tools I would suggest for you to maintain and improve your website user experience:

• Ensure your website is mobile-friendly: you can check your website’s mobile-friendliness through Google Search Console’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

• Improve page speed: You can use PageSpeed Insights to check your website’s speed on mobile and desktop. This tool also suggests improvements and factors you need to improve on or avoid on your website.

• Improve Readability: check your website regularly and make sure the font details and the positioning of the texts are readable and uniform. 

• Improve accessibility and navigation: make sure your website is accessible and navigational to all kinds of users. This includes providing descriptive alt text on images, closed captions on videos, and ensuring compatibility for text, visuals, buttons, etc. on all types of screens.

• Avoid using intrusive ads or pop-ups: this may lower users’ perception of your website, or distract them–both will reduce engagement. Additionally, make sure your website is secure from any kind of online threat.

Create high quality content

Creating high-quality content will always be a must for ranking high and ensuring Google finds your website authoritative. 

I’ve written a guide on how to write helpful, informative content (following Google’s most recent content update) if you want to improve your content strategy or revisit your old blogs and landing pages. 

Other standard practices you might have to double-check on your website are keyword stuffing, readability, duplicate content, scraped content, and relevance to users. Not following what we consider good practices in these areas can harm your credibility as a website. 

If you ever have trouble refreshing your old work or generating new content, you have the option of using generative AI. Tools like ChatGPT and Jasper can help you lessen the time and effort spent on updating your content–though use these tools carefully. 

Make sure to proofread and fact-check (as AI tools are never 100% accurate when it comes to data), and add your unique insight and expertise to what they generate. Doing so makes all the difference for your rankings. 

Other tools, like Bing AI, can also help generate content, though not on the same level as tools specifically designed for copywriting. Unlike ChatGPT, however, it does have access to the internet and is integrated with OpenAI’s GPT-4. So it can create more informative or insightful answers for you.

Refrain from doing Black Hat SEO

Websites that practice Black Hat SEO may experience spikes in traffic and ranking–but these are inconsistent. And, these practices essentially set you up for future penalization. 

Common black hat practices are using hidden headings, texts, or links, duplicating content, spamming, keyword stuffing, and cloaking content or URLs. 

Websites that take advantage of these methods will eventually drop off the SERPs, despite the initial visibility boost they can provide. 

How Long Will it Take to Recover from the March 2023 Core Update?

SEO, no matter what strategy you decide to use, takes time to show results. It’s why I don’t suggest you wait when it comes to recovering from a core update. Starting right away by reviewing your website and auditing your content will help you stay ahead of the competition and minimize losses as quickly as possible. 

Key Takeaway

Google is and will always be user-centric. Changes like the March 2023 core update are meant to improve user satisfaction, and push people-first content to the top of the SERPs. 

If you’re one of the many SEO specialists scrambling after this core update, it’s time to step back and start creating a plan. You should focus on improving your website as a whole. 

There is no silver bullet to recovering from this, or to jumping back to your initial position. Instead, this update calls for a thorough sweep through your website and analyzing where to improve. If you have not started practicing this, then I encourage you to.

The post Google’s March 2023 Broad Core Update: What You Need To Know appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Search engines, as we know them, are about to move into a whole new era with artificial intelligence chatbots. 

We saw it first with ChatGPT and its record-breaking adoption and how it opened up a wealth of new opportunities in the field of generative AI. We saw it again with Microsoft’s move toward an AI-powered search setup.

And now, with the upcoming launch of Bard, Google’s entry into the artificial intelligence chatbot race, the conflict between AI chatbots have already begun. 

We can see it now, in real-time: companies are rapidly expediting their research and development on how they can augment AI in hopes of further improving their current search engines and platforms.

In this article, I will be discussing where we are currently in the ‘AI war’. I will also be comparing the recently launched ‘Microsoft AI-powered Bing’ to Google’s AI-integrated offering – ‘Bard’.

State of Artificial Intelligence Chatbots

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are a fascinating tool, trained to have human-like conversations using a process called natural language processing (NLP). 

This allows the chatbot to both interpret and respond with human language naturally—which enables them to understand language and provide responses based on existing data. And, they can be trained to do just about anything. 

There are, in fact, various AI chatbots that exist today that you are probably using daily, the best examples being Apple ecosystem’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. 

AI chatbots are the greatest proof of the evolution of artificial intelligence and machine learning throughout the years. 

And its use cases keep on growing—and we’ve all recently seen one gain massive popularity: which is to answer specific questions. And, a great example of this is ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI.From its launch in November 2022 up to writing this article in February 2023, it was reported that it reached the 100 million active users milestone. Its rise in popularity has pushed companies like Microsoft and Google in developing their own AI-powered chatbots.

Now back in January 2023, Microsoft announced their collaboration with OpenAI that will allow their own search engine ‘Bing’ to have capabilities and features like what ChatGPT offers to their users, and they will be launching it by March 2023.

And a few weeks later, Google directly responded by announcing that they, too, were currently developing their own “experimental conversational AI feature” called ‘Bard.’ This one was initially released in February 2023 to testers, with no set date for a public release.

Microsoft vs. Google: Who has the better AI Chatbot?

Since AI chatbots seek to give answers or solutions to their users, it makes sense that both Google and Microsoft (Bing) are making moves to bring features of it to further improve their current search engines.

But what about ChatGPT? Well, it wouldn’t make sense to compare this to the other two. One, because it finished training in 2022 (which means its information is not up to date). Two, because ChatGPT is unable to crawl the web.

Now here are some of the important information in Google’s and Microsoft’s AI Chatbots so far:

Microsoft Bing:

Microsoft started investing with OpenAI way back in 2019, and since then Microsoft has moved fast in bringing in the artificial intelligence chatbot in Bing. 

Just last month, Microsoft opened the new AI-integrated Bing search in a limited preview for users to test, and the feedback from it was overwhelmingly positive—71% of the users gave it a thumbs-up.

However, despite the good words and praises, there were some issues that came up during the testing, especially for long chat sessions ranging from 15 questions and up. Some users said that Bing became repetitive and gave unhelpful responses to their prompts.

Microsoft later addressed this problem with these changes:

• The AI Chatbot will now be limited to 50 chat turns per day for every user, with just 5 chat turns per session.
• When a user reaches the 5 chat turns in a session they will be prompted to start a new topic, and the context of the conversation with the chatbot will be cleared. This is to avoid the AI chatbot being confused.
• They also added a ‘broom’ icon to the left side of the search bar to manually clear the previous conversation to start a new topic.

Microsoft also introduced its new AI-powered search engine to its Bing search engine and Edge browser for mobile devices. They also added these new features to Skype.

So, we can also expect that these AI-powered capabilities will be added to the rest of Microsoft’s communication applications—like Teams—in the future.

Google Bard:

While Microsoft was agile in launching its improved AI-backed search engine, Google in comparison seems to be taking their time in developing their own AI chatbot. It was only back in January 2023 that they even announced that they would be adding a conversational AI feature to their search engine.

This announcement was made by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. These founders were brought back to Google by its CEO Sundar Pichai, after the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which posed direct competition in the world of search engines.

Since their initial announcements, we still have limited knowledge about Google Bard. None of this AI chatbot’s abilities have been revealed nor confirmed, and how it will work is a mystery. But, it does look like it will function similarly to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Here are some of the relevant (and Google-confirmed) information you might want to know:

• Bard’s conversation capabilities will be powered by a language model created by Google called ‘LaMDA’ (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)
• LaMDA was trained on a dataset called ‘Infinset’
• ‘Infiniset’ is a mix of internet content that was intentionally chosen to improve the model’s ability to engage in conversation or dialogue.
• According to LaMDA’s research paper, it is pre-trained with 1.56 trillion words of “public dialog data and web text.”

With regard to AI, Google is also planning to launch 20 new AI products this year – alongside Google Bard. This demonstrates Google’s commitment to improving its ‘search engine’ more effectively and intuitively for its users.

So Who Wins?

For probably the first time ever, Bing seems to be taking the lead against Google. By launching first, and integrating conversational style answers into their system, they’ve managed to get ahead. In fact, Bing has already opened up a waitlist and is gradually rolling it out—garnering more traffic than ever.

At the same time, Bing’s AI chatbot seems to provide more accurate answers, compared to Google’s (who gave an inaccurate answer in their promotional tweet ).

But while Bing is ahead at this early stage in the race, Google has never taken its competition lightly. They will likely figure out a way to become a significant player in the AI arena in the coming months.

What does Google Bard (and other Artificial Intelligence Chatbots) Mean for the Future of SEO?

Speaking from a Google-centric standpoint, having an AI chatbot implemented could significantly impact our SEO practices.

From the little we’ve already seen, it looks like Bard will replace the spot of the featured snippet. Much like ChatGPT, it could consolidate information from many sources, and provide a personalized answer to the user’s query. It could also provide additional insights, such as articles from the SERP, videos, and more.

For example, someone looking for a step-by-step guide on how to tie-dye a shirt would receive a guide from Bard, rather than a set of articles that may or may not have the design or style that they were looking for.

This could end up changing standard SEO practices, particularly those geared towards gaining a featured snippet. This, in turn, could shift the focus on providing more high-quality, relevant, and informative content for people looking to gain additional perspective or fact-check the answer that Bard provides.

Will Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Replace Organic Search Results?

The picture I painted in the previous sections might look bleak—but it is unlikely that Bard would completely replace all organic search results, once it is fully launched. 

After all, as powerful as they can be, AI-powered tools always have limitations and may not always provide the most accurate or comprehensive answer.

Furthermore, Google already understands that not all queries are looking for one, specific answer. Sometimes, people are looking for a variety of sources to come to their own conclusions. Take, for example, if you’re looking for different types of swimsuits for your next vacation. That variety of information and content is something that they can’t get rid of.

What I think is that these new generative AI features being added onto search engines will help users gain access to answers much quicker, as they help organize complex information and multiple viewpoints right in the featured snippet. 

So, will Bard, Bing, and other AI chatbots make us SEO professionals obsolete? I don’t think so. They’ll undoubtedly play an important role in delivering information to users, but SEO will not become obsolete.

Key Takeaway

With the rise of Bard, Bing, ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence chatbots pushed a shift in the industry of search engines and its development, and even two of the biggest pillars in the industry— Microsoft and Google—have pivoted their focus on it. 

Let this be an important reminder for us SEO practitioners that we should be able to adapt and keep up with the rapid advancement of technology to maintain our competitive edge in the industry.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that SEO and AI are not mutually exclusive. AI will continue to change the landscape of search, but it can also be used to enhance the quality and delivery of information.

The post Artificial Intelligence Chatbots: Bard, Bing, and What They Mean for SEO appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.