By Pep Canals, on 14 September 2023
Artificial Intelligence is booming. More and more companies are opting for it including Google, which is developing Google Search Generative Experience. This is a new search experience facilitates the entire information gathering process thanks to AI and data science. Take a look below to learn more.
What Is Google Search Generative Experience?
Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) is Google's commitment to include Artificial Intelligence in its search results. With this new addition, the search engine's first answer will be generated by AI and will respond directly to the question asked by the user. The public will not have to click on the different URLs shown to them but will be able to see the information they need (and other elements such as the sources used) quickly.
SGE is a new search experience that integrates Artificial Intelligence and helps people search faster, more easily, and more efficiently.
For now, SGE's response is labeled as experimental Generative AI as it is not yet in its final version.
How to Access Google Search Generative Experience
SGE is part of Search Labs, a Google experiment program that is not yet open to the public and can only be accessed by certain accounts after registering on a waiting list. For now it is only available to U.S. residents and in English, so if you want to access it elsewhere you'll need to use a VPN.
Those lucky enough to sign up and be accepted will receive an email informing them that they can start testing the different Search Labs functions.
How Does Google Search Generative Experience Work?
According to Google, its new AI search experience uses a variety of large language models (LLM) including PaLM2, an advanced language model created by Google, and MUM (Multitask United Model), Google's latest AI-based algorithmic version of search.
The company has also reported that SGE has been trained to be able to perform specific search tasks, including identifying high-quality internet results that verify the data presented as a result.
According to Liz Reid, Google's vice president of search, with this new experience Google will limit its response capacity to some areas in order to make queries more and more secure. Thus, some questions related to medical, financial, dangerous or explicit topics will not be answered. Additionally, when there are data gaps or unreliable information, Google will not generate an answer by AI.
Why Doesn't SGE Allow Conversations Like ChatGPT?
Another of the company's goals in creating this new AI search experience is to provide answers where objectivity prevails over fluidity, despite the fact that users prefer fluid answers. Google did this intentionally to keep the answers in as neutral as possible.
The Foundations of Google Search Generative Experience
Let's look at what the 5 basic pillars of this new Google addition are.
- Security: Google does not want to give first-person answers or create conversations between the AI and the user. This way, users are more inclined to trust the answers they are given.
- Quality: Google aims to have its AI answers to be of high quality, so it wants to refrain from answering questions in some sensitive areas (mentioned above).
- Agility: AI reduces the number of steps users have to take to find the answer they are looking for.
- Relevance: When it comes to advertising, this AI aims to show more relevant ads to users and in the best possible way.
- Ecosystem: although the AI gives an answer to the user's question, Google does not want to stop encouraging the public to go deeper into the topic and delve into the content created by others. Therefore, when AI-generated content is displayed, the content sources on which it was based will appear next to it.
Are SGE and Bard the Same Thing?
Although both rely on AI, they are very different. Bard is a Google chatbot that is completely independent of the search engine, while SGE has been trained according to the result ranking criteria for a specific search usage. As a result, the quality of SGE's answers is higher and it is less prone to errors. This is also because it received human feedback during its training.
Another thing that Google wanted to improve with SGE over Bard is the lack of citations and references. With this new search experience, sources appear and the ecosystem of creators receives much more support.
Real-World Examples of What Generative AI Offers
Better Searches
Better searches are the clearest example of what SGE can do along with preventing you from gathering information from different sites.
Below, we can see how, in addition to answering the user's question, SGE shows the different sources from which it gathered the information and at the bottom it suggests related questions.
Shopping Support
SGE promises to be a great ally when shopping online. One of the things we liked most about this new update is that it gives advice on the product the user is looking for to make their purchase the best possible.
For example, it offers us three factors to take into account when choosing the best bluetooth speaker, thus avoiding going into three or four searches or articles to find this information.
