Speaker 1: 0:24

Last episode. Do you remember what we talked about last episode? No, I'm not surprised. We talked about the new search engine from ChatGPT and how people were saying, oh, it's like this is going to kill Google, this is it Right? And we you and I talked about well, how do you suppose ChatGPT is searching the web, right? And what that might mean for Google and Google's future, right? And I sort of suggested that, yeah, chatgpt probably uses Google to search the web, so it's not going to kill Google.

Speaker 1: 1:00

And people wrote in to let me know that ChatGPT uses Bing, and that is correct. They do use Bing. So I'm going to go a little deeper into that today. I think that's a good idea. So they do use Bing, and I believe Microsoft was a substantial and is a substantial investor in OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT. So it makes sense for ChatGPT to have a close partnership with and use Bing. Bing is owned by Microsoft. Okay, wait, I don't understand why it makes sense. It makes sense because Microsoft owns Bing. Bing is Microsoft's search engine. Microsoft invested heavily in ChatGPT. Oh, search engine. Microsoft invested heavily in chat GPT. So part of that arrangement, I'm sure, is you use our search results. Now, that is true, I am sure they do use Bing.

Speaker 1: 1:58

What I am saying and this is not based I do not work for either of these companies. I cannot say definitively exactly what's happening, but based on my experience and knowing what these companies do and things they say, and then seeing what they actually do, this is based on my experience, seeing that and we're going to game this out a couple of different ways I could be imagine that I'm just totally wrong about this. We'll imagine that. You know, every so often there's a yellow moon. Yeah, do you remember that? You remember that one time I was wrong about something, that one time I was wrong about that one thing? No, that was the only time. No, you're usually always right. I'm glad I was recording that. You can listen to that. We'll talk after. I'm going to have an easy button that plays that clip. Yeah, anyway, back to my story. What was my story? Yeah, anyway, back to my story. What was my story? Your story was what somebody says.

Speaker 1: 2:51

So, absolutely so, let's say they do use Bing. They don't say that they exclusively use Bing. Obviously, they're never going to say that they get search results from Google. They can't do that. They'd get sued immediately. So, again, based on my experience, I bet they are also using Google. But let's say they're not. Let's say they are only using we don't know, we'll never know, right, we don't know. Let's say they are only using Bing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:22

So let me back up a handful of years to a little experiment that Google did. Okay, okay, so Google, they hard-coded a specific search. What that means is if you did a search for, and they just put together a string of letters that are so long that nobody would ever search for it, okay. And if they set it up so that if somebody did do that search, only a single website would come up and it would have nothing to do with the search. So there is no way that this would ever make sense. If you saw this result, then they waited a few months and they went to Bing and they did that search and guess what came up? That website, that website. So that was a very obvious signal. It was proof. It was like there was. It could never happen that Bing was feeding up Google results.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Now, what happened as a result of that? I don't know exactly. I assume there was some sort of lawsuit, but what the consensus was at the time is that, more than anything. It's just really embarrassing for Bing because they were saying we don't use search results. We have our own, and they probably do have their own, but everybody supplements things with Google. That's one of my points. Okay, let's say for the sake of argument that ChatGPT is only using Bing and Bing is no longer stealing information from Google search results. Google is like totally out of the picture. Their information is not being used at all.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Then my second point from last episode was Okay, google's going to adapt, right. Right, I do remember you saying that. I will be the probably not the first to admit, but I will definitely agree that if you go to ChatGPT and try to have a conversation and do a search for things, it's better than the. Is that Google is answering for me? Does this all the time? I never have a Zoom call when this doesn't happen. Google, how's my phone Finishing the podcast for us? Okay, what was I talking about? You were talking about? Oh, right, I admit. Yes, chat GPT is better than the similar generative search results that you get from Google. Google is doing the same thing. If you notice at the top, when you do a search of the search results page, they're going to give their own AI-generated result.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Yes, I've noticed that it's not that great right now, but what is the difference? And I've asked people who specialize in it. I've asked one guy who taught this stuff at MIT and I ran into him in Truro walking the dogs Are you serious? Yes, I am. What is? I asked him. This was like a year ago. What is it that ChatGPT is doing so differently from Google and everybody else trying to do this? And he said and also, I've spoken with people at Google and they say the same thing. They just have a headstart. They're not doing anything that different. They just they're ahead of everybody. Right, they're the first. So you know, they absolutely have a head start, a noticeable head start on Google and everybody else.

Speaker 1: 6:32

My point is Google will adapt. Yeah, when people say Google is dead or SEO is dead or et cetera, et cetera, the thing about SEO is that it adapts, it changes. The only constant in SEO is that it's always changing. So as long as people are out there searching for things, looking for things on the internet, seo is going to adapt and adjust to whatever that means. Right, that makes sense. So I have a little bonus today. Oh well, hello, bonus.

Speaker 1: 7:00

So I went to chat GPT this morning. Yes, and I said dear chat GPT, how do you choose which results from the internet to display in your responses? How about that? Because, so, let's say, excuse me, so remember, let's say did you hear the podcast? Let's say that chatPT is using Bing. They're still, they have access to the same internet that Google does and they're getting all their information ultimately from the same places.

Speaker 1: 7:30

How is it that they are going to choose how to answer people? Right, because everybody's going to want to know this, because SEO is going to move in this sort of direction, whether it's ChatGPT or whether it's the AI version of Google. You want to get into that response. Right, because there's no longer going to be, eventually, a search results page like Google, where there are like 10 different websites that you see and you've got to choose one. It's just going to summarize everything for you. That's what chat GPT does. That's what Google does. Chatgpt is doing it better, but the question for businesses is how to be one of those websites that ChatGPT chooses.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Right, and so that was the reason I asked and, and it described the criteria that it uses. Okay, and it's all the same stuff as SEO. It literally talked about keywords. It talked about relevancy. It talked about trustworthiness. It talked about all the same stuff that you would do if you want to get to the top of Google. All the exact same stuff. Not all of it, but the stuff that it mentioned was the same Predominantly. So the rules right now are the same Right now. Right now. Now, talk about a cliffhanger. The rules right now are the same Right now. Right now. Now, talk about a cliffhanger. I want to get into this a little more deeply, about what ChatGPT said in response to my question how do you get your website into ChatGPT results? I'm going to have to tackle that in the next episode, so topical.