Alibaba, a Chinese company that is hugely influential in e-commerce, has an A.I. search engine specifically for the use of small businesses in Europe and the Americas. This could help business owners research and find products, but the caveat is that it could encourage impulsive purchases that do not lead to better business.
The Five Most Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- A use case is a small-business owner using the search engine to find wholesale products.
- Businesses can use text and image prompts to search.
- Data analytics is also available, allowing businesses to get information about, say, the popularity of one wholesale item among similar businesses.
- The name of the search engine, Accio, is a Harry Potter reference, which could probably attract American and European users given the popularity of that franchise in these parts of the world. The Accio spell in Harry Potter brings (summons) an object to the spell’s caster. So, it’s an apt metaphor for online shopping with an intermediary A.I. tool.
- Supported languages include English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Under the Spell of Accio
The thing about specialized A.I. search engines is that these can become a valuable tool for business owners to rely on.
Not only the gathering up of information for presentation, but the offering of insights into that information is one of the significant draws of A.I. search engines.
In traditional search, searchers got the information but had to make their own conclusions about the information. What is more, peruse the selected links to find a site that could potentially offer the answer sought after.
The next wave of search engines will automate this pesky research and just offer an answer to the searcher. Assessing the popularity of a product, for instance, will be one of the things that search engines like Accio will automate for business owners.
One of the things about the emerging gen-A.I. search engines is just how many of them seem to be broad-purpose.
Is Google, for instance, working on a search engine that small-business owners could use?
Perhaps, but one of the interesting things that gen-A.I. search engines allow for is greater specialization in narrow-purpose search tools.
Not only that, but gen A.I.’s capabilities extend to interactivity as well. It will indeed feel as if business owners can have a conversation with a machine that leads to a purchase.
This A.I.-as-salesperson (or A.I.-as-broker, if you will) approach is seen in even the broad-breadth gen-A.I. search engines like The New Bing, where ads populate the search results.
Facilitating Purchases: A Caveat for Business Owners
Given the extent to which online-shopping tools have increased consumerism among individuals, the same issue may arise for business owners with finite budgets sensitive to any wasteful spending.
So a significant risk to be aware of as a business owner is how such search tools could incline businesses to become shopaholics.
The results of a decline into shopaholism, for a business owner, could be making bad bets on wholesale products that showed up in recommendations.
That, in turn, could lead to lower costs overall. Just as individual shopaholics end up with credit card debt they would rather not have, a business owner may be staring down a balance sheet blighted with impulse buys because of using a search engine that by design tries to lead users to making purchases.
To avoid this pitfall, it will be important for any responsible business owner to ensure that the business still has a thoughtful process in place for ensuring purchases are well-considered before the purchase button gets a click.
A final key takeaway would be to also keep in mind the golden rule of getting a second opinion. The purchases these search engines lead businesses to are impactful on the business. If the search engine says a product is popular, why not do a little additional research to find out whether it really is?
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
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