Not having to use language to search is becoming a hallmark feature in the next wave of A.I. search engines. This represents a drift away from exclusively relying on text-based prompts.
The Five Most Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- A major benefit here is for those tip-of-the-tongue searches where you cannot remember the name of something, but have an image of it.
- Another kind of search this will help with is the one where searchers do not know the name of what they want to know about. For instance, a pretty flower that someone sees while hiking a trail. Take a pic and send it to a search engine for identification.
- It will also encourage users to search when they otherwise may not be inclined to. The convenience and speed with which users can search, instead of having to think of then type out a question, will increase dependence on search.
- In S.E.O., this will cause a major demand for more visual content on company’s websites, as “visual keywords” will become much more important.
- Circle for Search, which is a Google product (service? or is it one of those both–and things?) is one of the more prominent examples of this technology.
Look and See
What is the significance of this technology for search?
Well, it rings in a new era of search that further emphasizes the ascendancy of visual content’s popularity online. One could argue that this is just the next chapter in a longer tale about the growing supremacy of The Image in American and global culture.
As mentioned in the key takeaways, this could help users answer questions that they struggled to fit into a text prompt, whether from lack of knowledge or just difficulty in facility.
For business owners wondering how S.E.O. strategy will change according to this development, think visually.
More photo content on websites, which can be helpful in general because pictures of products are usually something that customers appreciate seeing.
But on a deeper level, what we have right now with text keywords will likely expand to multimedia keywords.
A possibility here is that more than just a picture of a product will be necessary. So, a picture of certain kinds of products with certain visual features.
Visual keywords, you could call them, calling for certain color hues, certain angles, and the like. Make your pictures look a certain way, is the idea.
And what will facilitate this is, well isn’t this quite convenient, gen-A.I. tools made by tech companies that offer the search tools. These gen-A.I. tools could take photos of products and quickly edit the pics to conform to the visual keywords’ prescripts.
Text Prompts Are Not Going Anywhere
Of course, there are some questions that a picture cannot ask for us.
For this reason, text prompts are not going anywhere.
Also, the very usefulness of image-based search in any case depends on whether the searcher actually has a relevant picture to give the search engine. Otherwise, just use text-based search. Or voice-based search, if that happens to be your inclination.
Another significant reason that text prompts will be here to stay is that gen-A.I. search will allow for text prompts of higher detail and sophistication.
Traditionally, most text prompts are in broken language, ungrammatical phrases and dependent clauses that do not make for fully-formed, grammatical sentences.
That is because search has only been able to successfully answer a certain level of query. “Restaurants near me”, etc.
The next generation of search will allow people to type out longer, more-detailed queries that cover several aspects of a question. Never mind if they still are not technically grammatical sentences. E.g., “Restaurants near me with a kids’ menu and seafood menu items under $30”, which has multiple layers to it, will have each one addressed by a search engine.
That is, provided that business owners are doing their due diligence in making sure their websites answer those questions.
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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