The AI Search Revolution

The world of search is undergoing its most significant transformation yet. For years, we've relied on a list of blue links, but AI is reshaping how we find information and get found by users. Instead of just delivering you to a source of information, AI search is dynamic, allowing you to carry on a conversation with the AI to get the answers you need and ask direct follow-up questions.

AI search is an advanced search experience that uses artificial intelligence, generally large language models (LLMs), to understand a user's question and seamlessly generate an answer. Rather than giving you a list of links to find the answer yourself, the goal of AI search is to provide a direct response to a question without the user needing to look for the answer themself. It's designed to be more of a conversation or a consultation with a knowledgeable assistant rather than a simple retrieval of indexed documents. Platforms like Google with its AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT Search are leading this shift, transforming how we access information online.

An answer engine is either a search engine or an LLM, and honestly, the largest traditional search engine right now, Google, is quickly becoming an LLM itself.

But the biggest difference between the two is the type of query. In traditional search, you had a 2 to 5-word query. In the world of LLMs, you have a prompt, which is more like a statement about what you’re looking for; your sentiment is in there.

Patrick Reinhart, VP, Services and Thought Leadership, Conductor

How AI Search Differs from Traditional Search

The fundamental difference between AI search and traditional search is the output. Traditional search engines (like Google in its classic format) function like a digital librarian. You give them keywords, and they return a catalog of ranked links (the "blue links") that they believe are relevant. It's then your job to visit those links to find the answer you need. AI search aims to understand the context of a request instead of just the keywords. From there, it breaks down the top content sources it's been trained on to provide a direct answer, allowing the user to ask follow-up questions and carry on a conversation. In that way, AI search is like a research assistant, while traditional search is like looking through the shelves and books in a library.

The main difference is the way in which answer engines represent and understand the user's search queries and prompts. Their nuanced understanding of the user's intent, what they're looking for, and why they're looking for it. And then the ability for them to give users highly personalized responses that align with what they’re looking for.

In fact, a lot of answer engines even crawl the web just like a normal search engine would. But they don't give you back responses the way that you see from a traditional search engine like Google and Bing. They shortcut the information delivery cycle, instead of you going to look for information, they present the information to you.

Wei Zheng, Chief Product Officer, Conductor

Examples of Answer Engines

Here are a few examples of platforms that incorporate AI search capabilities:

Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews

While still a search engine at its core, Google is pivoting into the answer engine space, providing users more direct answers for many queries alongside their classic blue links.

AI Mode

Refers to an enhanced experience, provided by Google, where AI generates comprehensive answers and surfaces information to answer a user's question, going beyond a traditional list of links. Instead of just providing snippets or summaries, this mode aims to deliver more holistic, AI-generated responses that synthesize information from multiple sources directly within the search interface. The core idea behind AI Mode is to provide users with a richer, more interactive search journey.

AI Overviews

These are the AI-generated snapshots or summaries that appear at the top of the search results for certain queries. While both AI Mode and AI Overviews leverage Google's AI, the key distinction lies in the extent and prominence of the AI interaction. AI Overviews are concise, AI-powered answers integrated into the familiar search results page, while AI Mode suggests a more immersive, AI-driven environment for search.

Perplexity AI

A conversational answer engine that provides direct answers with cited sources.

ChatGPT and other AI Chatbots

These conversational AI models can function as answer engines, providing information and explanations in response to user prompts. Keep in mind that some of these chatbots have knowledge cutoffs and can’t provide accurate information past a certain date, so be sure to double-check the information you get from chatbots.

Related Resources:

• AI Search & How It Differs from Traditional Search
• What is AI Mode? Google's AI Search Experience Explained
• An In-Depth Look at Google’s AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience)