Search without LLM/GPT is just dead in the water now, isn't it?
"Give me facts about X" there are several decent options for.
"Give me quality reading material about topic X", there's like nobody even trying. Not that an answer doesn't exist for the query, just nobody is able to produce it.
This goes well beyond websites, discovery sucks for streaming video, for shopping, almost everything.
Nice job on marginalia.nu btw. Your site is a good reminder that there is a whole internet out there that just isn't able to rank on Google for various reasons.
But the tool clearly has some value, which may even reveal itself to be quite significant. I think a useful metric is to look at what happened with Copilot, which is a domain where there has been a lot less media frenzy about, and in which, arguably, this kind of model could've have much more readily made a tremendous impact. I think even in the dev community we went through a small period of folks thinking this was going to be earthshattering, followed by a natural cooldown, followed by a probably much saner interpretation that it is a tool, and in the right contexts might actually be useful.
The question is often very relevant. I'll readily admit that I have a high engagement with that accordion feature, but I can't believe how often I open it to find a disappointing text selection or even page.
And if it is, I wonder where that leaves JSON-LD schema in all of this. Schema is the perfect signal for something like this, but I'm afraid, and I believe I can speak representatively about this from an agency perspective, the trust is kind of broken for that model.
Too many people, myself included, are uneasy about how much information to give to Google since they have an insidious aim to use it to get information to users faster regardless of how much impact it has on a business' ability to remain competitive. Yet, on the other hand, I sympathize with the idea that the more Google reverses course on this and leans into embracing SEO industry-driven control they risk compromising the product. It makes me think that Google has reached a theoretically maximum level of product optimization.
A lot of questions I would have googled, I now ask ChatGPT.
It's not always reliable of course but it's often quicker and somewhat more extensive and specific when I need code snippets for example.
I think it's complimentary technologies. It will definitely eat up search market share.
It's almost as if yesteryear encyclopedias were having their revenge.