A recent Search Off The Record episode featuring Martin Splitt and Nikola Todorovic, Director of Software Engineering at Google Search, explored the revolutionary aspect of AI and how a new wave of users are crafting longer conversational queries. They pointed out that while AI has democratized access to information it has made experience-based insights more valuable, implying that this is a key to standing out in the AI search.
AI Makes Human Experience And Opinions More Important
While AI is making information more accessible, it’s making basic information less important because it’s something that AI can do. Something like the specs of Texas Instruments OPA1656 op-amps is something that is provided by Texas Instruments and data sheets available from sites like electronics warehouses like DigiKey and Mouser.
What AI can’t provide are opinions and experience with those electronic parts, like what is the sonic difference between using an OPA1656 and something else that is six times more expensive? This is something that an AI can’t provide and as a consequence human experience and opinion is the thing that is variously referred to as the “value” that makes one site useful and another site not useful.
Martin Splitt made this case in talking about how AI can bridge human experience and the basic type of information that’s found “on the box.”
Splitt explained:
“Some people have misunderstood whatever it was that they’re trying to accomplish or to provide to be these cumbersome bits and only these cumbersome bits, right?
But eventually that turned into…, how do I put this nicely, putting words around spec sheets from manufacturers. And that wasn’t really the value that I was looking for. I’m not interested in knowing how many gigahertz a certain new processor has because I can read that basically on the box. It says it on the box. You don’t have to tell me that this is now a 3 gigahertz processor. It says it on the box.
And I had a key moment when I was buying a joystick back in the days for a computer game. And I didn’t know what force feedback was. And that’s effectively you have a different resistance. And it might move and vibrate the device if there’s any shaking happening in the surroundings. And I didn’t know what that was. And it said on the box, it has force feedback.
And so I went to someone who worked at the shop, and I anticipated them to be like an expert on the topic. So I’m like, so this says force feedback. What does that mean? And he literally said to me, that means that this joystick has force feedback.
And this is funny, but I’m seeing this a lot in articles and on websites that they’re effectively not giving me any context. They’re just explaining what I can kind of glimpse and gather from the information that is right in front of me. And I think AI makes that easier. You don’t have to spend as much time to rattle off the spec sheets into a more readable human conversational form. But chat bots do that.”
Splitt followed up by saying that it’s no longer necessary for websites to focus on providing commonly available information. That’s still important but there is a higher level of information that based on human experience that websites can provide, even if it’s something as small as explaining what “force feedback” on a gaming joystick is.
Paradoxically, while information is now more widely available than at any point in human history, it’s also made human judgement and opinion more valuable because that’s something that an AI system cannot do. And while there are many ways to approach content, it’s the subjective information that can be said to be the value add.
Splitt explained:
“So I think there is still enough space online for different outlets and people and opinions and experiences, but I think we have to increase the level of our content to be useful and interesting for humans, from humans to humans. And I don’t think AI is going to take that away. I think AI is going to bridge that.”
Martin Splitt insists that basic content is no substitute for expertise. He suggests that judgment and insights earned through experience are superior to surface-level content that can be found anywhere. Human experience is a key ingredient of high-value content.”
Content that only repeats widely available facts now has a weaker claim on attention because AI can make that same baseline information easier to reach. The stronger opportunity is content built from what a person notices, tests, prefers, questions, compares, and learns through use. That is where experience becomes editorial value, not as a decorative personal angle but as the part of the page that changes what the reader understands.
- Facts explain commonly known information.
- Experience explains what it means to a human.
- What it means turns information into guidance.
- Guidance is the value-add that makes a web page worth visiting.
What this means for SEO is that these kinds of considerations can be used for evaluating content and identifying reasons why it’s not being indexed, why it’s underperforming in search. And I know that for beginners a step-by-step approach feels useful but in real-life, optimizing for search engines, a checklist approach to optimizing only gets you to a shallow level of content and not to the higher standards necessary to stand out.
Listen to Search Off The Record here:
Featured Image by Shutterstock/ra2 studio
