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points by Terr_ 5 days ago | 0 comments

> asking Google to maintain a non-AI search engine is like

...is like asking your company to maintain its SQL database instead of shoving everything into a document the LLM reads and suggests edits to.

Even if you're using an LLM to talk to the user, there still needs to be some kind of deterministic search engine back there in order to do things well, or to answer any kind of question that involves information newer than X months ago.

[–] brainwad 4 days ago

There needs to be retrieval, but ranking can be fully offloaded to LLMs and they would probably do better. Legacy search engines do both parts, and their ranking is highly gameable judging by how SEOed they are.

[–] Terr_ 4 days ago

> ranking can be fully offloaded to LLMs

If someone searches for "mexican food" you require ranking anyway because you aren't going to load those ten bazillion hits into the LLM first.

[–] brainwad 4 days ago

Spoiler: regular search ranking doesn't see very many results, either. I mean, have you seen the results for a crowded query like this? They are trash.

[–] Terr_ 4 days ago

Yeah yeah, search is hard and gets adversarial, we already knew that.

What's missing here is your imagined alternative: What exactly are trying to propose where Google can ditch having a search engine, and why do you believe it work well instead of badly?

[–] brainwad 4 days ago

Well, for some factual queries it can just know the answer inherently. Plus you can provide it all the curated data feeds that currently back first party results. But most of all, if there's no simple ranking signals to game, then SEO gets a lot harder.