With Microsoft adding AI-powered search to Bing and Edge, the online world could change quickly, in the coming months. If you depend on search traffic for your blog, are you ready to do things differently?
AI Search Tools
Recently, Microsoft officially announced that a new, interactive chat feature would be added to Microsoft Bing and Edge, to help with search questions.
If people can get answers on the spot, what will happen to our blogs? Will anyone click the links, and visit our blogs for more details? Or, will most people accept the Bing answer, and not dig any deeper?
You can see a demo of the new Bing search capability, in the video below, starting about the 21:00 mark. The presenter is Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer.
Bing Chat Search Demo
And here’s another demo of the new Bing search, by iJustine, starting at the 1:45 minute, when she looks for snowboarding information.
I like the annotations that Bing adds to the chat results, and I hope that most people will click those!
Unfortunately, some people will just skim those answers, or copy and paste them into a school essay, or other places. Teachers will have a whole new set of challenges ahead, just like we bloggers will face.
Turning a Train Around
Like thousands of other people, I’ve been experimenting with the new AI tools, and wondering how to prepare for the changes they will bring. Changing direction in a business can be a tough challenge, even for a small business like mine!
Thinking about “turning things around” reminded me of the steam train turnaround that we visited on a fall vacation, back in 2009.
We were staying in Ottawa, and took a day trip to the nearby town of Wakefield Quebec. The town had a train turntable, where a steam engine was spun around – not by machines, but by four people.
And no, these weren’t muscle-bound bodybuilders, or 7-foot-tall superhumans. They were just regulars folks, using a simple, but effective, system!
Video: Turning the Steam Train
Sadly, this popular tourist train service, Gatineau–Chelsea–Wakefield Steam Train, ended operations in June 2011, so you can’t go and see the train turntable for yourself.
But, if you watch this video that I recorded, maybe you’ll be inspired by it, like I was!
- The train turners knew the train was coming, so they were prepared to turn it around, and they got the job done.
- It took some effort, and as one bystander shouted at the end, they “put some shoulder into it!”.
- And it’s nice to get a little bit of applause when the turnaround is finished!
P.S. Don’t be like the guy who’s lying on the ground around the 1:35 mark He’s not ready to turn things around 
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Are You Ready to Pivot and Turn Things Around
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