AI chat must stop sourcing Bing search results
I find more and more fascinating answers as I explore the new Microsoft BingAI with ChatGPT. Bing Chat is one example of this. It sources the answer to a question I ask it. Yes, Bing chat can list bing.com in its search results as a citation.
In a sense, the AI has become the journalists on some level.
This must stop, and it should stop with Bing Chat.
Examples. Example. This search experience is circular, and it sends searchers back towards the search results in an order that may confuse the searcher.
This is a screencast that I created of it in action.
Now I tried it again for another query where bing.com was also listed in the citations:
However, Bing included in the answer box the Bing Search News Box. This is useful, but why link to more Bing search results?
Glenn Gabe also saw examples of this yesterday. He said that Bing leading to more Bing results instead of leading to authoritative medical/health sites was not a good idea.
Contrary to Google’s guidelines. Google has always stated that search engines should not index or rank internal search result pages. The Google webmaster guidelines, reworked to search essential, contained a line that read: “Use robots.txt on your web server to manage crawling budget and prevent crawling of infinities such as search results pages.”
I don’t know if Bings webmaster guidelines recommend that you don’t let Bing index internal search results pages. I haven’t seen this mentioned. In any event, Bing Chat shouldn’t source Bing Search for its answers. This is especially true if those Bing search results only link to other publishers it can list within the Bing Chat answers.
Why we care. Bing AI Chat is still in its infancy. I am sure it will evolve over time. Bing needs to listen to our feedback in order for Bing chat to be improved. Not only for the searcher, which is their top concern, but for the entire ecosystem.
The post Bing AI Chat Needs to Stop Sourcing the Bing Search Results originally appeared on Search Engine Land.