With the introduction of ChatGPT and other similar AI-powered chatbots, the future of traditional search engines as we know them could look very different in a few years.

Over the past decades, traditional search engines have evolved from open directories (DMOZ, open directory project) to today’s web crawler based search engines such as Google.com, Bing.com and Baidu.com, each crawling and indexing millions of content across the internet and with the ability to serve relevant content and answers designed to please web-users across the Globe regardless of time, place and or device.

With the recent introduction of ChatGPT supported by the Open AI project and Microsoft, a new technology has been made available to the public and made conversational AI accessible – a technology that many experts will enable search engines to advance to a new level and possibly become the industry’s next big disrupter.

Since the rise of today’s search engine giant Google during the late 90s and early 00s, Microsoft has been trailing the industry’s leader, but with the emergence of ChatGPT, Microsoft is preparing to be integrating some of the machine learning techniques behind it into its Bing search queries. Based on industry insights provided by The Information Reports, Microsoft hopes to launch the new feature before the end of March in a bid to make Bing more competitive with Google.

Microsoft is betting that the more conversational and contextual replies provided by ChatGPT to users’ queries will improve the overall quality of its search index and win over search users by supplying better-quality answers beyond links.