SearchResearch (6/20/26): Celebrating AI search / Specialty search tools

It's easy to complain...

P/C DS Studio at Pexels.com 

... about the quality of AI-powered search tools.  (I've done my fair share!) But when you're searching for something that's fairly difficult, I've often found the answers to be incredibly helpful, especially when the research question is vague or difficult.  They really help you find the right puzzle piece, even in a massive soup of pieces that all look pretty-much the same. 

As you know, this blog is about trying to give you tips and methods to be better at your online research.  But it's also about the best ways to think about what our online research tools are doing.  In other words, what's the most effective mental model you can have. 

If you think about Google as a database search, that's the wrong mental model.  A database search implies that the query will find every thing that matches.  If your query is something like "magic trick" then I'd expect the database to give me back a complete and accurate list of all the hits.  Those are key ideas: "accurate" and "complete." 

But that's not the way any search engine works. Instead of database records, a search engine indexes all kinds of documents--text files, Word documents, PDFs, videos, spreadsheets, images, etc etc etc.  Your search engine finds the most probable hits and then rank orders them by what it thinks is best.  Usually, that means sorting the hits by relevancy.  (What makes something relevant is a topic of long debate and discussion, quickly approaching the zenith of technical discussion.  Here's an article with more details, should you wish to learn more.)  

With the additional AI overviews, the search engines now have another tool that tries to answer your question.  A good old-fashioned Google query (short and to the point) isn't as helpful to the AI as an extended question: for AI questions, longer (with more detail) is often better.  

My point is that people often complain about the changes to search engines.  You're right to complain about inaccuracies and errors, but it's also worth taking a moment to celebrate how truly magical some of the AI-augmented search experience really is.  

There's been a huge improvement in finding difficult-to-find things.  

When I needed some quark (a kind of a fresh, unaged, and spreadable dairy product from Central Europe; halfway between yogurt and cream cheese) for a recipe I'm making, I just asked and got a truly helpful response: 

These are really decent suggestions, although there are a couple of errors. Kalinka isn't at that address anymore and neither is the Slavic Shop at that address. But they're both plausible places to buy quark. (And it was simple to find their current addresses with a quick Google search.)  

Best of all, the answer suggests contacting the stores via their online stock-checker. That just saved me several pointless trips.  And this was an incredibly useful suggestion--I didn't KNOW you could do online stock checking!  

My point is that this was a useful AI-augmented result.  It didn't quite give me the answer, but it told me useful information that I could carry foward to get to the answer.  

As members of the SearchResearch Rancho have noted, it's often true that just putting in old SRS challenges works pretty well.  Current AI search technology just answers them. 

For instance, if you remember the Carolina Parakeet Challenge (find an image drawn from life), copy-pasting the Challenge with the default current Google search gives more-or-less the same answer that we worked out by hand.  

Other AI engines also do pretty well.  Here's Claude's lovely answer… 

But wait, there's more!  Specialty Search Tools!

You might have also noticed that there are an increasing number of other kinds of search engines.  We've talked before about music identification systems.  But there are more: like Shazam for music, or Starwalk2 for things in the night sky, or Vinvino for wine identification. 

I want to mention another special-purpose search app that I've been using recently.  

Merlin Bird ID is incredibly accurate—with roughly 98% accuracy for photo identification and 70-80% for sound recognition. Developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it relies on massive, crowdsourced databases to deliver reliable results in your immediate area.  

Identifiying birds just by their songs requires human verification.  A part of good search practice is double checking.  For instance, there's the problem of the Northern Mockingbird, which imitates other species (hence, "mocking bird").  Merlin will often identify the mockingbird as the original bird... that is, the one being mocked.  Ah well.  (Pro tip: Listen for consistency: If Merlin flags an unusual bird but you only hear a split-second snippet of it once, it is likely a misidentification. If the song repeats continuously, it's generally accurate.)  

AND, when Merlin hears a bird, it will show a picture of that bird and give you additional spotting information.  (Such as "look in the top branches of a nearby tree; they love to perch there...")  

Here's an example from this morning's birds: 

The Merlin Bird ID interface.

When Merlin hears a particular birdsong, it will highlight that bird in the list (or add it to your list if it hasn't heard it yet today).  That way you can quickly learn which bit of bird song you're hearing is actually that bird.  

SearchResearch Lessons 

1. AI search engines sometimes make mistakes... but they're often useful.  For what it's worth, *I* sometimes make mistakes as well.  Learn from the errors and try to figure out what happens, why, and how to work around the issue.  (Big tip:  CHECK EVERYTHING!)  

2. What used to be hard SearchResearch Challenges are now (mostly) straightforward.  This is a huge shift! And I'm celebrating the increase in our ability to find the answers to complex questions.  And, as always, be sure you understand the answer.

3. Consider other kinds of special purpose search tools. There are a large number of speciality search tools.  It's good to learn which ones are useful for the tasks you do.  (I'll try to collect a list of them in a future post. It will go out of date quickly, but it will show us the range of possibilities!)  

And... 

        ... keep searching.  

Changes to Google search post I/O -- don't panic about it

 The only constant is change

"the only constant is change" as a math-y expression, where 
k represents a constant, which is equated the delta symbol
representing change

After the latest Google I/O conference, it’s no surprise to learn that the Google search experience is changing too.  But I’m not sure the changes are quite as Earth-shattering as some people are making it out to be.  

I’m seeing lots of slightly panicked posts about how Google results are going to be all AI all-the-time.  My advice: relax.

What Google did announce at I/O 2026 is a much more AI-forward Search experience: that’s not the same as trashing the organic results. But Google’s own I/O post explicitly says: “You’ll continue to get a range of results from Search, just like you do today.” The new AI search box still returns a range of results, and the AI Search flow includes links to learn more.

Here’s the important distinction that people are over-reacting to:

Standard Search / SERP: organic results are not being removed.  AI Overviews appear when Google thinks they add value, and Google still describes them as part of Search with supporting links. Google Search Central says AI Overviews are shown only when “additive to classic Search” and “often don’t trigger.”

AI Mode: this is more conversational and answer-first. People see this and react to it saying it feels much less like the old SERP. It includes AI-generated responses and supporting links, but it is not the same thing as removing organic results from all Google Search.

On the other hand, the ecosystem is changing as well… 

Publisher / SEO implications: organic visibility may decline for many queries because AI Overviews, AI Mode, generative UI, and agents can satisfy more intent before a click. That is a traffic/CTR displacement problem, not a removal of organic listings. Google’s Search Central guidance still tells sites to follow standard SEO fundamentals to appear in both Search and AI features, and says eligible AI-feature links must be indexed and eligible for Google Search with a snippet.

One of the truisms in the web/search/online world is that people hate change.  In fact, they hate on any visible change… for about 2 weeks. By then, whatever changed will now become the new norm.  

That’s obviously not always true, but it happens often enough that people who have been around the block a few times know that you should basically ignore user feedback of the form “I hate this…” for a while.  (That’s especially true if you’ve done the background research and know that the change is actually an improvement in clicks, time-on-task, accuracy, or whatever user behavior you’re trying to improve.)  

At Google I/O this month (May 19 and 20, 2026), some changes to the core Google search experience were announced.  Here’s a summary of what they said: 

The search box now expands with user query length.  (Finally!)  This is a really-good-thing; now you can enter an arbitrarily long query without losing the front part of your query.  

And the search results page now ALWAYS has the AI Overview present.  It also has AI-powered suggestions for more nuanced question expansion.  It also has vastly improved multi-modal search letting you ask with text (the usual), images, files, or videos.  

There’s a plan to smooth over the differences between AI Overviews and AI Mode.  Right now they’re separate, but you can see why (and how) they’ll integrate them together.  

But Don’t Panic!  The blue links are still around, and you can use all the operators that you like.  (Although I can see a day when some of them will be retired.  Stay tuned: I’ll let you know when I find out.)  

Here’s what the SERP looks like today (May 28, 2026): 

(Click to expand)  

Below the query box (which now happily expands as needed), you see (2) the AI Overview.  Notice that if you click on (1), you’ll switch out of regular search into the “AI conversational mode.”  Some people like it, some don’t.  If you don’t trust it or just hate chatting with an AI, don’t click on it.  

Your regular old search results are just below the AI overview… which has been true for a while now.  

SearchResearch Lessons

1. Don’t Panic. This isn’t the last change to Google search, and we’ll survive this one in great shape.  The right attitude (methinks) is one of how can we take advantage of these changes?  

As always, keep searching!