Google Bard and its chat-based search features that have yet to be seen in the wild may have their unique way of sending publishers traffic, unique from Bing’s AI Chat feature. According to some Twitter coverage of his talk, Gary Illyes from Google said this at PubCon yesterday.

We’ve seen how Bing uses citations and, on mouse-over of a chat-based sentence, also has overlay hyperlinks to the publisher. Here is a screenshot:

But how will this look and work in Google Bard or Google’s chat assistant? That is yet to be seen.

Gary Illyes reported said that Google may have its own approach to sending traffic to publishers. Gary also said they want to keep the status quo of sending traffic to publishers.

Here is that tweet:

The Bing chat has one way of funneling traffic to the sources. Google might have another way. But they want to keep the status quo of sending traffic to publishers. (again, @methode‘s personal opinion) #pubcon

— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) February 27, 2023

I am excited to see what this looks like, for better or worse…

Forum discussion at Twitter.