SEO News You Can Use: Google Officially Launches Gemini AI Model

On December 06, 2023, Google finally announced Gemini, the “most capable and general model we’ve ever built.“

The model is split into different sizes, making it flexible enough for any type of task and developer:

• Gemini Ultra: The largest, most advanced model designed for highly complex tasks.
• Gemini Pro: Google’s best model for scaling in a broad range of tasks.
• Gemini Nano: This version is optimized to execute on-device activities efficiently, such as Google’s Pixel 8 phones.

Alongside its sophisticated reasoning, Gemini’s multimodal capabilities allow it to understand texts, images, audio and other formats “at the same time,” making it on par with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.

Gemini Pro now also powers Bard, with Gemini Ultra expected to power an advanced version of Bard next year.

Other notable features of Gemini include:

• Advanced coding: Gemini can “understand, explain and generate high-quality code” in Java, C++, Python and Go languages.
• Safety features: Guided by Google’s AI principles, the company claims Gemini’s multimodal capabilities are safer and responsible.
• Scalable and more efficient: Gemini runs on Google’s proprietary Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), allowing for faster, more efficient release of Gemini-powered offerings.

“This new era of models represents one of the biggest science and engineering efforts we’ve undertaken as a company,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet.

We expect Google to leverage Gemini for its other services in the following months, especially Search Generative Experience and Bard.

Read Google’s full blog here.

More SEO News You Can Use

End of an Era? Google Drops Mobile Search Tools: After “nearly ten years” since its release, the search engine company is now “sunsetting Search Console’s Mobile Usability report, Mobile-Friendly Test tool and Mobile-Friendly Test API,” said Google in its post on Twitter (now known as X). Does this mean mobile devices are not that important anymore? The answer is no, says Google. In its updated help documentation, the company is now pointing you towards more “robust resources” like Lighthouse to test your website’s mobile-friendliness.

Google Tests Paid and Organic Line Separator: If you’re among the many people confused with organic and paid results, this should be good news. Twitter user Khushal Bherwani spotted Google testing a line separator to keep paid results clearly separated from organic ones. While this is not yet seen across many users, this test means Google is preparing for a more dynamic search engine results page (SERP) experience, thanks to recent upgrades in the Search Generative Experience (SGE). We’ve discussed some of these upgrades here, here and here.

SGE Tries Image-Based Searching: This looks like another busy week for Google as they plug Gemini into some of its most-used services. This time, while not found in every SERP, the company is also testing a multimodal way of searching, enabling you to use SGE with images. Twitter user Brian Freisleben spotted this test run, showing screenshots of the Google Lens icon that can be used with a text query, enabling a more holistic and dynamic search experience for users. Check out this article from Search Engine Roundtable for the full story.

Video Must Be Main Content for Google’s Video Mode: Google has updated its Video mode search to show only pages where video is the primary content. This means “clicking a result in Video mode will only take users to a page where the video is the main content,” Google said in its announcement. But what qualifies as main content in video mode? Google said the video should be “above the fold, it’s prominent, and the main purpose of the page is to watch that video.” Sounds like a YouTube page, right? But what about other pages with videos on them? Suppose it’s a blog post with text as primary content, a product page with complementary video or a video category listing many videos in equal prominence. In that case, these pages won’t appear in Video mode. Read this Google article for more information.

Bing Introduces Deep Search: Google is not the only one enhancing its search experience, as Bing introduced Deep Search on December 5, 2023. This new feature “provides even more relevant and comprehensive answers to the most complex search queries,” said Bing in its announcement. However, you should only rely on Deep Search with complex, highly technical questions. Bing CEO Mikhail Parakhin said in a Twitter thread that Deep Search “Will be very slow,” like instructing a search engine to do the research work for you and then “pinging” you when it’s done. So, if you have specific questions in mind, why not try Bing’s Deep Search today?

Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.