A report based on independently verified accounts notes that Apple’s Safari 18 will come with a Smart Search feature that summarizes web pages in response to search queries and may have a new feature called Web Eraser that allows users to permanently remove text, images, ads from web pages.
The disruptive potential of Apple AI Search
Apple has been collecting website data for years through its Internet robot, which uses the Applebot user agent. The collected data has in the past been used in the context of Siri and Apple’s Spotlight Suggestions feature.
Many in the search community were aware of Applebot and welcomed the prospect of a new search engine from Apple, but despite constant crawling, Apple has not released a search engine. The reason Apple hasn’t released a standalone search engine may be that it’s become clear that the best way to challenge Google Search is with technology that completely replaces search engines, much like how the Apple iPhone made digital cameras obsolete .
The latest news about Safari 18 seems to confirm that displacing Google is the strategy Apple is pursuing.
Jeff Ferguson, partner at Amplitude Digital and assistant professor of advanced digital marketing at UCLA, noted:
“No wonder Apple didn’t bother to launch its own search engine. They’re just about to kill the search engine concept altogether.”
The approach Apple is taking has the potential to disrupt not only search engines, but also the search optimization and publishing industries, which have been waiting years for an Apple search engine. But the extent of this disruption depends on how Apple implements their AI web search aggregator.
Web page summarization
While the news reports did not provide details on how the new summaries of search results will be displayed, it seems reasonable to speculate that Apple will provide attribution in the form of a link to websites so that users can click through to the website.
Here’s what was reported:
“With the release of Safari 18, Apple is expected to introduce article summarization via a new Smart Search feature — meaning users will have the option to generate a brief summary of any web page currently on the screen.
Apple’s built-in AI software can analyze the keywords and phrases in a web page or document and generate a short summary containing only the most important information.
SEOs have been giddy at the prospect of an Apple search engine for years. Now it looks like the Google Killer they’re waiting for may result in less search traffic, but to what extent is impossible to say at this stage.
One search marketing expert reasoned in a private chat that if Intelligent Search aggregates more than it links, then it could be a signal that it’s time to start selling off the domain names they’ve invested in.
Device processing
An interesting feature of the text summary is that the technology that creates the summary (called Ajax) resides on the mobile device itself. What Ajax does is extract keywords, objects, and use the data to identify the topic and loose summary of a web page, which is then turned into a text summary for the user.
Here’s how the functionality is described:
“When analyzing texts, the software takes into account all available relevant information. It can recognize and classify objects such as companies, people and locations. For example, if a name appears at the top of a text, the software will probably recognize the name as belonging to the author of the text.
Apple also plans Web Eraser
As if Apple’s search aggregator isn’t bad enough, Apple reportedly has a “Web Eraser” functionality planned for Safari. Web Eraser is a feature that removes content from web pages so that site visitors no longer have to view it. Things like ads, videos, comments, reading suggestions, and maybe even pop-ups can be permanently blocked by Web Eraser. Once a user “deletes” a block of content from a web page, that block remains deleted for the site visitor on subsequent visits.
According to a report on Apple Web Eraser:
“The feature is expected to build on existing privacy features in Safari and will allow users to delete unwanted content from any web page of their choice.” Users will have the option to delete banner ads, images, text, or even entire sections of pages, all with relative ease.
Technological disruptions
It’s a natural reaction to feel anxious about change. For many, the dawn of AI Search is their first experience of major change. But for those of us who have been in search for 25+ years, we have experienced and are accustomed to sudden and transformative changes that are changing publishing and SEO. I tend to think that Apple’s implementation of an AI search engine that aggregates websites will be disruptive, but not to the point of harming websites. It is in Apple’s self-interest not to disrupt the Internet to the point of extinction.
Featured image by Shutterstock/frantic00
