Search Central Live Taipei 2024 Recap: Sessions, Networking Sticker – Plus the Impact of ChatGPT search on SEO Traffic

What is Search Central Live Taipei?

• Search Central Live Taipei¹ is an annual flagship event hosted by the Google Search Central team, designed to share the latest search technologies, best practices, and trends with website managers, digital marketers, and developers. The event was first held in Taipei in 2023, and this year (2024) marks its second edition², hosted at the Multi-Functional Exhibition Hall on the 2nd floor of Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. The organizing team, comprising Google Search experts from Singapore, Switzerland, and Taiwan, ensures that the event covers diverse and rich content, including topics such as AI and search functionality, localization and internationalization, and video SEO.
  
• Organizing Team: This consists of Google Search experts from Singapore, Switzerland, and Taiwan, providing a diverse range of topics and insights.
  
• Event Highlights: Keynote sessions, interactive discussions, and networking opportunities, offering participants a chance to delve into Google’s latest developments in search and foster connections among industry professionals.

While this event mainly focused on SEO, the recent updates and developments in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity within the industry have sparked additional discussions on trends in SEO and search behavior. These tools are transforming website traffic distribution, presenting new challenges in the search ecosystem. This article will not only recap the interactive moments and insights from Search Central Live Taipei 2024 but will also explore the impact of these external AI tools on the SEO landscape.

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Event Experiences and Highlights at Search Central Live Taipei 2024

Networking Sticker Collection Activity

Attendees exchanged stickers, enhancing the networking experience and creating a unique highlight of the event.

This year’s event was not only centered around SEO technical sharing but also emphasized interpersonal interactions and knowledge exchange. The paper-based networking activity — where participants collected stickers in a booklet — encouraged easy and natural interactions, helping people “break the ice” and facilitate exchanges.

The blank pages in the networking booklet resembled a “network map” waiting to be filled with stickers and contacts. Although contact information could be handwritten, it would have been more convenient if each participant’s name and organization were pre-printed. I also manually wrote down my contact details on my laptop, and despite my untidy handwriting, everyone could still recognize my website address and brand name, “Ke2B” (written as 刻刻 in Chinese).

During the second break, I finally had the chance to grab a snack, sharing a table with a former financial industry professional who recently switched to front-end development. We shared experiences, and the conversation extended over two session times, highlighting the value of deep networking.

As someone who has organized community gatherings for years and occasionally attended meetups across different fields, I highly value creating an environment where participants can connect and interact with others. This event was well-designed in that regard, allowing everyone to engage and share information seamlessly.

Recap and Key Insights from Search Central Live Taipei 2024 Sessions

Key Topics and Insights

• In-depth Understanding of Google Search Principles:
  The event highlighted Google’s processing logic in crawling, indexing, and ranking. The Google team explained the factors influencing search result rankings, including simplified and traditional Chinese recognition, regional search behavior studies, and the principles behind these processes, helping participants gain a deeper understanding of Google’s operations and feedback mechanisms.

• Multilingual Website Search Strategies:
  Google shared best practices for managing multilingual websites, particularly in recognizing traditional and simplified Chinese variations and the impact of multilingual domain design (e.g., ccTLD, different domains, or separate sites) on search performance.

• 結構化資料的效益
  座談會上討論了結構化資料的類型和潛在效益，講者強調這無關搜尋排序，是額外的盡量對應適合的呈現方式。

• The Future of SEO:
  The discussion addressed the question of whether SEO is “dead” and its long-term impact on search results, offering the industry interesting reflections on the future of SEO.

Core Web Vitals and the New INP Metric

Google emphasized the role of Core Web Vitals in SEO rankings and introduced the new Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric to evaluate user interaction experience.

The Core Web Vitals (CWV) and the new INP metric³, introduced in the past two years, were clarified during the session.

1. The official speakers specifically mentioned that while CWV’s influence on rankings isn’t significant, they emphasized that Page Experience⁴is still a critical factor.

Google’s core ranking system is designed to reward content that provides a good web experience. Website owners looking to achieve high rankings should consider the overall user experience rather than focusing on individual aspects.`

Understanding page experience in Google Search results

Listening to them discuss this topic left a strong impression. The official representatives used clear and accessible English, making it easy to follow. I found myself instinctively comparing their explanations—often challenged over the years by various perspectives from different industry players—to my own practices.

In the end, their explanations mostly matched what I tell clients, including their understanding of performance metrics. The only difference was that they didn’t stress looking beyond scores to review PSI, Lighthouse, Web.dev, or third-party tools like GTMetrix⁵. These tools provide detailed breakdowns on specific factors, sources of impact, and data for each resource—possibly because SEO and marketing vendors may prefer not to shift focus to these technical details with their clients.

Ke2B Articles on Google CWV and PSI

Extra Segment: AI Tools Impacting the Search Ecosystem

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Extra Segment: AI Tools Impacting the Search Ecosystem

Although Search Central Live didn’t focus on the direct impact of AI tools on search, attendees and speakers shared an underlying sense of awareness about the trend. There’s a subtle yet growing sentiment that Google Search faces challenges from emerging AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. While the recurring question “Is SEO dead?” might appear annually, this time, it underscores real shifts in the traffic ecosystem.

These changes highlight the growing significance of AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity, in diversifying search traffic. With the launch of ChatGPT’s “Search” feature⁶—Introducing ChatGPT search⁷—and the “ChatGPT for Chrome” extension, these AI tools are gradually becoming viable search alternatives, directly altering user behavior and further impacting Google’s search ecosystem.

For instance, some tasks, like finding café options or planning lazy itineraries with specific requirements, often lead to suboptimal suggestions on AI tools like ChatGPT, which may still lack the level of refinement that Google holds.

Recent updates on ChatGPT, incorporating Perplexity’s strengths, now provide better reference sources and validated queries. However, in my experience, it still falls short of Google’s level of contextual accuracy and effectiveness.

Demonstration of ChatGPT search’s Influence on Search Behavior and Traffic

AI tools, including ChatGPT search, are now more than just endless text generators. The latest versions integrate multiple data sources and allow users to directly access original content pages.

This evolution transforms search behavior from “navigating through search engine result pages (SERPs) to find relevant links” to “AI tools providing direct answers and links,” potentially posing a new challenge for SEO traffic.

The images below illustrate the current implementation of ChatGPT search, demonstrating how it interacts within the traffic ecosystem.

1. The 1st image provides a test prompt for ChatGPT search and includes a brief explanation of its search capabilities and extension features, offering a clearer understanding of its goals and mechanisms.
   
   
2. The 2nd image shows that ChatGPT highlights how its new features impact the traffic ecosystem. Traditional search engines provide multiple links that users click to access details, driving website traffic. In contrast, ChatGPT search offers direct answers within its interface, reducing the need for external site visits and potentially impacting website visibility. ChatGPT’s suggestion (and I’ll admit, quoting “from ChatGPT” is a bit tongue-in-cheek): “Bloggers might optimize content for AI model references and explore other traffic sources, like social media or email marketing, to reduce reliance on a single source.”
   
   
3. The 3rd image shows The source mechanism of ChatGPT search doesn’t rely on Google or specific search engines for data; instead, it uses its internal “default process,” which functions similarly to a web crawler. This indicates that its responses are not directly sourced from a particular search engine but rather from its built-in data processing.
   
   
4. The 4th image shows that ChatGPT search displays source links with basic OG (Open Graph) information for each item, making them clickable. However, unlike traditional search engines that emphasize link clicks, these links lack prominent click prompts, which may reduce user engagement in clicking external sites.

After all…

I pay for AI to get more lazy-friendly, direct, and efficient results without spending extra time going through sources.

Except for cases like retrieving reference materials, integrating applications, or for SEO professionals and anyone who wants to prove they are a source recognized by AI tools for information queries and content generation.

The Impact of ChatGPT’s Enhanced AI Search Feature and Chrome Extension

As tools like ChatGPT offer more convenient search options, website owners need to rethink how to maintain visibility and traffic in this rapidly evolving search ecosystem.

This is especially crucial for sites that heavily rely on visitor counts and traffic metrics!

Pros

• Provides direct sources, enabling quick access to information.
• Enhances search experience with source pop-ups, making the query process more transparent.
• The Chrome extension makes searching smoother and more convenient.

Cons

• Reduces traffic from Google Search, impacting websites that rely on organic traffic.
• Cannot fully redirect users to the original website, leading to a decrease in website visitors.

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Conclusion

The Search Central Live Taipei 2024 event was well-organized, with Google’s own staff carefully selecting topics, simplifying complex knowledge, and sharing behind-the-scenes insights. The support teams—covering photography, refreshments, check-in, and giveaways—were all professional. My friend, who needed English interpretation, used an interpreter device and captured slides on his phone while taking notes.

Biggest downside: No event Wi-Fi.

This was announced in advance, and the public Wi-Fi at the venue didn’t work. Staff and attendees resorted to personal hotspots, creating a long list of unique hotspot names.

This self-hosted, free event by Google is different from large-scale conferences that rely on sponsors, budget allocations, and participant fees. I’ll admit, during the first hour, I couldn’t help but compare it to my experience co-organizing the three-day WordCamp Asia 2024 and other major conferences.

Unexpected Highlight of the Event

Whether as an attendee or an organizer, this was a rare occasion where I got a high-quality event photo right on the spot! The process was simple: scan a QR code to upload to the platform (I quickly did some portrait editing in Google Photos), choose from three frame options, download the file, and receive a printed photo with a protective sleeve—all taken with our own phones and assisted by dedicated staff.

The process was friendly, fun, and convenient, and the results were fantastic. My honest reaction: this was truly awesome!

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FAQs

1. 什麼是 Search Central Live Taipei？由誰主辦？

   Search Central Live Taipei 是由 Google 搜尋中心團隊主辦的年度活動，旨在與網站管理者、數位行銷專家和開發者分享最新的搜尋技術、最佳實踐和趨勢。

2. ChatGPT 的「ChatGPT search」功能會直接影響網站流量嗎？

   是的，ChatGPT 的「ChatGPT search」功能讓使用者可在平台上查詢並查看資料來源，無需進入原始網站，對依賴自然流量的網站會有潛在影響。

3. 我需要使用 ChatGPT 的 Chrome 擴充元件嗎？

   若常需在搜尋過程中快速收集資料或與 ChatGPT 互動，可考慮使用 Chrome 擴充元件來增強效率。

4. 部落客應如何應對 ChatGPT 等 AI 工具的流量影響？

   部落客可以考慮多元化流量來源，如社群平台和電子郵件行銷，並優化內容使其更適合被 AI 引用。

5. ChatGPT 的 AI 功能是否取代 Google 搜尋引擎？

   ChatGPT 的 AI 功能雖提供便捷性，但尚未完全取代 Google 搜尋，Google 依然在搜尋結果的全面性上具優勢。

References

1. Traditional Chinese Blog: Search Central Live Taipei 2023 | Google Search Central Blog | Google for Developers ↩︎
2. Search Central Live Taipei 2024 ↩︎
3. Introducing INP to Core Web Vitals ↩︎
4. Understanding page experience in Google Search results ↩︎
5. 11.1 Tools to measure Core Web Vitals powered by Google ↩︎
6. OpenAI發表具備即時搜尋能力的ChatGPT | iThome ↩︎
7. Introducing ChatGPT search | OpenAI ↩︎