Google Bard adds genuine citations in responses

January 2, 2024 130 Views

Google released an update today that is better at summarizing information and identifying sources for its answers

I’m not aware of that specific update, but Google frequently updates its search algorithms and features to improve its ability to provide accurate and relevant information. It’s common for search engines to continuously evolve and enhance their capabilities, including better summarization and source identification. If this update has been released, it would likely be part of Google’s ongoing efforts to improve the quality of its search results.Google Bard Now Shows Citations Like Bing Chat

Citations improved.

Google Bard now shows sources with numbers, like true citations, next to the responses. You can click on the numbers to see the source of that information. “Bard can now help you identify which parts of a response match a source. For the responses with sources, you’ll see numbers alongside the response. By clicking on the numbers, you will now be able to identify the section of the text that matches the source and easily navigate to it.,” Google posted in the Bard changelog.

Here is a screenshot from Jack Krawczyk showing the numbers on the left side, with a “learn more” link below.Google Bard Now Shows Citations Like Bing Chat

Concise summaries.

Google Bard Now Shows Citations Like Bing Chat,That’s great to hear! It’s always beneficial when search engines like Google improve their ability to provide concise and accurate summaries of information. This can be particularly helpful for users who want to quickly grasp the main points of a topic. It’s good to see that Google is continuing to enhance its language models to better serve its users.

Why do we care?

Citations and the overall web ecosystem. Google is trying to address some of that with this update to offer more links in the Bing Chat responses. Also, better summarizations with improvements to the LLMs Google has are useful and exciting to see, especially over time.

Postscript.

I found a few examples of citations; they are hard to find, and they are not as good as Bing Chat just yet. Here is one example, and the page Bard links to has not existed in over a year, according to the Wayback Machine.