Search engines have been effectively providing users with the information they need, but now chatbots have emerged as a viable option for answering a wide range of queries. Are these technologies identical or do they have distinct differences? The advent of ChatGPT has complicated these questions, but as the chatbot market continues to grow, the differences between chatbots and search engines become more pronounced. Is this a lasting rivalry or is it a dead-end?

Search engines, when posed with a question provide a wide range of answers. For a person who is looking for different angles of an issue, this would be of immense help. What if one needs specific answer to a question? Chatbots are the ones you need. Technically speaking, the range of memory is the major difference between them. While chatbots hold data for a long period of time, search engines have short-term memory. This explains why chatbot replies are more personalized and specific. Chatbots analyze the question based on the entire historic data pertaining to the question while the search engine looks for only the previous searches. Search engines, which traditionally use crawlers, of late has got advanced providing more relatable and context-specific suggestions. On the other hand, chatbots which depend on AI neural networks, NLP, audio, video and media processing to interact with users.

They are way different from each other yet have complementary functions, ie., they can work together. Chatbots are function specific while search engines have a wide range of indexed information. Therefore, when clubbed together, they provide a better information circulation environment to address customers’ needs quickly and efficiently. Everyday examples of this integrated technology include home automation, smart cars, and IoT.