Microsoft and Cloudflare have recently introduced NLWeb and AutoRAG, technologies designed to make websites more “friendly” to AI. According to a report from TechRadar, this move could shift internet traffic from Google to Bing and Copilot.
NLWeb is a new standard from Microsoft that allows websites to have specific endpoints for natural language queries. For example, users can simply type /ask on the site and write a question, and the answer will appear without having to click through multiple pages.
Meanwhile, AutoRAG is a service from Cloudflare that automatically indexes site content, converts it into a format accessible to AI, and updates it regularly. This way, site owners do not need to build their own vector and pipeline systems.
When combined, NLWeb becomes the “language” used for Q&A, while AutoRAG becomes the infrastructure that manages the data. Interestingly, this system can also serve requests from AI agents like ChatGPT, not just humans.
For Google, this is clearly a threat. Their search engine has relied on the crawling, indexing, and ranking process, while NLWeb + AutoRAG completely bypasses that process.
However, there are risks as well. Direct AI answers can reduce visits to smaller sites, reducing their revenue, and sometimes the answers may be biased or inaccurate because the language is generated by AI rather than directly by humans.
Regardless, the search engine era seems to be changing sooner or later. No longer just typing keywords and selecting links, but getting answers directly from AI. This change has already begun, with Google itself implementing features like AI Overview and AI Mode, although currently still combined with conventional search. Are you in favor of this change or not?
