A lot of SEOs and webmasters have been buzzing about chatbots, a computer program which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Many are playing with the idea of adding one to their web site to engage with their users in an automated fashion. But it seems Google's John Mueller is not a fan of chatbots on the whole.
John said in the hangout yesterday at the 18:26 mark that "most chatbots I see are really basic and useless so." He added "I don’t think that randomly adding chatbots to the page, makes that page better."
John Mueller explained that it is not good to "artificially keeping people on your web site even though they don’t want to actually buy or convert." So don't add chatbots just because they are chatbots. If they can genuinely help your users, sure - but otherwise nope.
Here is the video embed:
Here is the transcript:
Would you guys appreciate chatbots in the future? To kind of keep the users more? To help kind of. Is that something you guys want to see in the future?I don’t know, most chatbots I see are really basic and useless so. I wouldn’t try to artificially change these metrics because you are just kind of short selling yourself by artificially keeping people on your web site even though they don’t want to actually buy or convert. Then you are not doing anyone a favor.
If you can add value by having a chatbot there and if you know users have questions that you can’t answer proactively with your content then maybe that is an option. Maybe there are certain strategies that you can use to kind of show it at the right time, to the right people, but I don’t think that randomly adding chatbots to the page, makes that page better.
Forum discussion at Google+.
