As you may know, we’ve been working on creating AI search engines for our brands, making it easier for our users to access the information they need, right away. 

Robin Booth, Managing Director of our ‘CONE’ division, spoke about this at the recent News Rewired conference in London, talking about what we’ve learned from this process. 

When considering how to apply AI to our publications, Robin took inspiration from Steve Jobs. “One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology,” Jobs said when responding to a pointed question at Apple’s 1997 Worldwide Developers Conference.  

Robin then explained to the audience of like-minded publishers that a quick win for Nursing Times has been to improve content discovery and recirculation. In the past, publishers relied on related content boxes driven by internal tags and on-site search, which few publishers love and few visitors use. “We were only surfacing a little bit of our content,” he said. 

A premium service, our new Ask Nursing Times feature has been mapped to our business model, so anonymous users can see the questions but not ask any of their own. Registered users can ask up to five questions, and subscribers can ask unlimited questions.  

“We are using AI to make Nursing Times a destination site,” Robin explained. “Why ask Dr. Google when you can come to the Nursing Times? You can open up a direct relationship with your content and can stand out.” 

AI is becoming a big aspect of our daily lives and it’s important that we’re able to evolve and adapt alongside it. We now have two brands, Nursing Times and Local Government Chronicle, that both have the new AI search feature, with multiple other brands currently in the works. 

The full talk from Robin at News Rewired was covered by PugPig, you can read their article in the button below.