15 percent of hits: Google AI Overview is displayed less and less frequently
Instead of the previous 84 percent, the generated AI answers will now only appear in 15 percent of Google search queries.
(Image: achinthamb/Shutterstock.com)
Absurd and sometimes even dangerous answers, such as sticking cheese on a pizza, as well as the costs of operation have obviously led to Google displaying significantly fewer AI-generated answers in searches. When AI Overviews were introduced, 84 percent of search queries were reportedly answered with AI-generated texts above the regular search results. In the meantime, less than 15 percent of queries are said to receive an AI response.
The AI Overviews were initially called Search Generative Experience (SGE) and for a long time were only available in a test environment, Google Labs, and only in the USA. The name changed at Google I/O and the AI answers went live, but are still not available in the EU. In the USA, people entered their search queries into Google and received some disturbing answers – for example, that you can use glue to attach cheese to pizza – although Google does warn that you should not choose toxic glue.
Another recommendation from the AI Overviews: Stones for breakfast to regulate your mineral balance. There are also countless plain wrong answers, such as that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Google's AI is hallucinating, but is also unable to distinguish between satire and jokes, which led to the glue cheese, for example. Linked was a forum post in which the suggestion was written as a joke.
AI overviews for featured snippets, health topics and question form
The decline in AI responses to 15 percent was noted by the SEO platform BrightEdge. The company has been monitoring and analyzing the SBU and now AI Overviews since they first appeared. They also found that AI Overviews appear significantly more frequently if the answer previously contained a featured snippet, i.e. direct excerpts from websites that Google already displays in the search results. In addition, Google responds more frequently with AI texts if the search query was also asked in a question form, reports Search Engine Land, which was able to access the data from BrightEdge.
It is unlikely that Google will respond with an AI overview if you ask about local topics and if there are particularly many site links, i.e. subpages. Questions about images, videos and even people are again more likely to lead to an AI Overview. One of the topics that is often provided with an AI answer is health – a particularly sensitive topic. Restaurants and travel appear surprisingly rarely in the form of an AI Overview. Yet it is a common and recurring example of all providers that their applications (AI or non-AI) should help with travel planning. Google also emphasized how well search could be used for travel planning in the future, for example when asking which national park is better suited for a trip with a child and dog or more complex questions.
Read also
Microsoft adds generative AI results to Bing search engine
OpenAI tests AI search engine SearchGPT
Update for Google Gemini: 1.5 Flash for free and new version for teenagers
Reddit locks out search engines and AI bots - if they don't pay
Google Group Alphabet benefits from search engine and cloud business
At I/O, Google also repeatedly emphasized that in future Google will do the Googling, i.e. it will already have the right answers before people even search or ask. BrightEdge has established that Google is indeed increasingly suggesting follow-up questions and answers.
However, the fact that Google is initially issuing fewer AI answers overall is most likely due to the costs as well as the errors and known hallucinations of the AI. The operation and each query are computationally intensive, and the marketing of advertising space around the AI Overviews has not yet been tested as with the previous search results – which can lead to Google having less revenue. Advertising is Google's main source of income.
It is also unclear to what extent people find an AI Overview helpful or are more likely to scroll down to get to the search results in link form. Google will certainly evaluate and incorporate this behavior.
(emw)