Google Continues to Backpedal from AI Overview - Is Reddit to Blame?

Google Continues to Backpedal from AI Overview - Is Reddit to Blame?

When Google began displaying AI summaries in its search results in May, the company immediately received backlash. It instructed people to add glue to their pizza and claimed that adding cooking oil to a grease fire would help extinguish it.

A week after its introduction, Google had already reduced the prevalence of AI summaries from 27% to 11% of its search results.

According to a new report from Search Engine Land (via Android Police) using data from SEO firm BrightEdge, this number is even lower, and Google has nearly eliminated submissions from sources like Reddit and Quora

The feature was designed to leverage AI tools to provide summaries of information and help users find relevant information faster.

BrightEdge data shows that certain categories of queries, such as education, entertainment, and e-commerce, saw the most decreases. As an example, entertainment searches decreased from 14% to 0%, while education queries decreased from 26% to 13%. In other words, only 13% of education searches feature an AI overview.

E-commerce searches similarly declined from 26% to 9%. This may be due in part to Google's removal of the product viewer, carousel, and product comparison table from the AI overview.

Information that is more relevant to the user is what triggers AI overviews; phrases beginning with Best “,” What is “,” How to “,” Symptoms of “,” are more likely to trigger an overview. However, searches related to brand names, general products, or lifestyle content appear to receive no or infrequent AI overviews.

It is unclear how much of the Internet Google was scraping when it launched its AI Overview service, but it is clear that it should never have pulled from sites like Reddit and Quora, which are known for their troll-level answers to the most serious questions is clear.

This means that fewer user-generated suggestions will appear, roughly 85.71% and 99.69% less for information from Reddit and Quora, respectively.

In addition, the BrightEdge data claims that AI overviews appear to occupy 13% less area on search pages. Google also tries to prevent duplication of data by not citing the same sources in the AI overview as the search results below it.

Google has not given up on the AI overview entirely. Whether it will join other actually useful programs in Google's product graveyard (the RIP Podcasts app) remains to be seen.

As a reminder, you can block AI Overviews by changing Google's settings.

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