AI Overviews will roll out to all U.S.-based searchers on Google Search, making AI Overviews available to hundreds of millions of searchers by next week, said Liz Reid, the company's new head of search. announced at Google I/O. AI Overview will be released in more countries soon, and by the end of the year she will be available to over 1 billion users.
Hema Budaraju, Google's senior product director for search generative experiences, said link cards within AI summaries generate higher click-through rates than traditional web search results. However, Google does not analyze impression and click data for his AI overview link in Google Search Console.
In addition to AI Overview, Google is rolling out new Search Labs AI features, including multi-step inference capabilities, planning capabilities, AI-curated search results, and new Google Lens video questions.
What is AI? AI Overview was introduced last May 2023 as part of Search Generative Experience. It remained opted-in within Google Search Labs until Google began testing his AI overview with some users in March 2024.
AI Overview uses generative AI technology powered by Google Gemini to provide answers to your queries. It provides answers in part based on an understanding of the query and content found in topics on the web.
Below is a GIF that shows what AI Overview looks like in Google Search.
Limited queries. You won't see an AI summary for every search. The AI Overview is meant to answer more complex questions that Google believes can add value beyond search results, Budaraju said. Google won't show his AI overview if it doesn't add value to what appears by default in Google search.
Google doesn't say what percentage of queries generate an AI summary. I asked multiple times and was told, “We won't release those numbers.”
I asked if the AI summary only appears when no ads are shown and was told that's not the case. The types of queries that AI Overview displays “have less to do with advertising” and more to do with adding value to search results, Budaraju said. “As before, ads will continue to appear in dedicated slots throughout the page and will be clearly labeled to distinguish between organic and sponsored search results,” Reid wrote.
Google may display AI summaries for health, medical, and financial queries, or YMYL (your money, your life) queries.
A recent study concluded that Google has shown fewer AI summaries since testing began a year ago.In addition, only share Similar data outlining AI appears much less frequently these days.
click sound. We know that when Google launched AI Overview and SGE (by the way, Google said these should be called AI Overview and not SGE, since AI Overview graduated from SGE and Labs), Google I guessed that it would only be launched for queries that don't. Ad performance and revenue are negatively impacted.
Budaraju said the click-through rate for the AI Overview link card is actually higher than the click-through rate for regular web results, similar to what he saw for featured snippets.
AI overview impressions in Search Console. Google will begin reporting AI Overview impressions and clicks in Search Console reports, but will not differentiate between those generated by traditional search and AI Overview. Google will lump them all together, Budaraju said. There is no way to tell if your site was referred to only in his AI overview, if there were impressions only in his AI overview, or if there were clicks only in his AI overview.
This approach is similar to Microsoft's use of Copilot in Bing Search (formerly known as Bing Chat). Bing Webmaster Tools aggregated Copilot impressions and clicks with regular web search clicks. This is how Google handles showing (or hiding) featured snippets in Search Console, even though Google created the filter in 2016 but never made it publicly available.
To me, this feels like Google (and Bing) is hiding something from content creators. The number of clicks and CTR you get from these AI-powered answers may not generate a healthy click-through rate for publishers. I mean, why don't they show that detail?
If your overview of AI is wrong. As with any new technology, problems can arise. I recently saw an AI overview advising people to drink urine to expel kidney stones, but Google removed that answer within his 24 hours. In the past, we've seen examples of how old featured snippets can go wrong.
Searchers can report harmful and inaccurate AI summaries by clicking the three dots at the top of the AI summaries. AI Overview results may improve over time and display fewer inaccuracies, similar to what we saw with Featured Snippets when it was first released.
opt out. Because AI Overview is a search feature, the only way to opt out of having your site appear in AI Overview is to use the regular search controls. This means completely blocking your site from appearing in Google Search, whether through robots.txt, meta tag controls, or other means.
Google has added help documentation explaining how to prevent content from appearing in the AI overview. Google writes: “AI Overview provides previews of topics and queries based on a variety of sources, including web sources. As such, these are subject to search preview controls.”
Currently, searchers have no way to opt out of these AI summaries.
Featured snippets. Featured snippets will not be deprecated. These new AI summaries will still show up in search results. Some believe that AI Overview will replace Featured Snippets, but for now, Google has announced that Featured Snippets will continue to appear in Google search results.
advertisement. Google Ads will host a Google Marketing Live (GML) event on May 21st. I'm sure many ad-based features will be announced at that time (see here for more information on GML).
“Innovating and improving the user experience in search has historically created new opportunities for advertisers. We saw this when we successfully moved from desktop to mobile,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine. told Land. Google also believes that “using generative AI to help people and expand the types of questions they can ask in search to meet new intents will help ads and also open up new opportunities for businesses to connect with their customers.” ”.
Google also says, “People find ads above or below AI Overview helpful. We also continue to experiment with new ad formats, such as adding search and shopping ads to AI Overview search results.” ”
why do we care? Like it or not, AI Overview is rolling out to search users in the US this week and in more countries later this year. Will it always be perfect? No, but this is the next evolution of Google Search.
Google has been testing them for the past year and announced that they have processed billions of queries using generative AI. The company claims that AI summaries encourage people to click on more diverse websites and that users “love” the answers they provide.
“This is all made possible by the new Gemini model customized for Google Search. It combines Gemini's advanced features, including multi-step inference, planning, and multimodality, with a best-in-class search system. ,” Reid said.
More to come. Google has added new AI capabilities to Google Search Labs, including:
- Multi-level reasoning function
- Google Search planning features
- Search results organized by AI
- Ask with Google Lens video
Learn more about these new features here.