Bad mistake
Ever since Google's new “AI Overviews” feature was released and found to be spitting out nonsensical and obviously wrong answers to search queries, the company has been working to get its AI-generated search summaries back on track with a series of fixes and guardrails.
There also appears to be a significant drop in users serving AI results, signaling at least a temporary move away from the technology. According to a new study from SEO firm BrightEdge, before the change, AI summary summaries were appearing in response to around 84 percent of queries. Now, that number has dropped significantly to around 15 percent of queries.
“The likely reason is to reduce the risk that the AI's answers will be wrong while it is refined in a public environment,” the study said.
“Of course I'm not against it,” the founder said. Search Engine Roundtable Barry Schwartz wrote about that assessment: “But I'd also add in there the costs of running these. Plus, they probably wouldn't work all that well with Google Ads, so they would likely generate less revenue than search result pages without the AI ​​summaries, at least for now.”
Future Plans
Research shows that phrasing your search as a question increases the likelihood of an AI summary appearing, which in turn increases the chances of triggering healthcare-related keywords.
However, we can’t expect the rate of AI results to remain stagnant.
“I expect Google to ramp up this effort over time as it's able to improve its product,” SEO expert Lily Ray opined about X. “So I think drawing conclusions about AIO's current impact may become less accurate over time.”
https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1798039067931840565
We expect to see more issues in the future as Google tweaks and improves the parameters of AI Overviews, but will we start to see strange AI Overviews answers like glue on pizza, which have been flagged as a sign of serious flaws in Google's AI?
Time will tell.
Learn more about Google AI: Why Google's AI is suggesting you add glue to your pizza shows a deeper flaw in tech companies' obsession with AI