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AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

arstechnica.com

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Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#71

Post by zahlman »

ncallaway wrote: post #65
mtkd wrote: post #50

Conversely, it's useful to get an immediate answer sometimes 6 months ago, "what temp is pork safe at?" was a few clicks, long SEO optimised blog post answers and usually all in F not C ... despite Google knowing location ... I used it as an example at the time of 'how hard can this be?' First sentance of Google AI response right now: "Pork is safe to eat when cooked to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C)"

Dear lord please don’t use an AI overview answer for food safety. If you made a bet with your friend and are using the AI overview to settle it, fine. But please please click on an actual result from a trusted source if you’re deciding what temperature to cook meat to

I've been finding that the proliferation of AI slop is at its worst on recipe/cooking/nutrition sites, so....

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#72

Post by [deleted] »

mtkd wrote: post #50

Conversely, it's useful to get an immediate answer sometimes 6 months ago, "what temp is pork safe at?" was a few clicks, long SEO optimised blog post answers and usually all in F not C ... despite Google knowing location ... I used it as an example at the time of 'how hard can this be?' First sentance of Google AI response right now: "Pork is safe to eat when cooked to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C)"

[deleted]

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#73

Post by [deleted] »

mtkd wrote: post #50

Conversely, it's useful to get an immediate answer sometimes 6 months ago, "what temp is pork safe at?" was a few clicks, long SEO optimised blog post answers and usually all in F not C ... despite Google knowing location ... I used it as an example at the time of 'how hard can this be?' First sentance of Google AI response right now: "Pork is safe to eat when cooked to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C)"

[deleted]

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#74

Post by telchior »

Nursie wrote: post #59
JKCalhoun wrote: post #24

Liberating me from "search clicks" is not a bad thing at all. I suspect many of us though don't even go to anyway but ask an LLM directly.

I'm intrigued as to why someone, presumably tech-savvy, would do that? We know they aren't oracles and come up with a lot of false information in response to factual questions.

In my view it's a pretty straightforward calculation. Nothing is free, no knowledge is instant. Start off knowing your time investment to learn anything is greater than zero and go from there..

If you do a Google (or other engine) search, you have to invest time pawing through the utter pile of shit that Google ads created on the web. Info that's hidden under reams of unnecessary text, potentially out of date, potentially not true; you'll need to evaluate a list of links and, probably, open multiple of them.

If you do an AI "search", you ask one question and get one answer. But the answer might a hallucination or based on incorrect info.

However, a lot of the time, you might be searching for something you already have an idea of, whether it's how to structure a script or what temperature pork is safe at; you can use your existing knowledge to assess the AI's answer. In that case the AI search is fast.

The rest of the time, you can at least tell the AI to include links to its references, and check those. Or its answer may help you construct a better Google search.

Ultimately search is a trash heap of Google's making, and I have absolute confidence in them also turning AI into a trash heap, but for now it is indeed faster for many purposes.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#76

Post by mrheosuper »

thewebguyd wrote: post #5
skywhopper wrote: post #2

Which is of course Google’s short-sighted goal. See also their push to switch to full “AI mode” search which doesn’t show results at all.

It's a weird goal to me. Like, what's their end game here? Offer to manipulate the AI responses for ad money? Product placement in the summaries? I would hope those placements have to be disclosed as advertising, and it would immediately break trust in anything their AI outputs so surely that would only continue to harm them in the long run, no? ~57% of their revenue is from search advertising. How do they plan on re…

AI subscription would be my guess. Want better model ? Open your wallet.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#77

Post by owlstuffing »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #30

The overviews are also wrong and difficult to get fixed. Google AI has been listing incorrect internal extensions causing departments to field calls for people trying to reach unrelated divisions and services, listing times and dates of events that don't exist at our addresses that people are showing up to, and generally misdirecting and misguiding people who really need correct information from a truth source like o…

> The overviews are also wrong and difficult to get fixed.

No different from Google search results.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#78

Post by ceejayoz »

esafak wrote: post #67
brianwawok wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun. I have people asking ChatGPT support question about my SaaS app, getting made up answers, and then cancelling because we can’t do something that we can. Can’t make this crap up. How do I teach Chat GPT every feature of a random SaaS app?

Write documentation and don't block crawlers.

It’ll still make shit up.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#79

Post by deadbabe »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #30

The overviews are also wrong and difficult to get fixed. Google AI has been listing incorrect internal extensions causing departments to field calls for people trying to reach unrelated divisions and services, listing times and dates of events that don't exist at our addresses that people are showing up to, and generally misdirecting and misguiding people who really need correct information from a truth source like o…

> The overviews are also wrong and difficult to get fixed.

Let’s not pretend that some websites aren’t straight up bullshit.

There’s blogs spreading bullshit, wrong info, biased info, content marketing for some product etc.

And lord knows comments are frequently wrong, just look around Hackernews.

I’d bet that LLMs are actually wrong less often than typical search results, because they pull from far greater training data. “Wisdom of the crowds”.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#80

Post by BoorishBears »

brookst wrote: post #52
mtkd wrote: post #50

Conversely, it's useful to get an immediate answer sometimes 6 months ago, "what temp is pork safe at?" was a few clicks, long SEO optimised blog post answers and usually all in F not C ... despite Google knowing location ... I used it as an example at the time of 'how hard can this be?' First sentance of Google AI response right now: "Pork is safe to eat when cooked to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C)"

Safe Temperatures for Pork People have been eating pork for over 40,000 years. There’s speculation about whether pork or beef was first a part of the human diet. (5000 words later) The USDA recommends cooking pork to at least 145 degrees.

I searched it.

First result under the overview is the National Pork Board, shows the answer above the fold, and includes visual references: https://pork.org/pork-cooking-temperature/

Most of the time if there isn't a straightforward primary source in the top results, Google's AI overview won't get it right either.

Given the enormous scale and latency constraints they're dealing with, they're not using SOTA models, and they're probably not feeding the model 5000 words worth of context from every result on the page.

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