Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 872 posts

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#221

Post by throwawaymaroon »

Nursie wrote: post #58
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…

I still find it amazing that the world's largest search engine, which so many use as an oracle, is so happy to put wrong information at the top of its page. My examples recently - - Looking up a hint for the casino room in the game "Blue Prince", the AI summary gave me details of the card games on offer at the "Blue Prince Casino" in the next suburb over. There is no casino there. - Looking up workers rights during a…

[dead]

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#222

Post by OtherShrezzing »

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…

In the UK we've got amazing National Health Service informational websites[1], and regional variations of those [2]. For some issues, you might get different advice in the Scottish one than the UK-wide one. So, if you've gone into labour somewhere in the remote Highlands and Islands, you'll get different advice than if you lived in Central London, where there's a delivery room within a 30 minute drive.

Google's AI overview not only ignores this geographic detail, it ignores the high-quality NHS care delivery websites, and presents you with stuff from US sites like Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic is a great resource, if you live in the USA, but US medical advice is wildly different to the UK.

[1] https://www.nhs.uk [2] https://www.nhsinform.scot

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#223

Post by ripped_britches »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #215
ripped_britches wrote: post #203

Why is this being framed as a problem? People are obviously happier with the new feature, duh Of course they need to make the AI overviews suck less, but saying it’s unfair to sites is crazy talk because your site now just generates less value than an AI response if that’s what stopped you from going If you have content better than Gemini I will still go to your site

Because some companies are going bankrupt because of the data google is taking. Google always had a weird relationship with sites, they sort of needed each other but google always had the upper hand, now it’s even worse

Wouldn’t you expect AI to displace some companies though? As did every major technology?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#224

Post by Oras »

metalrain wrote: post #216

People only click from search when they have actual need to visit the site. E-commerce, image/video content, social media, etc. That is pretty much as it should be.

This! Why would I go and read 2000 words optimized article for SEO when I can get the answer in one line?

I only go to a website to perform an action as you said.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#225

Post by grey-area »

bee_rider wrote: post #137
Nursie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find it amazing that the world's largest search engine, which so many use as an oracle, is so happy to put wrong information at the top of its page. My examples recently - - Looking up a hint for the casino room in the game "Blue Prince", the AI summary gave me details of the card games on offer at the "Blue Prince Casino" in the next suburb over. There is no casino there. - Looking up workers rights during a…

I find it amazing, having observed the era when Google was an up-and-coming website, that they’ve gotten so far off track. I mean, this must have been what it felt like when IBM atrophied. But, they hired the best and brightest of my generation. How’d they screw it up so bad?

They sell ads and harvest attention. This is working as designed, it just happens that they don’t care about customers till they leave. So use something else instead.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#226

Post by Miraste »

deadbabe wrote: post #79
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…

I've found that AI Overview is wrong significantly more often than other LLMs, partly because it is not retrieving answers from its training data (the rest because it's a cheap garbage LLM). There is no "wisdom of the crowds." Instead, it's trying to parse the Google search results, in order to answer with a source. And it's much worse at pulling the right information from a webpage than a human, or even a high-end LLM.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#227

Post by vouaobrasil »

wiseowise wrote: post #196

And thank God! It does. I’m done dealing with bazillion shitty websites with bad, slow, performance, bad ui and dark patterns. All I need is an information in a convenient format and that is what AI tools provide to me.

What's interesting is that:

0. Internet is initially pretty good.

1. Google introduces search algorithm that is pretty good.

2. SEO becomes a thing because of Google, and makes the web bad.

3. AI (including Google's AI) bypasses that.

4. The web is eradicated, and Google/other AI companies are the only place where you can get information...

Seems like the web would have been better off without Google.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#228

Post by watwut »

kazinator wrote: post #123

> Google users are less likely to click on a link when they encounter search pages with AI summaries Well, doh: "Do I just read the AI summary? Or click past five pages of ads and spam to maybe find an organic link to something real?"

I find this claim massivy exaggerated.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#229

Post by Miraste »

what wrote: post #141
mvdtnz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When asking a question do you not see a difference between 1. Here's the answer (but it's misinformation) 2. Here are some websites that look like they might have the answer ?

Isn’t 1 really “here’s a summary of what the websites from 2 say”?

That's the goal, but the AI Overview LLM is terrible at summarizing, and will misunderstand even straightforward single-source answers. Then it will repeat its newly created misinformation as fact.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#230

Post by grey-area »

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)"

Why do you think that answer is correct? I mean maybe it is, or maybe it’s by the same user who recommended eating rocks (which ‘AI’ also recommended).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd11gzejgz4o

Post reply on HN