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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

#231

Post by vouaobrasil »

toenail wrote: post #212
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

Some people are against all kinds of progress. They don't understand that their life depends on progress that was made in the past.

That does not imply that future progress is a good thing, nor does it imply that future progress will even be useful to the majority. It boggles my mind how some people make the logical inference that "all progress is good" based on "some past progress was useful".

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#232

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

#233

Post by littlecranky67 »

Here is the experience when clicking a link on mobile:

* Page loads, immediately when I start scrolling and reading a popup trying to get tracking consent

* If I am lucky, there is a "necessary only". When unlucky I need to click "manage options" and first see how to reject all tracking

* There is a sticky banner on top/bottom taking 20-30% of my screen upselling me a subscription or asking me to install their app. Upon pressing the tiny X in the corner it takes 1-2 seconds to close or multiple presses as I am either missing the x or because there is a network roundtrip

* I scroll down a screen and get a popup overlay asking me to signup for their service or newsleter, again messing with the x to close

* video or other flashy adds in the content keep bugging me

This is btw. usually all before I even established if the content is what I was looking for, or is at any way useful to me (often it is not).

If you use AI or Kagi summarizr, you get ad-free, well-formatted content without any annoyance.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#234

Post by HSO »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #133

Of course slow, shitty web sites also cause a massive drop in clicks, as soon as an alternative to clicking emerges. It's just like on HN, if I see an interesting title and want to know what the article is about, I can wince and click the article link, but it's much faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments. That difference is almost entirely from the crappy overdesig…

> faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments

Or, youre confusing primordial desire to be aligned with perceived peers -- checking what others say, then effortlessly nodding along -- with forming your own judgment.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#235

Post by jcattle »

cornholio wrote: post #167
throwaway81523 wrote: post #133

Of course slow, shitty web sites also cause a massive drop in clicks, as soon as an alternative to clicking emerges. It's just like on HN, if I see an interesting title and want to know what the article is about, I can wince and click the article link, but it's much faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments. That difference is almost entirely from the crappy overdesig…

This is a pretty apt analogy: why settle for the original article when you can read the outrage infused summary of an opinionated troll in a hurry? It has little to do with overdesign or load times.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. It's the perfect analogy.

What do HN comments and AI Overviews have in common?

- All information went through a bunch of neurons at least once

- We don't know which information was even considered

- Might be completely false but presented with utmost confidence

- ...?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#236

Post by HSO »

brianwawok wrote: post #35
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…

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?

llms.txt

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#237

Post by Miraste »

taurath wrote: post #132
jordanb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google could have cut down on this if they wanted. And in general they did until they fired Matt Cutts. The reality is, every time someone's search is satisfied by an organic result is lost revenue for Google.

Which is the stupidest position ever if Google wants to exist long term. Unfortunately there are no workable alternatives. DDG is somehow not better, though I use it to avoid trackers.

It's a bit like the Easter Islanders cutting down all of their trees for wood. Where does Google management think they'll get search results if they kill the entire internet? Has anyone at Google thought that far ahead?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#238

Post by HelloImSteven »

accrual wrote: post #145
tayo42 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you need to wait until they train and release their next model?

I don't know this for certain, but I imagine there's some kind of kv store between queries and AI overviews. Maybe they could update certain overviews or redo them with a better model.

I also don’t know for certain, but I’d assume they only cache AI responses at an (at most) regional level, and only for a fairly short timeframe depending on the kind of site. They already had mechanisms for detecting changes and updating their global search index quickly. The AI stuff likely relies mostly on that existing system.

This seems more like a model-specific issue, where it’s consistently generating flawed output every time the cache gets invalid. If that’s the case, there’s not much Google can do on a case-by-case level, but we should see improvements over time as the model gets incrementally better / it becomes more financially viable to run better models at this scale.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#239

Post by tokioyoyo »

msgodel wrote: post #98
landl0rd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a small group of highly tech-literate people are wary of this. Your personal bubble is wary of this. So is some of mine. "People" don't care and will use the packaged, corporate, convenient version with the well-known name. People who are aware of that and care enough to change consumption habits are an inconsequential part of the market.

I don't know, a bunch of the older people from the town I grew up in avoided using LLMs until Grok came out because of what they saw going on with alignment in the other models (they certainly couldn't articulate this but listening to what said it's what they were thinking.) Obviously Grok has the same problems but I think it goes to show the general public is more aware of the issue than they get credit for. You com…

Yeah, average people that I know (across continents) just ChatGPT their way into literally anything without a second thought. They don't care.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#240

Post by jay_kyburz »

HSO wrote: post #234
throwaway81523 wrote: post #133

Of course slow, shitty web sites also cause a massive drop in clicks, as soon as an alternative to clicking emerges. It's just like on HN, if I see an interesting title and want to know what the article is about, I can wince and click the article link, but it's much faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments. That difference is almost entirely from the crappy overdesig…

> faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments Or, youre confusing primordial desire to be aligned with perceived peers -- checking what others say, then effortlessly nodding along -- with forming your own judgment.

I think that's a mean and disingenuous.

I often click on the HN comments before reading the article because the article I very often nothing more than the headline and I'm more interested in the discussion.

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