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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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this game inspired by all the dark patterns from darkpatterns.org - every pop up is based on a real dark pattern https://www.termsandconditions.game/

Application error An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details. You can do this from the Heroku CLI with the command heroku logs --tail

the darkest pattern of all!

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#322
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesson to whom, is the question. The venue organizers also ended up with a shit experience (and angry potential customer) while having nothing to do with the BS.

> (and angry potential customer) An angry potential customer who demands one work for free is probably not the kind of business arrangement that most folks would find agreeable. I don’t know where these people get off, but they’re free riders on the information superhighway. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

That same person might have actually paid money if they weren’t (somewhat legitimately) lied to about it being free. Or just not gone.

Instead it’s the worst outcome for everyone, and everyone is angry and thinks each other are assholes. I guess that does sum up America the last few years eh?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#324

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. U…

> Page loads, immediately when I start scrolling and reading a popup trying to get tracking consent It was with the best of intentions but cookie banners have done more to hurt web browsing than anything else in the last decade

The banner is not the problem, the predatory tracking by webpages are. You can make a webpage without it no problem, my home page does not have it.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#325

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. U…

You forgot the popup requesting access to send you background notifications.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

qwant ?

Qwant also has an AI overview. Pretty bad too.

I've been using noai.duckduckgo.com for a few weeks now and it's pretty reliable. Still yandex etc. but at least no longer AI overview. (Yes, I know about settings, but they get deleted every restart).

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#327

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. U…

> Page loads, immediately when I start scrolling and reading a popup trying to get tracking consent It was with the best of intentions but cookie banners have done more to hurt web browsing than anything else in the last decade

[deleted]

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#328

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.

All you need is good information and AI tools are giving you information without you knowing whether or not it is any good. You may think it is good, but unless you know more about the answer to your query than what you needed to create it you won't be able to tell the difference. If you did then you would not have been asking in the first place. Effectively you are now believing in an oracle.

Which is different from believing the information on an ad and dark pattern infected website how?

Since the AI is trained on the data on the websites below the AI summary, the summary quality is basically lock step with the quality of the websites.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#329
At some stage Google will need to be accountable for answers they are hosting on their own site. The argument of "we're only indexing info on other sites" changes when you are building a tool to generate content and hosting that content on your own domain.

I'm guilty of not clicking when I'm satisfied with the AI answer. I know it can be wrong. I've seen it be wrong multiple times. But it's right at the top and tells me what I suspected when I did the search. The way they position the AI overview is right in your face.

I would prefer the "AI overview" to be replaced with something that helps me better search rather than giving me the answer directly.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#330
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (and angry potential customer) An angry potential customer who demands one work for free is probably not the kind of business arrangement that most folks would find agreeable. I don’t know where these people get off, but they’re free riders on the information superhighway. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

That same person might have actually paid money if they weren’t (somewhat legitimately) lied to about it being free. Or just not gone. Instead it’s the worst outcome for everyone, and everyone is angry and thinks each other are assholes. I guess that does sum up America the last few years eh?

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