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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

#511

Post by manwe150 »

chasd00 wrote: post #480
pflenker wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipe for Foo. Foo has always been my favorite dish. I fondly remember all the times my grandma made this for me. My grandma, who was born on August 2, 1946, as the daughter of… (10 more pages of text) To cook Foo the way my grandma did, you first need some Bar. Bar is originally native to the reclusive country of… (20 more pages of text)

Yeah recipes are the worst. I least the acknowledge themselves and give you a “jump to recipe” button most of the time. I sometimes hit the print button and just use the preview screen too.

I don’t think recipes are much at actual fault here. It seems the fault of search engines preferring returning recipes with longer stories over just-the-recipe blogs or sites like AllRecipes. We humans just have to suffer as a result of the artificial selection of what the search engines wants for us to experience.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#512

Post by pembrook »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #233

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…

Yes, this is the experience on virtually every content website that used to be tolerable or even good.

But this is because there is no viable monetization model for non-editorial written word content anymore and hasn’t been for a decade. Google killed the ecosystem they helped create.

Google also killed the display ad market by monopolizing it with Adsense and then killed Adsense revenue sharing with creators to take all the money for themselves by turning their 10 blue links into 5 blue ads at the top of the search results. Search ads is now the most profitable monopoly business of all time.

YouTube is still young, but give it time. Google will eventually kill the golden goose there as well, by trying to harvest too many eggs for themselves.

The same will happen with AI results as well. Companies will be happy to lose money on it for a decade while they fight for dominance. But eventually the call for profits will come and the AI results will require scrolling through mountains of ads to see an answer.

This is the shape of this market. Search driven content in any form is and will always be a yellow pages business. Doesn’t matter if it’s on paper or some future AGI.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#513

Post by sidewndr46 »

pflenker wrote: post #461
Disposal8433 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed that a lot. For example: What is the price of the Switch 2? The Switch 2 can be purchased with money.

Recipe for Foo. Foo has always been my favorite dish. I fondly remember all the times my grandma made this for me. My grandma, who was born on August 2, 1946, as the daughter of… (10 more pages of text) To cook Foo the way my grandma did, you first need some Bar. Bar is originally native to the reclusive country of… (20 more pages of text)

You forgot 4 paragraphs text about how they went on a journey of self discovery, that lead to them spending time in the remote village of Y, learning the traditional methods of cooking the dish.

The dish in question is a ham sandwich.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#514

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

nicbou wrote: post #386
tmountain wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is following the drug dealer model. “The first dose is free!” Given the cost incurred, lots of dark patterns will be coming for sure.

AI is built by the same companies that built the last generation of hostile technology, and they're currently offering it at a loss. Once they have encrusted themselves in our everyday lives and killed the independent web for good, you can bet they will recoup on their investment.

That indeed is likely to come, but having experienced user hostile technology, the appropriate response is to prepare. Some trends suggest this is already happening ( though that only appears to be a part HN crowd so far ): moving more and more behind a local network. I know I am personally exploring local llm integration for some workflows to avoid the obvious low hanging fruit most providers will likely go for. But yes, the web in its current form might perish.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#515

Post by al_borland »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #489
al_borland wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I used, but it’s a bit of a hack. It has to hijack one of the other search engine, which then becomes unusable. It also doesn’t show the search term in the address bar, like the person was asking for.

You can thank Apple for that, presumably because they receive a ton of money from Google.

Google isn’t the only option in the list.

And of course it’s Apple’s fault, they wrote Safari. I submitted a feature request a while ago, but I’m guessing more people need to do the same.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#516

Post by sumtechguy »

generic92034 wrote: post #361
bdelmas wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well maybe not. Thanks that we have Gemini now to compete with ChatGPT. Competition may avoid dark patterns. But without competition yes definitely

Competition or not, dark patterns or not - sooner or later LLMs will need to earn money for their corporations.

The electric bill does not pay for itself.

What is also interesting is one of the biggest search companies is using it to steer traffic away from its former 'clients'. The very websites google talked into slathering their advertisements all over themselves. By giving them money and traffic. But that worked because google got a pretty good cut of that. But now only google gets the 'above the fold' cut.

That has two long term effects. One the place they harvest the data will go away. The second is their long term money will decrease. As traffic is lowered and less ads shown (unless google goes full plaster it everywhere like some sites).

AI is going to eat the very companies making it. Even if the answers are kind of 'meh'. People will be fine with 'close enough' for the majority of things.

Short term they will see their metric of 'main site retention' going up. It will however be at the cost of the websites that fed the machine.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#517

Post by AlienRobot »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #233

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…

All because "content" isn't free to produce.

AI stole all the content from those websites, starving them from ad revenue.

The Google overview is made by the same company that puts those ads in those websites in first place.

What is coming next is that there will be ads in the overview and you will have no choice but to read it because all its cited links will be rotten.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#518

Post by swat535 »

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…

Google stopped being a search engine long time ago.

Now it's the worlds biggest advertisement company, waging war on Adblockers and pushing dark pattern to users.

They've built a browser monopoly with Chrome and can throw their weight around to literally dictate the open web standards.

The only competition is Mozilla Firefox, which ironically is _also_ controlled by Google, they receive millions annually from them.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#519

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

svachalek wrote: post #429
littlecranky67 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how that will work out. Just I have an adblocker now, I could have a very simple local llm in my browser that modifies the search-AIs answer and strips obvious ads.

They won't be obvious. They'll be highly customized brain worms influencing your votes and purchases to the highest bidder.

Yep. Right now, even with cookies inferences about individual humans are minimal, but exposing your whole patterns in speech make you a ripe target for manipulation at a scale that some may not fully understand yet. 4o is very adept at cold reading and it is genuinely fascinating to read those from that perspective alone. Combine it with style evaluation and a form of rudimentary history analysis, and you end up with actual dossier on everyone using that service.

Right now, we are lucky, because it is the least altered version of it ( and we all know how many filters public models have to go through ).

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#520

Post by jakebennet89 »

pembrook wrote: post #512
littlecranky67 wrote: post #233

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…

Yes, this is the experience on virtually every content website that used to be tolerable or even good. But this is because there is no viable monetization model for non-editorial written word content anymore and hasn’t been for a decade. Google killed the ecosystem they helped create. Google also killed the display ad market by monopolizing it with Adsense and then killed Adsense revenue sharing with creators to take…

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