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On the surface, AI showed results of £45 while normal results showed £39.99 and this particular result didn’t show at all in the AI search, even when clicking more.
However, small fine print was the £39.99 had a £4.99 delivery. Can it be that AI is optimised for full price including shipping?
At least in a few examples it looks like it is surfacing the manufacturers page, and then random 3rd parties have it cheaper, which is pretty commmon.
Yeah and I know one issue with this is that sites like Amazon tend to have greater protections against scraping from AIs, so there is not much AI providers could do if they wanted to find the true lowest price.
I tried “mens cycling helmet specialized” via normal search and AI search. On the surface, AI showed results of £45 while normal results showed £39.99 and this particular result didn’t show at all in the AI search, even when clicking more. However, small fine print was the £39.99 had a £4.99 delivery. Can it be that AI is optimised for full price including shipping?
In your example, any helmet by a manufacturer who has zero safety tests, regulatory stamps, warranty, etc, should be filtered out.
Any product with anomalous price needs heavy scrutiny.
At least in a few examples it looks like it is surfacing the manufacturers page, and then random 3rd parties have it cheaper, which is pretty commmon.
It sucks that Google seem to be phasing out plain search - for some specialized searches it ONLY gives me AI mode results, which are useless, and I have to go to Bing instead.
Hey, that's actually a pretty useful feature if it helps discourage people from buying so much stuff!
You'd think of all the companies, Google would be the best one to come up with a good solution for deal hunting but no...
I guess it's in no company's interest for consumers to get the best deals...
It's crazy how getting the best deals online is still a unsolved problem. Google product page was garbage even before AI, most aggregators are a complete farce as well, either displaying deals that are out of date or completely unrelated items, and let's not even get started with price tracking... You'd think of all the companies, Google would be the best one to come up with a good solution for deal hunting but no...…
It's in Google's interest to auction ad spots at the highest price.
That's it.
Nothing else matters. The content needs to be vaguely legal, the quality or any other product feature doesn't matter.
Another platform, Facebook, makes about 10% of its income from scams. No manager or executive will willingly reduce their company's income by 10%.
Thank you for your time this evening.