Finding the cheapest price for a product that isn’t fake is a completely unsolved problem and the entire premise of this is ridiculous
Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
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Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#22So are companies paying more to have products featured in AI mode rather than just plain search? 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.
It's clearly part of the AI endgame that conversational AI output will sell an undisclosed promoted slant where possible. The money will not be left on the table. Regulation effectively no longer exists.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#23They’re using “traditional search” to mean the shopping specific search widget or page, which is a separate feature from traditional search. It aggregates retailer listings and sorts them by price.
The AI mode is based on normal top search results, which are oriented toward information about the product like the manufacturer’s page, which is usually going to be full MSRP.
So technically correct that the AI mode is not using the price ranking from the separate shopping mode, but the intent of the AI mode is to find information about the search term first and prices second. The intent of shopping mode is to find lowest prices first and not find any information about the product at all.
In my experience, shopping mode will show a lot of low prices that I can’t actually get because when I get to checkout shipping is $10 higher than anywhere else for some inexplicable reason, or the Google listing was tricked into showing a coupon code that doesn’t work with some exclusion message at checkout. The worst are the sites that show Googlebot a lower price on the indexing pass but then charge regular customers full price when you get there.
In some product areas these tricks are so widespread that every vendor uses them. Search for contact lenses at the lowest price and every single website will have a low price indexed by Google but will add a checkout fee to bring the price back up to full at checkout to cancel out the discount.
I haven’t found shopping mode to actually save me any money other than in a few rare cases. Usually it just wastes my time.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#24[deleted]
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#25It'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 crazy how getting the best deals online is still a unsolved problem.
Not actually. Good deals are usually compensatation or a symptom of market forces. Additional costs in the form of marketing, advertising or risk aversion (bad or new vendors) are just some of the reasons that good deals exists.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#26At 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.
I think it's a good thing if this forces manufacturers to list honest prices instead of inflated ones.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#27I wish that purchase/shopping search engines were entirely separate and removed from general search engines. "are you searching for information or are you shopping?"
when I'm searching for information, so often results are just flooded with pricing from sellers.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#28I 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?
Also, not defending AI, but id gladly install a ublockoriginAI to filter out scam products and low quality knock offs. Would never trust google to do this. 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.
GP included the word “specialized” which is a reputable manufacturer. Without seeing anything else, I’d automatically be inclined to believe that any helmets sold by them has warranty and safety tests.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#29I dislike when unjustifiable precision in a headline is used to try to give some credibility to a defective analysis.
Re: Google AI Mode shows same products 21.6% more expensive than traditional search
#30I 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?
Also, not defending AI, but id gladly install a ublockoriginAI to filter out scam products and low quality knock offs. Would never trust google to do this. 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.
There's a blocklist for ublockorigin, but I can't really recommend it. It's a bit over-zealous and sometimes blocks useful stuff.
Link: https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist