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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

#41

Post by mysterydip »

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 was at an event where someone was arguing there wasn't an entry fee because chatgpt said it was free (with a screenshot of proof) then asked why they weren't honoring their online price.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#42

Post by s900mhz »

greatgib wrote: post #39
slau wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can opt-in to get an LLM response by phrasing your queries as a question. Searching for “who is Roger rabbit” gives me Wikipedia, IMDb and film site as results. Searching for “who is Roger rabbit?” gives me a “quick answer” LLM-generated response: “Roger Rabbit is a fictional animated anthropomorphic rabbit who first appeared in Gary K. Wolf's 1981 novel…” followed by a different set of results. It seems the resu…

I don't think that you are right. It is the search result that influence the llm generated result and not the opposite. In your case, I think that it is just the interrogation point in itself at the end that somehow has an impact on the results you see.

It’s a feature of Kagi. Putting the question mark does invoke AI summaries.

https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#44

Post by NoPicklez »

pryelluw wrote: post #16
oezi wrote: post #6

The tricky thing for Google will be to do this and not kill their cash cow ad business.

Not tricky at all. This is a new line of business that provides them with more ad space to sell. If the overview becomes a trusted source of information, then all they need to do is inject ads in the overviews. They already sort of dye that. Imagine it as a sort of text based product placement.

I'd say putting ads into AI search overviews is absolutely tricky.

You might think that's the correct way to do it, but there is likely much more to it than it seems.

If it wasn't tricky at all you'd bet they would've done it already to maximize revenue.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#45

Post by pryelluw »

NoPicklez wrote: post #44
pryelluw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not tricky at all. This is a new line of business that provides them with more ad space to sell. If the overview becomes a trusted source of information, then all they need to do is inject ads in the overviews. They already sort of dye that. Imagine it as a sort of text based product placement.

I'd say putting ads into AI search overviews is absolutely tricky. You might think that's the correct way to do it, but there is likely much more to it than it seems. If it wasn't tricky at all you'd bet they would've done it already to maximize revenue.

Product teams in big companies move slow. But soon enough all the shit ads are going to pop up.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#46

Post by amluto »

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 particularly hate when the AI overview is directly contradicted by the first few search results.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#47

Post by outlore »

ghushn3 wrote: post #14

I subscribe to Kagi. It's been worth it to have no ads and the ability to uprank/downrank sites. And there's no AI garbage sitting in the top of the engine.

is there a way to make safari search bar on iOS show the kagi search term rather than the URL?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#48

Post by bethekidyouwant »

ahartmetz wrote: post #40
oezi wrote: post #6

The tricky thing for Google will be to do this and not kill their cash cow ad business.

Somebody is working on "native advertising" in AI slop, surely? Barf.

you can’t make the slop have a nice clean ad in it. Also: as soon as your slop has ads in it, I’m going to make Polpot advertise your product.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#49

Post by msgodel »

kozikow wrote: post #19
oezi wrote: post #6

The tricky thing for Google will be to do this and not kill their cash cow ad business.

Ads inside LLMs (e.g. pay $ to boost your product in LLM recommendation) is going to be a big thing. My guess is that Google/OpenAI are eyeing each other - whoever does this first. Why would that work? It's a proven business model. Example: I use LLMs for product research (e.g. which washing machine to buy). Retailer pays if link to their website is included in the results. Don't want to pay? Then redirect the user t…

People are already wary of hosted LLMs having poisoned training data. That might kill them altogether and push everyone to using eg Qwen3-coder.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#50

Post by mtkd »

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)"

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