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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

#401

Post by lelanthran »

throwaway290 wrote: post #287
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.

Yep. Dark patterns you can see are not that dark by comparison, we will need another word for coming dark patterns disguised in llm responses

> Yep. Dark patterns you can see are not that dark by comparison, we will need another word for coming dark patterns disguised in llm responses

As someone else said, you can probably filter responses through a small purpose-built/trained LLM that strips away dark patterns.

If you start getting mostly empty responses as a result, then there was no value prior to the stripping anyway.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#402

Post by robryan »

croes wrote: post #202
manmal wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT lists clickable sources in a lot of nontrivial queries. Those sites don’t even need to pay OpenAI for the traffic (yet). If you ask „what’s happening in the world today“, you might get 20 links. How is this worse, exactly?

How many people click the links? What happens to LLMs if people don’t provide training data anymore because nobody visits their sites?

They will either pay for it to be generated or get good enough at producing synthetic data that actually improves LLM quality.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#404

Post by the_real_cher »

hereonout2 wrote: post #347
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…

You forgot the part about when you actually get to the content, there's usually about 5 paragraphs of SEO filler text before it actually gets onto answering the topic of the post.

This is most of the results on the first page of Google search are AI slop.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#405

Post by bomb17982 »

AI Overviews are great for users but brutal for publishers. Studies show sites lose roughly 40–50% of clicks when these summaries appear. It feels like another step toward Google keeping users on the SERP, instead of sending traffic out.

If this sticks, creators will either need to optimize for being included in the AI answer or focus more on direct channels (newsletters, communities) to survive.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#406

Post by csunbird »

viraptor wrote: post #390
dspillett wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* If I am lucky, there is a "necessary only".* I never use those. I suspect that in many cases if there are "legitimate interest" options¹ those will remain opted-in. ---- [1] which I read as "we see your preference not to be stalked online, but fuck you and your silly little preferences we want to anyway"

They will because that's how things are supposed to work. For example your preference about tracking will get stored for that site. The same as login details. Those are legitimate interests and you never get an option for them.

most of them try to argue serving ads and tracking is `legitimate interest`, which you have to disable manually

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#407

Post by aembleton »

reddalo wrote: post #367
cudder wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an extension called "I still don't care about cookies" that mostly solves the nag screens (There's also a similar one that doesn't have the "still" in its name but that one was bought by an ad company and enshittified.) AFAIU it usually accepts the cookies though, so you should combine it with something that clears your cookies periodically. Sometimes it breaks the site so that you can't scroll or something,…

No need to use a specific extension, uBlock Origin is all you need. Just enable the "Easy List/uBO - Cookie Notices" filter from the filters list (the default is off).

You can also add this filter to uBO: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#408

Post by msgodel »

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…

Don't forget the drop in device performance/battery from the ridiculously spammy analytics scripts they force on you.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#409

Post by create-username »

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…

I send the link to another browser, one with JavaScript disabled

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#410

Post by msgodel »

dspillett wrote: post #316
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…

>* If I am lucky, there is a "necessary only".* I never use those. I suspect that in many cases if there are "legitimate interest" options¹ those will remain opted-in. ---- [1] which I read as "we see your preference not to be stalked online, but fuck you and your silly little preferences we want to anyway"

The only necessary cookies would be a session cookie for that domain which doesn't need a popup under the GDPR.

I always use the inspect tool to just remove the popup. Interacting with it could be considered consent.

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