Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 872 posts

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#481

Post by al_borland »

Xylakant wrote: post #218
al_borland wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe with Orion instead of Safari? Apple really needs to update Safari to let people choose their search engine, instead of just having the list of blessed search engines to choose from.

Kagi has an extension to add itself. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default/s...

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.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#482

Post by Jenk »

quectophoton wrote: post #467
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…

For those who want to experience it: https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/ The only inaccurate thing of that meme page is that you only need to uncheck 5 cookie "partners", when in reality there should be at least a few hundred.

    document.querySelectorAll("[type='checkbox']").forEach(c => c.checked = undefined)
Adjust the selector as neccessary, sometimes I'll use `#id-of-cookie-banner [type='checkbox']`

Probably useless for mobile though, unless you can punch it in the omnibar with `javascript:` prefix

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#484

Post by nikanj »

nightfly wrote: post #317
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…

> Page loads, immediately when I start scrolling and reading a popup trying to get tracking consent It was with the best of intentions but cookie banners have done more to hurt web browsing than anything else in the last decade

The law is good, but websites implement it badly on purpose to inflict consumer ire towards the EU. There's good money to be made if they manage to make the voting public hate the cookie banners so much the anti-tracking legislation gets repelled

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#485

Post by nelblu »

This is all nice while the AI overview has no ads in it. Wait until it gets enshittified, and I have a feeling AI overview would be so infested with ads that people would rather block it and proceed to reading the actual links.

All this said, I am guilty of using this a lot these days - while it is still ad-free. I just ask chatgpt.com to give me a recipe of "XYZ" and it gives it immediately without any annoying repetitive content.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#486

Post by aerhardt »

inopinatus wrote: post #460
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…

Your AI chat bot is ad free for now . This comment brought to you by PlavaLaguna Ultrasonic Water. Make your next VC pitch higher than you ever thought possible! Consume responsibly

At least there is more credible competition, so there could be a variety of business models to pick - ad-backed or paid. The search engine wars truly ended up being winner-take-all.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#487

Post by MOARDONGZPLZ »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #454
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the main thing to be worried about is that this model is undermining the fundamental economic model the internet's currently based on. This would be lovely. > I think the worst case scenario is that people stop publishing content on the web altogether. The most likely one is that search/summary engines eat up money that previously came from content creators. More than likely, people return to publishing con…

>More than likely, people return to publishing content because they love the subject matter and not because it is an angle to “create content” or “gain followers” or show ads. Why would you do that if you thought it was going to be hoovered up by some giant corporation and spat out again for $20 a month with no attribution.

From my post:

[B]ecause they love the subject matter and not because it is an angle to “create content” or “gain followers” or show ads.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#488

Post by brainwad »

benrutter wrote: post #373

A lot of the comments here are along the lines of "websites are often hostile, and AI summaries are a better user experience" which I agree with for most cases. I think the main thing to be worried about is that this model is undermining the fundamental economic model the internet's currently based on. If I create content like recipes, journalism etc, previously I had exclusive rights to my created content and could…

>If I create content like recipes ... previously I had exclusive rights to my created content

Recipes are not protected by copyright law. That's _why_ recipe bloggers have resorted to editorialising recipes, because the editorial content is copyrightable.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#489

Post by tonyedgecombe »

al_borland wrote: post #481
Xylakant wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi has an extension to add itself. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default/s...

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.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#490

Post by devnullbrain »

carlosjobim wrote: post #447
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK we've got amazing National Health Service informational websites[1], and regional variations of those [2]. For some issues, you might get different advice in the Scottish one than the UK-wide one. So, if you've gone into labour somewhere in the remote Highlands and Islands, you'll get different advice than if you lived in Central London, where there's a delivery room within a 30 minute drive. Google's AI ov…

[flagged]

People died
Post reply on HN