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

621–630 of 872 posts

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#621

Post by greatgib »

s900mhz wrote: post #42
greatgib wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I know for the summary.

What I say is that the search results part of the page, with or without the summary should be the same in theory.

So if the other person saw a difference in the result returned it might be only because of the impact of the question mark character itself on the search index

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#622

Post by sandos »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #133

Of course slow, shitty web sites also cause a massive drop in clicks, as soon as an alternative to clicking emerges. It's just like on HN, if I see an interesting title and want to know what the article is about, I can wince and click the article link, but it's much faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments. That difference is almost entirely from the crappy overdesig…

Iv'e been focusing on comments on social media for I don't know how long. It works 90% of the time as a pretty good summary for some reason.

I do this on hackernews, and especially on news-sites I check (cleantechnica, electrec, reneweconomy) and I actively shun sites _without_ comments.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#623

Post by carlosjobim »

lazide wrote: post #590
carlosjobim wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like that are screaming at somebody wherever they might be at the moment. There isn't any technical solutions to them.

Having a technology platform point someone at a specific venue and then lying about a ton of details (including costs) is not that situation at all. Frankly, most people would be angry in that situation .

If somebody is a person who demands to get something for nothing from complete strangers and then get mad when they don't - well that person has very low value as a human until they can find enlightenment. These guys are definitely not in the majority of people.

There are reasonable reactions in this situation: Either be grateful that you got something for free, or accept that you were misinformed and pay what is asked, alternatively leave.

But let's be honest about this particular situation: The visitor had checked the event online, maybe first with ChatGPT and then on the official website. They noticed that the AI had made a mistake and thought they could abuse that to try to get in for free.

Everybody who works with the general public for restaurants, hospitality, events or retail recognize this kind of "customer", who are a small minority which you have to deal with sometimes. There are some base people who live their lives trying to find loop holes and ways to take advantage of others, while at the same time constantly being on the verge of a massive outrage over how unfairly they are being treated.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#624

Post by IAmGraydon »

guluarte wrote: post #614

I think this will be the end of Google as a search engine. I don't see how website owners don't start charging bots for scraping their content.

It's definitely the beginning of the end of Google Search IMO. Extremely small sample size, but me and many people I know have started running the majority of searches that end in a question mark (actual questions) in an LLM, and not Google's LLM. Google is only used as a sort of phone book - when I need to look up the URL of a site by inputting the name, or when I want to find a particular article I previously read. I would say my usage of Google has reduced by about 75% (seat-of-the-pants estimate). It's just better to do it this way, and I have to imagine that this sentiment will spread.

Google will have to survive on other products, like YouTube. I see a massive contraction of their employee base in the not-so-distant future. Low-return products that are subsidized by the massive revenue of search will likely be cut as well if they can't be monetized more effectively (which will ruin them).

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#625

Post by lelanthran »

throwaway290 wrote: post #526
lelanthran wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you can't tell when a big expensive llm is subliminally grooming you to like/dislike something or is selective with information then another (probably small and cheaper) llm somehow can? Arms race?

> If you can't tell when a big expensive llm is subliminally grooming you to like/dislike something or is selective with information

I mean, I can tell when a page contains advertisements, but I still use an ad-blocker.

The point was not to help me detect when a response is ad-heavy, but to stop me seeing those ads at all.

> Arms race?

Possibly. Like with ad-blockers, this race can't be won by the ad-pusher LLM if the user uses the ad-blocker LLM.

The only reason ad-pusher websites still work is because users generally don't care enough to install the ad-blocker.

In much the same way, the only reason LLM ad-pushers will work is if users don't bother with an LLM ad-blocker.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#626

Post by carlosjobim »

devnullbrain wrote: post #490
carlosjobim wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

People died

Of course, as evident by no human being alive currently.

"Oh no, I've been pregnant for nine months without preparing myself in any way and now I'm in labour, better ask the AI what to do!"

Is this how humans will become extinct? Wouldn't surprise me.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#627

Post by IAmGraydon »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #617
guluarte wrote: post #614

I think this will be the end of Google as a search engine. I don't see how website owners don't start charging bots for scraping their content.

See: "Introducing pay per crawl: Enabling content owners to charge AI crawlers for access" https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pay-per-crawl/

I love Cloudflare, and they're very wise to spin up this service. I wonder how well it will work.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#628

Post by tempodox »

pembrook wrote: post #512
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…

Yes, this is the experience on virtually every content website that used to be tolerable or even good. But this is because there is no viable monetization model for non-editorial written word content anymore and hasn’t been for a decade. Google killed the ecosystem they helped create. Google also killed the display ad market by monopolizing it with Adsense and then killed Adsense revenue sharing with creators to take…

It's the usual enshittification. First they screw the end luser, then they screw their actual customers. If you depend on one platform as a member of either of those groups, you're screwed.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#629

Post by ethan_smith »

keiferski wrote: post #323

What is the long term plan for data acquisition? 1. Use existing websites for training data 2. Replace search traffic with AI prompts, thereby destroying the economic incentive for websites to publish data 3. ?

Step 3 is "train on synthetic data generated by previous AI models" - creating an inevitable quality death spiral as each generation trains on increasingly derivative content.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#630

Post by graemep »

marcellus23 wrote: post #607
Nicook wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its encrapification is real. It has been slow though, mostly affecting niche interests and smaller creators. And the ad experience has definitely gotten worse, but adblockers help. Try using youtube without and adblocker.

Using an adblocker certainly won't help smaller creators and niche interests. If you don't want ads but want to support creators, pay for Premium.

A lot of them have sponsors which pay more than the ads, or are on Patreon, or are also on other platforms that pay them a higher proportion or allow videos that risk demonetisation on Youtube, or sell merch, or something else.
Post reply on HN