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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

#761

Post by com2kid »

bombela wrote: post #696
tempestn wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just pay for premium?

Not OP. I did pay, for 10y. But the video quality kept slowly degrading (lower bitrate). And ads in the video content kept increasing. YouTube also increased advertising some paying shows, YouTube shorts, and more. No way to say no, only "yes forever" or "no thanks not right now". And it comes back in a few weeks. It also constantly sneakily lowers the video quality. So I stopped paying. I combine ad block and sponso…

YT premium has higher bit rates and sponsor block built in, but they don't call it that or advertise that it even exists. Instead they say it allows you to "skip commonly skipped segments of video" but basically it is sponsor block.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#762

Post by AlecSchueler »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #340
jacquesm wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that was true for Google in the first year. But after that it rapidly became their goal.

You think? For several years they definitely kept out the way and provided links to get to the best results fast. By the time they dropped "don't be evil" they certainly were acting against users. It started well, agreed. But my recollection is the good Google lasted several years.

Almost twenty years between launch and dropping Don't Be Evil, which was itself ten years ago now.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#763

Post by 3form »

tempestn wrote: post #664
kylebenzle wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube only still "works" because of the cat and mouse ad blocker game. I don't know how but my new ad blocker seems to fast forward through all the ads. For a little while YouTube had them licked and I was watching 10 to 20 second ads all the time so temporarily gave up on YouTube until the ad blockers caught up again. Now YouTube is still functionally broken on TVs and mobile phones but works fine on a desktop com…

Why not just pay for premium?

Watching things without having to log in is my use case. Not something that Google would want to ever cater for, so ad blocking it is.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#764

Post by no_wizard »

brokencode wrote: post #562
pembrook wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

YouTube is 20 years old now. Either the encrapification is very slow or they landed on a decent ad model. Plus there is a subscription that eliminates ads. I think it’s a great experience for users. Many creators also seem to do well too. I think this should be the model for a new generation of search. Obviously there will be ads/sponsored results. But there should be a subscription option to eliminate the ads. The k…

>YouTube is 20 years old now. Either the encrapification is very slow or they landed on a decent ad model.

Have you seen how many ads are in a video on YouTube? On desktop its no issue, but I use the YouTube app on my Apple TV now and then, and I tried to watch a few relatively short video, and I saw easily 4-6 ads per video, some of which were 90+ seconds long. Its awful

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#765

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

lelanthran wrote: post #561
malfist wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Gemini is the authority on the internal costs of AI providers and their profit margins?

> Why do you think Gemini is the authority on the internal costs of AI providers and their profit margins? Where did I say I think that?

That's the source you chose to use, according to you.

You don't mention cross-checking the info against other sources.

You have the "make of it what you will" at the end, in what appears to be an attempt to discard any responsibility you might have for the information. But you still chose to bring that information into the conversation. As if it had meaning. Or 'authority'.

If you weren't treating it as at least somewhat authoritative, what was the point of asking Gemini and posting the result?

Gemini's output plus some other data sources could be an interesting post. "Gemini said this but who knows?" is useless filler.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#766

Post by greymalik »

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 now. Some LLM responses will contain advertising eventually too. Google’s search revenue is plummeting. They have to make it up somewhere.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#767

Post by s900mhz »

greatgib wrote: post #621
s900mhz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ahh thanks for the clarification, I misunderstood!

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#768

Post by cm2187 »

lelanthran wrote: post #747
cm2187 wrote: post #260

What I don't understand is how do you square that with google still reporting growth in ads revenues. Surely google's business should tank by that much (not even taking into account the additional cost of processing a seach with AI).

> What I don't understand is how do you square that with google still reporting growth in ads revenues. Advertiser sees fewer hits from ad campaign, assumes it's their competitors, then raises their budget slightly to better compete in the ad auction. Multiply that by about 300m businesses. The signals that Google's customers (the advertisers) get is not "Your ad was ignored after we answer the user's query directly"…

I don't think advertisers are so naive than to not be aware that google now answers many queries with AI.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#769

Post by pasc1878 »

wat10000 wrote: post #714
pasc1878 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for the OP it is not as it does not give a temperature in their preferred units and probably USDA gives the wrong temperature in their locality.

The only advantage is the automatic unit conversion, and that introduces a second point where the summary can get it wrong. If the source gives an incorrect answer then the AI summary is just going to repeat it, if you’re lucky.

Yes USDA gives the wrong value for Canadians and Britons

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#770

Post by pasc1878 »

omnicognate wrote: post #292
pasc1878 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi sort of gets this correct. Kagi search gives the pork board first as well. But note that site fails mtkd's requirements giving temperature in degrees Fahrenheit and not Celsius. The second hit does give a correct temperature but has a cookie banner (which at least can be rejected with one click) The optional Kagi assistant quotes the pork board, usda which also is only in Fahrenheit, and third a blog on site for…

I don't really see the problem with F and C. As I mentioned, I always stick " C" on the end of temperature queries. It's 2 characters and the results always have the centigrade temps, on both Kagi and Google.

The OPs main complaint was lack of C when that is the temperature scale used in their country
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