Google Says its AI (MUM) Now Makes Better Consensus of Featured Snippets

[engine]

Google says the quality of its featured snippets are improved through its latest AI model, Multitask Unified Model (MUM), [webmasterworld.com] which can now understand the notion of consensus; This is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact.

Our systems can check snippet callouts (the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font) against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing. We've found that this consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippet callouts.

We’ve trained our systems to get better at detecting these sorts of false premises, which are not very common, but are cases where it’s not helpful to show a featured snippet. We’ve reduced the triggering of featured snippets in these cases by 40% with this update.

[blog.google...]

[tangor]

The continued search for valid granularity is impressive. Have to wait a bit and see how this works out!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

One of my hobbies is restoring vintage widgets. Every experienced enthusiast knows that these widgets require 2.2 Quarts of oil, it's stamped on the side of the widget.

As of this week a new featured snippet has been chosen saying the capacity is 3 Quarts. If you put 3 Quarts in these small widgets you immediately foul the air filter and get blow-by(and eventually widget damage)

It's also the first time I see an Amazon item take the featured snippet. Amazon sells a "rebuild kit" that comes with a 3 Quart bottle of oil... but the query is "how much does this widget take".

Not Good... ignoring expertise for concensus may be better for some querries, but not all. Also interesting, the 2-4th place results are now all affiliate sites selling the 3 Quart Amazon kit... you don't get accurate info until position 5 on this query.

I hope they work it out.