Google's SGE: AI Overviews is rolling out globally

[Whitey]

A concise overview broken down by @rustybrick

AI Overviews is rolling out to all US based searchers in Google Search, making AI Overviews available to hundreds of millions of searchers by next week, Liz Reid, the company’s new head of Search, announced at Google I/O. AI Overviews will launch in more countries soon and be available to more than a billion users by the end of the year.

[searchengineland.com...]

[Whitey]

UPDATE: A must read with @rustybrick interviewing Hema Budaraju, the Senior Director of Product, Search Generative Experience, Google:

Google, as expected, has officially launched AI Overviews in the US and will expand the launch to other countries by the end of this year. AI Overviews were in Search Labs under the Search Generative Experience last year and has finally launched.

AI Overviews, which was briefly named AI Answers, then went back as AI Overviews is rolling out to all US English users in the next week or so.

I spoke in detail with Hema Budaraju, the Senior Director of Product, Search Generative Experience, Google, as I covered yesterday at Search Engine Land. Google also announced a bunch of new AI search features that are coming soon.

[seroundtable.com...]

[Whitey]

@martibuster's article at SEJ re: New Google AI Overviews Documentation & SEO

Google published new documentation about their new AI Overviews search feature which summarizes an answer to a search query and links to webpages where more information can be found. The new documentation offers important information about how the new feature works and what publishers and SEOs should consider.

What Triggers AI Overviews

AI Overviews shows when the user intent is to quickly understand information, especially when that information need is tied to a task.

[searchenginejournal.com...]

Some analysis that will likely demonstrate insight into both the preparation and intention behind the previous year or so of HCU updates and site removals. Another must read to develop an understanding of these changes and how to prepare for the future.

[rustybrick]

@Whitey the updated documentation is also in my stories on SER and SEL - but it is easy to miss

[McMohan]

The more I read about it, more it resembles Perplexity.ai

[Skips]

What I'm interested about is how it will affect organic traffic. Webmasters rely on users coming to website to get the information they are looking for, here the user gets the information without ever visiting the site.

[aristotle]

Has anyone in the U.S. seen this yet? I've done about 10 searches today in different subject areas and so far still haven't seen it.

[rustybrick]

Many are, but most are not yet, from what I can tell.

[aristotle]

Many are, but most are not yet, from what I can tell.

Do you mean that it's being rolled out person by person?

Somehow I thought that it would depend on the search term, not the searcher. Also I would expect it to only be useful for a minority of search terms.

[rustybrick]

Google rolls these things out slowly; first 10%, 25%, 50%...

[universenet]

With Google AI Overviews Google will help to people that have all in one place (google place) and no need click in some "stupid" link where is located original content

[Skips]

...yeah, not having to click any 'stupid links' is good for people, good for google, bad for producers of original content, who will then stop producing content, which then will be bad for people and bad for google. So, I somehow think they must have thought this through a couple of steps ahead, so I'm curious how it's supposed to look in theory...

[superclown2]

So first of all it's hidden under 'other'; the vast majority won't ever find it or even know it exists.

What's more interesting though is: When I use it, even when typing in search terms with millions of results, every time I get the message: "It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" with a 'see all results' button below, which takes me back to the usual junk. My conclusions are:

1) they don't want anyone to use it.
2) they want those who do use it to stop using it ASAP.

So: why does it exist at all?

[aristotle]

I found this response under "People Also Ask":

How to get Google AI answers?
Get "AI Overviews and more" in search results

Make sure you're signed in to your Google Account with Incognito mode turned off. Do a search on Google. If an AI Overview or another experimental generative AI feature is available, it will show in search results.

So this may explain why I've never seen AI Overview show up in my google searches, since I always use the Firefox browser in "private browsing" mode.

[Whitey]

Speakers at Google’s Marketing Live event demonstrated how they will utilize user search queries and AI Overviews content to show interactive shopping ads that will push organic search results even lower, stating that Google is “focused on opening up new opportunities for your business.”

[searchenginejournal.com...]

Article from @martinibuster. It's all about increasing the SERP reach and revenue from ads.

[aristotle]

So has anyone actually seen this in live results? How much of the screen does it use? Does it show references to the sources of its content? What about additional ads?

Also, why wouldn't google show it to searchers who aren't signed in?

[superclown2]

I strongly suspect that SGE will eventually go the same way as so many 'other bets' and be dropped after having lost the company billions of pounds and ruined it's credibility in the minds of millions of people. Artificial 'Intelligence' itself may well prove to be a damp squib too, useful for a lot of purposes but certainly not living up to the hype it's been given.

According to the [bbc.com ] only 2% of people in Europe use it regularly and I suspect that most of them use ChatGPT; I don't know anyone that uses Bard2 and the recent bloopers that have made it a laughing stock will hardly provide more confidence in it.

Whoever agreed to pay Reddit 60 million dollars a year for access to their mixture of facts, untruths, inuendo, dreams and downright nonsense may have made the most expensive mistake in business history. Why is it that when I think of AI I think of tulips?

[Whitey]

I’m not sure where AI in search is going, except that Google will attempt to grow it’s income by encouraging greater user engagement.

Google’s advertising income wouldn’t exist if the paradox of not finding what you want didn’t occur.

The day a sustainable competitor search process surfaces that provides precise data driven e-commerce commodity answers like “the cheapest deal with parameters A,B,C” Google would loose a lot of ad revenue.

Since marketing is 95% BS, this isn’t likely to happen, ever.

But I think AI does present the possibility of manipulating the user to another level under Google’s control via its ubiquitous platform and search related assets. G calls that greater engagement and it’s hellbent on ensuring that users return to it on a sustainable basis. SGE is just part of that strategy and users will simply slide into the engagement as it evolves imo.

I think ChatGPT and other AI / LLM tools will find themselves in other areas of usefulness for users and commercial applications. And it may be surreptitiously disguised or not hyped about in many of its applications.