When Google rolled out AI Overviews in search results back in May, the company was hit with an immediate backlash; mostly due to some of the absurd results that the AI summaries were providing. These included telling people to add glue to pizza or claiming that adding more cooking oil to an oil fire would help put it out.
A week after its introduction, Google had already reduced the prevalence of AI Overviews from 27% of search results all the way down to 11%.
A new report from the Search Engine Land using data from the SEO firm BrightEdge (via Android Police), says that number has gotten even lower and Google has nearly eliminated contributions from sources like Reddit and Quora.
The feature was designed to utilize AI tools to provide summaries of information and help users find relevant information faster.
According to the BrightEdge data, certain categories of queries like education, entertainment and e-commerce showed the biggest drop. As an example, entertainment searches dropped from 14% to 0%, while education queries reduced from 26% to 13%. Meaning, that only 13% of education searches will feature an AI overview.
E-commerce searches also saw a drop from 26% to 9% as well. That may partly be attributed to Google removing product viewers and carousels from AI Overviews as well as product comparison tables.
The more relevant information for users is what triggers AI Overviews. Using phrases that start with “Best”, “What is”, “How to” and “Symptoms of” are more likely to trigger an overview. However, it appears searches that include a brand name, a general product or that relate to lifestyle content either don’t seem to get AI Overviews or receive them less often.
It’s unclear how much of the internet AI Overviews was scraping when Google launched the service, but it was clear that it should never have been pulling from sources like Reddit or Quora, sites notoriously filled with troll-level answers to even the most earnest questions.
This means that fewer user-generated suggestions will appear; roughly 85.71% and 99.69% less for information from Reddit and Quora, respectively.
Additionally, the AI Overviews appear to be taking up 13% less real estate on search pages, BrightEdge’s data claims. Google is also trying to prevent duplication of data by not citing the same sources in the AI Overviews as in the search results below it.
Google hasn’t quite given up on AI Overviews, as the tool still exists and is active. It remains to be seen if it joins other actually useful programs in Google’s product graveyard (RIP Podcasts app).
As reminder, you can try block of sorts on AI Overviews by changing settings in Google to give you a back-to-the-basics Search that gets rid of the frills of AI Overviews and some other Google-induced headaches.
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