After a couple months of backpedaling away form AI Overviews, Google just announced that the AI-powered Search feature is expanding. The feature is an AI summarization tool that provides compiled answers to queries put in Google Search that is presented over traditional search results.
Despite a horrendous launch of the search product in May, Google has been quietly tinkering away at the feature.
In a blog post, Google announced a number of updates to the AI Search feature.
Fact checking and relevance
In their posts, Google claims that "people have been visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions."
They go on to say that the people visiting website via AI Overviews are spending more time on sites they visit, presumably in comparison to traditional search results.
To improve relevant website information, the company is adding a new link display on the right side of the AI Overview on desktop, with a "site icons" button on mobile.
Apparently, some users might see the addition of links to relevant web sites in the text of the AI summaries (in addition to the links that already exist). Again, Google claims that this experiment has shown higher traffic results.
There is a worry that AI Overviews could harm websites by keeping people from actually going to them for information. If you take Google at their word, the new linking systems are allegedly improving site traffic.
The blog does say the feature is rolling out, but we have not received it yet on our accounts. As of this writing, we weren't able to see it in action yet.
It definitely seems like an attempt to show where information is coming from in a more user-friendly manner.
We do wonder if these changes are a response to Microsoft Bing's version of AI Overview which actually offers much better citations and is far more informative than the current Google tool.
Search Labs
Google's beta version of Search called "Search Labs" offers curious guinea pigs a way to test out potential new features that might come to Google Search.
A couple that Google announced in this blog include the ability to "save" an AI Overview for reference as well as the ability to "simplify" the language of an AI-generated answer.
It feels like the dumbing down of something that is already meant to summarize complex information.
You do need to sign up for Search Labs to test these beta features out and it appears to only be available to US-based searchers.
Global expansion
AI Overviews is being rolled out Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom with this update.
How Google will prevent another eat rocks situation in those countries is unclear. Though the company has reduced the prevalence of answers from untrustworthy sources like Reddit and Quora.
The company also lessened the types of inquiries that might trigger an AI overview to appear in search results.
Whether or not AI Overviews will become a viable worthwhile search tool remains to be seen.
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