Liz Reid says Google’s data shows AI is generating consistent clicks and better experiences.
  • Sludgehammer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    74·
    24 days ago

    Riiight… Next headline: “Pusher claims that his drugs not the cause sleepless nights and bugs under the skin”

  • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
    73·
    24 days ago

    AI is driving more searches

    This is hilarious. People are searching more because they aren’t getting results they need from AI, which drives ad revenue so Google’s doing great!

    • Cypher@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      23 days ago

      Search engines are so significantly worse than they were a decade ago. The golden age of accurate searches is over, now it’s all SEO piss and AI slop.

      • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
        5·
        23 days ago

        To give credit to the people trying to make good search, the internet is so much worse than it was a decade or two ago.

        Over that time the ad driven internet has encouraged low quality, high volume websites full of articles designed around common search terms.

        It started before AI, but now you can drum up an article in seconds it has got much worse.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          20 days ago

          Yup I ran into this last week, looking for a wiring diagram of a relatively obscure part.

          1st page of results on DDG and Google were both AI ‘blog’ style results of random diagrams unrelated to the part. All the same “loading…” text and I’m pretty sure all generated on the fly as I opened them.

          It didn’t even give me the manufacturer’s site in the first 2 pages. And because I got upset and clicked through every result to vent to a co-worker, it decided to give me MORE slop results. I watched the useful info vanish from the results on reloads of the same search term.

          • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
            1·
            20 days ago

            Holy crap, I hadn’t considered that we have the technology to create articles on the fly based on search terms.

            That could be a serious weapon of war - you get your site to the top through SEO, then show each user personalised propoganda. You show googlebot the genuine page but adjust the page based on what you know about the user.

    • decended_being@midwest.socialEnglish
      4·
      23 days ago

      There are really two options, either

      1. Clicks on results have decreased because AI summaries are so good. Or
      2. AI summaries aren’t giving the answers people want so they’re clicking on results.

      It’s good for Google to show that clicks are happening because that’s part of how they make their money, their clients need the clicks to survive. It’s good for Google to show that AI summaries are being used because it’s a product they’ve poured a lot of money into, that’s being sold to shareholders as a superintelligence.

      Bubble is going to burst.

  • elucubra@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    25·
    24 days ago

    I run sites for a major NGO for addiction recovery. We often ask people how they found us. More than half now say AI. We don’t have ads in our sites, but for people monetizing their sites this must be dramatic.

    Also, Google must be bleeding ads revenue,

  • nadram@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    24 days ago

    Amount of Google searches I’ve made since implementation of AI results: zero

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      1·
      23 days ago

      I’ve only used Google a couple of times, and by accident. The ebook reader I have seems hard coded to search Google when you ask it to search the web for a word in the book. I intensely dislike the AI slop. I do not want an AI summary of the Wikipedia article. Just take me to the wiki article you dunces!

  • DaddleDew@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    24 days ago

    Search clicks were dead already from 19 out of the top 20 results being AI generated SEO garbage pages and “articles” that contains information that is blatantly false and even contradictory. AI just gives you that same garbage right there without having to click anything. The real info is probably buried somewhere two search pages down.

    • MudMan@fedia.io
      4·
      24 days ago

      Honestly, the guy is absolutely full of crap, but this is a solid point. The question os where the clicks AI summaries are absolutely killing are coming from.

      I can’t imagine this will survive forever, considering that Google has already gone through the loop of getting nuked from orbit by the EU by summarizing news content once. Even if AI wasn’t involved in this at all, it’s of very dubious legality in… well, wherever Google News got swiftly shut down.