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Google search boss says AI isn’t killing search clicks (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 77 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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!

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  • [+] 28 points 1 year ago (4 children)
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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year 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.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year 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.

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