After a few months of regression from the AI-powered search feature, Google has just announced that the AI-powered search feature is going to expand. This feature is an AI-powered summarization tool that provides compiled answers to queries entered into Google Search and which are presented in traditional search results.
Despite a disastrous launch of the search product in May, Google has been quietly tweaking the feature.
In a blog post, Google announced a number of updates to its AI search functionality.
Fact checking and relevance
In its publications, Google claims that “people are visiting a greater variety of websites to get help with more complex questions.”
They go on to say that people who visit websites through AI Overviews spend more time on the sites they visit, likely compared to traditional search results.
To improve the website's relevant information, the company is adding a new link display on the right side of the AI preview on desktop, with a “site icons” button on mobile.
Apparently, some users could see the addition of links to relevant websites in the text of AI summaries (in addition to the already existing links). Again, Google claims that this experiment showed higher traffic results.
Some worry that AI insights could harm websites by preventing users from going there for information. Google says the new linking systems would improve traffic to sites.
The blog states that the feature is rolling out, but we haven't received it on our accounts yet. At the time of writing, we haven't been able to see it in action yet.
This clearly looks like an attempt to show where information comes from in a more user-friendly way.
We wonder if these changes are a response to Microsoft Bing's version of AI Overview, which actually offers much better citations and is much more informative than Google's current tool.
Search for laboratories
The Google Search beta, called “Search Labs,” offers curious guinea pigs a way to test out potential new features that could come to Google Search.
Google announced in this blog the ability to “save” an AI presentation for reference as well as the ability to “simplify” the language of an AI-generated response.
It feels like a simplification of something that is already supposed to summarize complex information.
You need to sign up for Search Labs to test these beta features, and they appear to only be available to US-based searchers.
Global expansion
AI Overviews is rolling out to Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and the UK with this update.
It's not yet clear how Google plans to prevent these countries from happening again, but the company has reduced the prevalence of answers from unreliable sources like Reddit and Quora.
The company also reduced the types of queries that could trigger an AI preview to appear in search results.
It remains to be seen whether AI Overviews will become a viable and useful research tool.