After a Series of Mishaps, Google Significantly Reduces the Visibility of AI-generated Summaries, Now Only 7% of Searches Will Display AI-generated Overviews

Google ambitiously integrated AI-generated overviews into its search engine, powered by its artificial intelligence application, Gemini. When users searched for certain keywords or questions, Gemini automatically fetched and summarized web content, allowing users to get answers without having to click through search results individually.

However, not long after its launch, the AI overview feature experienced significant blunders. Instances such as suggesting people should eat a certain number of rocks daily for health and using super glue to fix pizza severely undermined user trust in the AI overviews.

In response, Google gradually reduced the visibility of its AI overviews. Data shows that when the feature was first launched in May, the visibility of AI overviews was around 80%. By June, it had dropped to between 40% and 50%. Following the super glue on pizza incident, Google further reduced the visibility of AI overviews to 15%.

According to the latest data from SearchEngineLand, the visibility of AI overviews has now plummeted to just 7%, a stark contrast to the 80% seen in May. Users now rarely encounter AI-generated summaries in their daily searches.

Detailed data indicates that in educational queries, the visibility of AI overviews dropped from 26% to 13%, in e-commerce-related queries from 26% to 9%, and in entertainment-related queries from 14% to nearly 0%.

Additionally, after a slew of incorrect content appeared on Reddit forums (some of which were intentionally fabricated by users), the frequency of AI overviews citing Reddit content also significantly decreased, possibly due to Google's concern over Reddit users potentially sabotaging content with pranks.

It remains unclear what Google's plan is. Since the AI overview feature hasn't been completely removed, it suggests Google might not be ready to discard the feature entirely. Perhaps by reducing its visibility, Google intends to collect data for improvements, aiming to provide high-quality AI overviews in the future and avoid similar mishaps.