Global Rollout of Google’s Contentious Search Functionality Sparks Debate

Generative AI responses to web queries on Google Search, called “AI Overviews,” are now available in the United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil.

Google Search AI overviews automatically appear for complex web searches where traditional search results may not be very helpful. These generative overviews, which can be paragraphs long, pull information from the top web results for a given query, including sites like Reddit and Quora. “We’ll be rolling this expansion out gradually over the course of several weeks,” Google wrote in a blog post .

AI overviews are designed for complex multi-step questions, but there were some concerning issues as results proved much worse than other AI tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. When AI overviews began appearing in Google Search for users in the United States in May, it became evident that the company rushed this feature as Search hilariously recommended everything from eating rocks to using gasoline in spaghetti. Google promised to do better by taking action against inaccurate responses, but some people found that AI overviews were simply removed from their search results.

To help people discover where its AI overview pulled a piece of information used for the answer, Google is also bringing citation links, displayed in a new section on the right side on desktop (on mobile, hit the website icons in the upper-right corner). Google claims that directly showing links to supporting pages within AI overviews “drives higher traffic to publisher sites.” Citation links are in addition to the links displayed in the AI Overview link cards. You may also see links to relevant pages inline within the text of AI Overviews, but this feature is currently being tested, so only some people will have it.

If you’re interested in upcoming features coming to Google’s generative search experience, sign up for Google Search Labs and opt into the experiment titled “AI Overviews and more.” Experimental features that are currently limited to English-language users in the U.S., including the option to save, simplify, or receive a more complex explanation for any AI overview, may roll out globally in the future.

Source: Google

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