AI has landed in Google Search, but how much will you really see it?

Ben Schoon | May 19 2024 - 9:00 am PT

As the first big announcement of I/O 2024 this week, Google revealed that AI Overviews – formerly the Search Generative Experience (SGE) – are now rolling out to the general public. But since its initial debut a year ago, AI Overviews in Search don’t seem to be as prevalent as they used to be.

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When Google first announced its SGE experiment last year, we called it “scarily sufficient” as, in many cases, results generated by AI answered the question more efficiently than links ever could, and with pretty good accuracy. Back then, SGE results were triggered on almost any search. There were exceptions, certainly, but most searches would result in a block of AI at the top of the page, pushing everything else down the screen.

Over the past year, it’s felt as though that has changed.

Google seems to have toned back how often you’ll see AI Overviews in Search leading up to this week’s launch. Many straightforward searches for direct keywords – such as the name of something or someone – often won’t show an AI Overview, and rather just show typical results. Many searches that trigger Featured Snippets or Knowledge Panels will also skip the AI.

It also seems that a balance has been struck with shopping, too. Google may still show AI with these results, but sometimes lower on the page, giving products top billing.

Overall, Search’s use of AI just feels less aggressive than it once did.

Google, this week, explained to 9to5Google that AI Overviews will only appear in Search when the system believes it’s particularly useful. So, for example, when you’re searching for something that may require pulling information from a variety of sources, or when you’re asking a direct question in Search, AI may end up being used more frequently than when you aim for very specific key words.

In the end, that feels like the right call. AI in Search can be helpful. For instance, Google’s examples of using AI to plan meals or trips in Search and have the AI organize meal plans with links to recipes from around the web seem genuinely and incredibly useful. But, other times, AI just gets in the way. After a year using SGE, I’ve mainly felt myself just scrolling past the answers half the time because, often, they just aren’t the answer I’m looking for.

*AI Overviews seem super useful for planning, in part because they have lots of links*

One of the biggest questions around the general rollout of AI Overviews remains on how it will affect the internet on the whole. Google Search, being the largest search engine in the world by a large margin, funnels incredibly massive amounts of traffic to websites. The simple fact is that Google can’t starve that traffic. If it does, huge swaths of the internet will likely die, and many others will convert to using AI to generate huge amounts of content in a bid to survive (that’s happening already, too). That’s no good for anyone, including Google, as AI feeding off of other AI is a recipe for disaster.

We’ll have to see how it all pans out over the months and, really, years to come.

Google is rolling out AI Overviews starting in the US – are you seeing them live yet?

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