Google Search testing another AI push

When you use Google Search currently, there is a good chance that you get an AI overview at the top of the search results page. It lists some text and a “show more” button to expand the full AI generated content. The organic results are shown below the fold already, which has led to a organic traffic decline for many sites. For Google, it is an opportunity to keep searchers on its own website, which increases revenue.

Google is now testing a change on its search results pages that has the potential to be even more damaging to websites around the world, reports Seroundtatble. The change expands the display of the AI reply on the results page. Users do not have to click on the “show more” button anymore to display the entire reply, as it is displayed automatically.

According to several Google employees, the automatic expansion is only happening “for topics where our systems determine it to be most useful”. Users who started to scroll already will notice that the expansion of AI content has stopped, according to the company.

This in turn means that the organic results are pushed down even further on the search results page, which may lead to even less traffic.

Google confirmed the test but it is unclear at this point whether it is going to make it the standard going forward. If I had to guess, I’d put a large sum on Google making it the new default for certain searches at the beginning before it gets expanded further.

It is clear that Google is pushing AI on Search and other company products. It has made and is making large investments in AI infrastructure and these are not paying for themselves.

For publishers, being listed in Google Search is becoming less and less of an attractive option to attract users and increase revenue at the same time.

Some have begun to block AI from indexing their websites, but unless other content discovery services are taking over, many may see a decline in the coming years or vanish entirely from the Internet.