Google makes publishers happy?

After tentatively launching Google AI Overviews (AI-generated summaries that answer search queries) in May, to US users only, Google has announced new features and a gradual rollout of the feature to six new countries. 

What are the new features? 

When it first launched, the AI Overviews feature displayed relevant websites (to cite its sources and provide users with the opportunity to delve deeper into their search query) beneath the AI summary. Now, these website sources will be shown on the right side of the summary, to give them more prominence, and encourage more users to visit these sites. Google is also testing the traditional in-line links within the overview, to see if this also encourages more clicks to publishers' websites. 

“We are using the right-hand-side space to prominently display the links to the AI Overview so that people can navigate to the content that they’re interested in.” —Hema Budaraju, Senior Director of Product Management

Plus, Google has released two, brand new AI Overviews features in beta, which can be found in their test platform, Search Labs (for US users only). The first is a ‘’save’’ button, that allows users to save their AI Overview results, to revisit at a later date. The second is a “simplify” button that simplifies complex or technical AI overviews, to help users understand the summary, better.  

Which countries will get AI Overviews? 

Google is also planning to slowly roll out AI Overviews to six new countries, which are: 

• The UK
• India
• Japan
• Indonesia
• Mexico
• Brazil

They want to do this cautiously, to avoid another embarrassing debut, after all, who can forget the ‘add glue to pizza’ result that AI Overviews gave when it first debuted in the US?

Why has Google done this? 

Alongside its sometimes questionable AI summaries, when AI Overviews first launched, it received a huge backlash from publishers, who were concerned that the overviews would reduce referral traffic back to their sites. 

"This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as marketed by Google to further satisfy user queries, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content"

In response, Google feels its attempt to make these sites more visible and accessible will result in more “people visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions”, testifying that early tests have shown an increase in traffic to referral sites, and higher quality clicks, as the user is searching with more intent.