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Ever since Google launched its AI Overviews, it’s been nothing but a mess for the company. Despite being a tool that can put a ton of companies out of business, AI Overviews have been problematic. Well, according to a new report, Google is showing AI Overviews less frequently.
The company has been dealing with yet another AI feature giving it trouble. It’s like Google can’t seem to launch an AI product without some sort of mishap. Besides the people protesting the tool, numerous users have seen some odd responses to their queries. Google posted a blog post explaining why the tool gave some of those responses and put a bit of the blame on the users. It also blamed the responses on “Data Voids” and other things. In any case, it rushed to issue a fix to the problem.
Google is showing AI Overviews less frequently
Back when Google tested this feature under the name SGE, the company was showing generated search results on about 84% of searches, according to BrightEdge. So, if you opted in to test it, you were seeing generative results on the majority of your searches. Well, it looks like Google is pulling back its AI tool just a bit.
When AI Overviews launched to the public back on May 14th, they showed up on between 40% and 50% of searches. However, after the backlash that the company has been facing, it appears that Google is scaling the tool back significantly. The report states that only 15% of searches are seeing overviews.
The source also states that the overviews are more likely to appear if the search query is a question or if there’s a Featured Snippet present. So, it looks like Google is trying to minimize the possibility of it serving up inaccurate information. You won’t have to worry about Google telling you to put glue on your food.
We don’t expect this to be a permanent thing; Google has put too many eggs in its AI basket. We’re sure that the company is just scaling this feature back while it works on the problem.