The Search for Logic and Profit in Google AI Overviews

Google AI Overviews (AIO) is a generative AI-driven feature on Google Search that provides summaries of search results rather than the traditional list of sources. While the jury is still out on whether Google Overviews is a good thing or a bad thing for the tech industry, publishers and SEO practitioners are calling it a double-edged blade that may end up drawing blood from everyone, including Google. “Google’s strategy might seem very à jour — leveraging AI and keeping users on their site longer and maintaining their iron grip on the search market,” says Lars Nyman, the CMO of CUDO Compute and an ex-Googler. “The question is what are the implications for search revenues and downstream user behavior? If the impact is negative, then the overviews will be history.” Clearly Google is trying to stay relevant in an age when search competitors like startup Perplexity are eating its lunch. But that’s harder to do when you have established revenue streams to protect, and an endless AI appetite to feed. “Google itself may have to help prop up some of the news sources, perhaps paying for the use of those sources,” says HP Newquist, author and executive director of The Relayer Group, a consultancy and exhibit organizer. “It’s not likely to be enough to keep all the affected new outlets afloat, but there may be little alternative. Google needs to feed the beast, as it were, so it may have to preserve the trough from which it eats.” Related:Navigating Google’s AI Changes to Search: Is SEO Dead? Meanwhile, Google is mum on what its plan for Google Overviews ultimately is. A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story. One can hardly blame Google for taking the “deer in the headlights” stance when asked to make a public comment as there is clearly no easy answer to a problem created by a monster they helped build: AI. “Google is in a tough spot, as OpenAI and other top AI companies have trained their models on most of [the] internet and are cutting into search engine volume,” says David Smooke, founder and CEO at Hacker Noon, a popular and community-driven blog for hackers. “Google-owned YouTube is a uniquely colloquial dataset, as it’s not just how people write, it’s actual billions of hours of training data about how people talk in the real world. In another world, YouTube could have only trained Google models, but that is not the case today.”

Mixed News for Google, Searchers, and Publishers

Follow the money is generally good advice when trying to solve a business problem or investigate a mystery. “Google playing catch-up in the AI search trend will not single-handedly kill digital publishers. But combined with updates to the search engine results page features and their search algorithm updates that are meant to fight AI-generated spam, they are now killing digital publishers,” says Yoyao Hsueh, a digital publisher (Digital Surfer) and a board member of the Web Publishers Association, a non-profit trade association that’s starting up to advocate for small to medium digital publishers. Related:Could Google Lose ‘Verb’ Status After Antitrust Ruling? While killing the businesses of publishers, intentionally or not, may be the result and one that costs Google dearly in the end after it runs out of data sources to feed its AI models, there may be a method to the company’s madness. At least some observers think so. “Google seems to be shifting its strategy from ushering users off its platform to keeping them ensnared within its own digital walls. This pivot is starkly evident with their AI Overviews, where the search engine now serves up spoon-fed summaries without a whisper of their origins,” Nyman says. But the issues aren’t as stark in the case of Google Overviews. Google stands to gain search traffic but can easily lose revenue, nonetheless. That’s quite the predicament. The duality in these results appear to stem from two types of searchers. Related:Google AI Overviews and Its Business Impact in the Tech Industry “There are some people searching online for a quick answer to an immediate question,” says Michelle Symonds, founder & CEO at Ditto Digital, a UK-based digital marketing and SEO agency. “Those people will be satisfied with an AI overview. They are not interested in a detailed expert opinion or answer to a complicated or nuanced question.” This sounds like a win for Google in retaining and increasing its search business against challengers like Perplexity ai, since it is Google’s dominance in search that attracts advertisers. But this type of searcher can negatively impact the advertising side of Google’s business since they are unlikely to consume any ads on the search page or from partners on the network. This is potentially bad news given that Google makes most of its money from ads shown alongside search results. Google ad placement rakes in additional money from things like bid amounts. It also makes a considerable amount of money from ads on partner websites in the Google network. Finding a balance between growing search traffic and growing search ad revenue is tough work. But a second time of searcher helps. “The other type of searcher is one looking for trustworthy content from experts to help them make an informed decision that cannot be reliably found in an AI overview. So, there is room for Google AI Overviews and well-researched, attributed content from respected digital publishers,” Symonds says. “These two types of searchers serve different needs at different times: the quick answer to queries of relatively low importance, and the in-depth answers to high importance searches such as typical YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) queries,” Symonds adds. But the question remains as to which content publishers (many of whom are retailers or other businesses) will fall into the YMYL category strongly enough to warrant a visit from this second type of searchers. “On the part of profit, Google makes revenue from search ads only because users cannot find what they need on the search result page and need to click on a site. So, I don’t think Google will show AI summaries from commercial and transactional searches unless sponsored AI overviews or search ad results are above the regular AI overviews,” says Onajite Omare, founder of Konvart, an AI SEO tool provider. “The data shows that AI typically is shown in informational searches, so search marketing will evolve to be only commercial based for businesses while publishers look to use other platforms for visibility,” Omare adds. And what of all the investments made in top of funnel content — which is typically informational in nature — and designed to attract buyer interest in the earliest stages of the buying process? Will those investments become worthless when Google Overviews take their place? What then, will serve to direct traffic to specific websites? “The concern is that AIO will take away clicks to websites,” says Vince Nero, director of content marketing at BuzzStream, a digital PR and link building provider. “But most likely, it will only take away top funnel questions and terms from sites. So, instead of learning something like “what is content marketing” from a website, users will get the answer from AIO instead of going to the site. But this type of traffic isn’t super valuable for most websites anyway.”

Summaries Without Sources, Attributions, or Bias Checks

Then there is the not-so-small matter of the reliability of the information contained within Google Overviews. It’s no secret that generative AI models sometimes get things wrong, and Google’s brand is no exception. “For the public, the AI Overviews are absolutely presented as fact or truth, which is a gross misrepresentation,” says Joe Karasin, SEO specialist at Karasin PPC, a digital marketing company. “As more consumers are exposed to the AI Overview, they are lulled into a false sense of security. Google’s AI told people to put glue on pizza, so it is far from safe. As more misinformation is published to the web and is consumed by the LLM’s with absolutely no vetting, the public will be exposed to these hallucinations without any real way to distinguish fact from fiction, at least, for those looking for ‘quick answers’. Overall, these overviews are bad for everyone, publishers and consumers alike. And until Google can find a way to present accurate information with attribution, it will continue to be a problem.” Given the serious questions surrounding AI summaries — whether on Google, Bing, or Perplexity — it’s hard to see the value beyond user convenience, and even that is dubious. But other issues loom, too. “On top of that, when utilizing vast datasets of information, search engines such as Google may prioritize quantity over quality and that may greatly impact individuals access to information. For example, after the Israel Hamas war broke out, search engines slowly began to change what came up when users would attempt to research on antisemitism and the history of Israel. This shows that AI and algorithms prioritize vast sets of information rather than potentially credible, historic, or reputable sources,” says Star Kashman, founding Partner at Cyber Law Firm. “If this is the case and the algorithms potentially present bias in numerous occasions, people may be fed hallucinations that can also be racist and dangerous to society or minority groups,” Kashman adds. The legal liabilities surrounding all these issues puts Google on precarious footing with AI Overviews as it does their competitors taking a similar tact. Providing sources for search summaries isn’t likely enough to resolve or mitigate the risks.