Though platforms like Perplexity, Arc Browser, and Bing have advanced generated search results, Google’s announcement last week that it’s rolling out “AI Overviews” to searchers will likely make AI-written search results the norm. But some marketers say the feature is not quite ready for widespread use.
“Even when OpenAI innovates and releases features, Google is the company that can deliver AI features to as many people as there are online,” said Darwin Santos, senior technical SEO strategist and AI innovation manager at Webserv.
But Google’s AI answers still have “flaws, redundancies, dangerous information, spam, and other issues,” said Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy and research at Amsive.
“Many of us in the SEO community felt AI Overviews were not yet ready for primetime, and certainly not a huge improvement to the answers Google already provides in its organic results,” she said.
For example, an AI Overview for the search inquiry “best SEO professionals” included people who are not SEO professionals and even a professional who is no longer alive, noted Aleyda Solís, founder and international SEO consultant at Orainti.
The biggest issue for websites is a lack of clarity on how to optimize for AI Overviews. Google hasn’t been doing a great job of communicating the impact and opportunities AI Overviews present for website owners, said Solís. And while websites can opt out of being shown in the Overviews, it’s unclear how that will impact their visibility in search results, she said.
“It will be hard to measure how this change truly impacts website traffic, and even harder to adjust our marketing strategies to find the best ways to be featured in those AI Overviews,” said Ray.
Gartner has already said it expects search volume to fall by 25% by 2026 as a result of AI search changes.
Another concern is the lack of transparency from search engines on how a site’s data and content is being used. “Whether it's Google, Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI with ChatGPT, or Anthropic with Claude, none of these sites [is] sharing data [with] brands, which is making it very difficult for brands to know whether or not their customers are changing their behaviors,” said Wil Reynolds, founder and CEO of Seer Interactive.
Unlike it has done for other search features like Features Snippets, Google said it will not show any data on impressions or clicks from AI Overviews in Google Search Console.
Will searchers like it? “In an AI search world, the fewer websites I have to visit, the happier I am,” said Reynolds. “The amount of friction today with pop-ups, cookie consent, weird navigations, intrusive ads—that experience is not enjoyed by any of us. So I applaud the moves that Google is making.”
Some users, however, are doing the opposite of applauding. Google’s Search Community forum is currently filled with user posts asking how they can disable AI Overviews.
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