But there was one particular announcement at I/O that’s sending shockwaves around the web: Google is rolling out what it calls AI Overviews in Search to everyone in the United States by this week and around the world to more than a billion users by the end of the year.
I thought about it afterward, and it’s pretty clear he wasn’t just talking about OpenAI but also Meta, which has openly turned away from sending any traffic to any websites whatsoever and has been explicit that it doesn’t want to support news on its platforms at all anymore.
I have to look at data on an aggregate [basis], so anecdotally, there are always times when people have come in an area and said, “Me, as a specific site, I have done worse.” But it’s like an individual restaurant saying, “I’ve started getting fewer customers this year.
I was reading some SEO community trade publications this morning responding to the changes, and one of the things that was pointed out was that, in Search Console, it doesn’t show you if the clicks are coming from a featured snippet or an AI Overview or just Google’s regular 10 blue links.
But in many cases, part of what is making people respond positively to AI Overviews is that the summary we are providing clearly adds value and helps them look at things they may not have otherwise thought about.
I think, and this is a complex question, which is how do you reward originality, creativity, and independent voice at whatever scale at which you’re able to and give a chance for that to thrive in this content ecosystem we create?
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