Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.
It’s worse than that. Not only are people going with the AI Overview as gospel, the search results themselves have nothing to do with the normal SEO that’s been the standard for the last 20+ years. People are picking the AI Summary, because the search itself is fundamentally broken.
Gone are the days that website content + traffic determine the order or relevance. Now websites have to include specifically formatted fluff that the AI summarizers like in order to show as relevant results. Just ask Louis Rossman.
The problem with search is not that it’s broken. The problem is that an effective search system like google had on the early days is only truly effective for “power users” who try to understand how to use search effectively.
The majority of people have been using Google as if it was an AI long before it turned into one. People search for questions expecting to see answers, so search engines tried to adapt to that. And then when you’re trying to guess what the user wants to search for instead of just searching literally for what they asked, your search engine will never be 100% effective for anyone.
Like, on the old days for each person who could get great search results from Google you had 9 people who failed to use Google at all. That was one happy user and 9 very unhappy ones. Nowadays they have all 10 of them getting mediocre to ok-ish results. They are never getting anyone as satisfied as that one person used to be, but in general the average satisfaction has gone up.
It’s worse than that. Not only are people going with the AI Overview as gospel, the search results themselves have nothing to do with the normal SEO that’s been the standard for the last 20+ years. People are picking the AI Summary, because the search itself is fundamentally broken.
Gone are the days that website content + traffic determine the order or relevance. Now websites have to include specifically formatted fluff that the AI summarizers like in order to show as relevant results. Just ask Louis Rossman.
The problem with search is not that it’s broken. The problem is that an effective search system like google had on the early days is only truly effective for “power users” who try to understand how to use search effectively.
The majority of people have been using Google as if it was an AI long before it turned into one. People search for questions expecting to see answers, so search engines tried to adapt to that. And then when you’re trying to guess what the user wants to search for instead of just searching literally for what they asked, your search engine will never be 100% effective for anyone.
Like, on the old days for each person who could get great search results from Google you had 9 people who failed to use Google at all. That was one happy user and 9 very unhappy ones. Nowadays they have all 10 of them getting mediocre to ok-ish results. They are never getting anyone as satisfied as that one person used to be, but in general the average satisfaction has gone up.
We’re entering a dark age that’s being marketed as a renaissance.