Google's AI search revamp puts publishers in a quandary

CALIFORNIA

Google's use of artificial intelligence to sum up answers to search queries has publishers wondering if traffic to their websites will wither.

The internet titan announced on May 14 it is introducing AI-generated answers to online queries in the United States, in one of the biggest changes to its world-leading search engine in 25 years.

The change will soon spread to other countries, arguably reducing the importance of links and web pages for more than a billion people.

And bloggers, news outlets and others who benefit from people clicking on their links via Google's search results could see audiences dwindle if people are sated by what its "AI Overview" serves up.

"It's going to create a negative impact on brands and publishers who rely on organic search traffic for sure," Marketing AI Institute CEO Paul Roetzer said of such a scenario.

"We just have no idea how much, and we don't really know what you can do about it."

AI blurbs generated by Google's Gemini technology will offer succinct summaries of what it found on the internet with only a few links to the online sources that supplied the information.

Research firm Gartner predicts traffic to the web from search engines will fall 25 percent by 2026 because of increased reliance on AI in general.

Roetzer noted that Google has not provided much information about how the change might affect advertisers or publishers, essentially asking them to have faith.

"It's just going to be a grand experiment happening in real time that will move people's businesses one way or the other, depending on how it plays out," Roetzer told AFP.

For now, marketers and publishers have little choice but to keep doing what they are doing, and diversify where they appear online to get noticed in places other than Google searches, he added.

But online audiences have already been splintering as people spend time on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and other venues, so opportunities exist to connect with people there, Roetzer added.

Aware of the negative reactions from publishers and content creators, Google executives insisted that the new formula would encourage users to click on a wider variety of websites, not the other way around.

"We're committed to ensuring a vibrant ecosystem," promised Hema Budaraju, a Google search director, at a press roundtable. In the new version, "sites receive more traffic" than before, she said.