Google’s launch last week of a new ‘AI Mode’ on search in the US appears to abandon its previous position as a friend to publishers.
The tech giant, which made $265bn (£205bn) in media revenue last year, is introducing an AI information delivery system built entirely on information taken from content creators without their permission, showing disregard for the health of the media ecosystem on which it relies.
AI Mode is the natural next step for Google – and perhaps a glimpse of what information retrieval will look like in the next, the AI-powered era of the internet.
It deploys the latest large language models to improve the search experience by allowing users to “ask complex, multi-part questions” as well as “ask follow-ups to dig deeper”. If you have a compound query that would have required multiple conventional searches, AI Mode will handle this in one, synthesising information from multiple websites and presenting a natural-language response in a chat interface, alongside links.
Google is doing this because of competitive pressure. It’s now becoming clear that consumers are turning to AI tools in place of general search.
The Verge’s ‘Remodelling the Internet’ survey, published at the end of last month, found that 61% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials are using AI tools in place of search engines.
Whereas Google holds a dominant 90% share of conventional search, the market for AI applications is more competitive. OpenAI and Microsoft’s Co-Pilot both have more of the chatbot market than Google. Smaller players such as Anthropic (which is soon introducing models that can access the real-time web) and Perplexity have dedicated and growing user-bases. If queries move from Google to the AI tools consumers are already using, Google’s core search business will look a lot less healthy.
Whilst Google’s AI products don’t stand out for their performance or popularity, they do stand out for their treatment of publishers.
Whereas other major players are giving website owners control and paying them for real-time access to their content, Google is using the dominant position it has in search to force publishers’ hands. Website owners have no choice but to give Google’s web crawlers access to their content. The flow of traffic from search is still the most important source of new users for most outlets.
The only way to stop Google summarising your content in an AI Overview – or now via AI Mode – is to either come out of search entirely or to give it a ‘no snippet’ instruction which has the effect of dramatically reducing prominence in all search results.
Even Perplexity, previously criticised for stealing and summarising journalism, has now launched a publisher programme and is committing to sharing revenues and respecting publisher controls (although it’s worth noting that its technical FAQ page still says “if a page is blocked, we may still index the domain, headline, and a brief factual summary”, so we can hold off the standing ovation just yet). OpenAI is increasingly looking like the grown-up in the room with a mature partnership programme, despite the vast unauthorised use of content to train its models in the first place.
Google seems to be hiding the performance of its AI search features. Despite repeated requests from media owners, Google has refused to separate AI Overview data in its Search Console analytics service. And it seems to be going to some lengths to ensure this isn’t easy to obtain in other ways. Unlike other search features such as ‘People Also Ask’ and ‘Featured Snippets’, AI Overviews are entirely processed server-side. This means it’s extremely challenging to analyse without looking inside Google’s own data.
12 questions for Google on AI Mode
Press Gazette asked Google 12 questions about AI Mode:
“Are the proportion of ‘zero-click’ searches higher when an AI Overview is displayed?
“How do the CTRs for the links in AI Overviews compare to the equivalent positions in organic search (for queries where an AI Overview is not shown)?
“Why is Google not providing separated data for AI Overviews in Search Console?
“Why is Google not providing publishers with granular controls allowing them to decide whether their content is used for AI Overviews without impacting search prominence (i.e. via snippet controls)? Does it plan to change this?
“Will Google be providing such controls for AI Mode?
“What does Google estimate the impact of AI Mode will be on publisher traffic?
“Will Google be compensating publishers for the use of content in AI Mode?
“Will Google be providing data – either in aggregate or via search console – on the performance of links in AI Mode?
“Will Google be deploying AI Overview or AI Mode on queries relating to news topics?
“In light of recent research on misattribution and inaccuracies for news queries, how will Google be ensuring its deployment of AI in search is trusted?
“What are the plans for rolling-out AI Mode globally and in the UK?
“What feedback will Google be seeking from publishers on AI Mode?”
‘AI Overviews our one of our most popular search features’
We received the following response from a Google spokesperson: “AI Overviews are one of our most popular Search features, reaching more than a billion users globally every month. They make it easier than ever for people to find the information they need and discover relevant sites across the web, which opens up more opportunities to connect with publishers, businesses and creators.”
Google claims that AI Overviews increase traffic for a variety of highly implausible reasons. Google head of search Liz Reid said that with AI Overviews “people are visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions” and that “links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query”. No data has been provided to substantiate any of these claims.
This sits in stark contrast with both intuition and the emerging evidence from methodologies that work around Google’s server-side processing.
I spoke with Laurence O’Toole, founder and chief executive of SEO tool, Authoritas. He has built a means of understanding the impact on AI Overviews by tracking the search terms where they are being deployed and measuring the impact on publisher clicks. According to this data, the presence of AI Overviews reduces average click-through-rates by 40% to 52% on desktop and 45% to 57% on mobile. These figures strike me as entirely credible.
Taking a broader view, the events of the last year have irredeemably changed the way we should look at Google. It used to be the friendly face of big tech. Perhaps that was because it needed publishers more than Meta or Amazon (a search engine without access to professionally-produced content is undoubtedly a far inferior product). Yes, they scraped our journalism but there was a value exchange and they supported the industry with grant programmes such as the News Initiative, and direct payment for content via Google News Showcase (a secretive scheme which distributes hundreds of millions in sweeteners to publishers).
They also took a more cooperative approach to regulation, sought publisher feedback and occasionally made product changes as a result (the removal of their first-click-free policy which required publishers to give away some free content in order to appear in search is a good example).
This is no longer the case: Google is in danger of bleeding the media dry. If its conduct continues unchecked large sections of the industry will go out of business.
Two simple changes are needed urgently from Google.
1. Provide separate data in Search Console on the performance of links in AI search features (i.e. AI Overviews and AI Mode)
2. Allow publishers to decide whether their content is used for AI features whilst still appearing in search.
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