AI Overviews – News Tracker

1 Aug 2024

AI Overviews rarely showing up in Search Results for Trending News Searchers

Analysis done by Newzdash for over 10,000 trending news keywords across different categories found that AI Overviews were showing up only for 3.9% of searches.

Collection of data for this study was done over the period of nine weeks.

An article from Search Engine Journal summarised key findings of this research and this info graphic from Newsdash shows break down of AI Overviews showing for trending news keywords in different categories like for Health keywords it showed up 30% of times but it didn’t showed up at all for Sports, Entertainment keywords.

29 July 2024

Google is showing Links to AI Overviews in Google Discover feeds

Some users are now seeing cards in Google Discover which mention a question and then a description below it which says “Quickly learn about this sport and more with AI Overviews”.

And in the bottom right corner there is a rounded blue button which says “See AI Overview” clicking it takes to Google Search with AI Overview being showing at top of Search Results.

I think that this is something which is related to on going Olympics in Paris and with these cards in Discover feeds Google is trying to show to users that for sports specific questions they can use AI Overviews to get quick answers and learn more about specifics of the different sports.

Video Summary of AI Overviews Updates from 18 to 25 July

25 July 2024

US Congress seeks answers from Google about wrong answers in AI Overviews and more …

US Congressman Adam Schiff’s office have sent an official letter to Google seeking explanations and answers about AI Overviews.

The letter includes 11 main questions going from how does AI Overviews work to how does Google is making sure that users are aware of misinformation which might be generated by AI Overviews in a response to their query.

Rich Sagar, an SEO Consultant based out of Boston has written a detailed blog post about this – I would recommend you to read this if your interested in knowing more about this.

24 July 2024

Bing launches Bing Generative Search

Bing’s new search experience puts AI-generated answers front and center while pushing traditional search results to the side.

The new layout, which is rolling out for a small number of queries, fills your search results page with AI-generated summaries addressing various aspects of your question.

Here is a gif showing how the results look and this annotated screenshot shows layout of different elements in Bing’s Search results which is generated using AI.


Also I just published a blog post about this sharing some of my thoughts about it.

23 July 2024

AI Overviews in US sometimes are showing citation links to Indian Websites

Lily Ray on X shared a screenshot showing citation links pointing to Indian websites even though – AI Overview was showed to her when She was in US.

She wrote “For the query “what does clear skin look like,” this Google AI Overview returns 4 citations from Indian websites, including Times of India, plus the Indian versions of the Harper’s Bazaar and L’Oréal websites. One of the listed sites is literally a doctor located in India.”

23 July 2024

Google Earning Call – CEO says they looking to scale AI Overviews

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said

“On the AI Overviews, we have rolled it out in the U.S. And we are will be, through the course of the year, definitely scaling it up, both to more countries.

And also, we have taken a conservative start, focused on quality, making sure the metrics are healthy and so on.

But you will see us expand the use cases around it, and we’ll touch definitely more queries. All the feedbacks we have seen are positive.”

To add more – Google while announcing AI Overviews in May during their IO event did say that by end of the year they plan to bring AI Overviews to a billion people by end of year.

But recently some reports are showing that Google is scaling down AI Overviews and its just being shown for around 7% of queries in US.

Also just back in May just after couple of days of launching AI Overviews they were showing totally wrong or in some cases weird answers which it should not – after the backlash Google put out a blog post sharing what they are doing to improve it.

After that blog post in May – Google has scaled down AI Overviews and now its being shown for lesser number of queries.

Let’s see by end of this year – to how many users Google end up scaling AI Overviews to as CEO just said that Google want to scale up.

23 July 2024

Google Earning Call – Update about model powering AI Overviews

Google CEO says in the last quarter they have doubled the size of core model which is used for generating AI Overviews while keeping the latency and cost per AI Overview served flat.

23 July 2024

Google Earning Call – some comments from executives about AI Overviews

CEO Sundar Pichai called out uniformly positive feedback on the product when discussing it on the earnings call.
The company is, “through the course of the year, definitely scaling it up” but has taken a conservative approach so far that’s “focused on quality.”

Philipp Schindler, the company’s chief business officer, said that “people are finding ads either above or below AI Overviews helpful.”

Source – Alphabet CEO says AI Overviews are generating positive feedback via Market Watch.

Also I have extracted all AI Overviews relevant parts from the transcript of earning call and summarised in this blog post – Google Earning Call – Here is Everything What was said about AI Overviews.

23 July 2024

Google is testing showing AI Overviews in Knowledge Panels in US for non-logged in users

SERP Alerts on X shared two screenshots of Google showing AI Overviews in description of knowledge panels on mobile for users who are not logged in.

SERP Alerts shared two screenshots – first showing the description in Knowledge Panel being generated by AI and second one is an expanded view of same showing citation links that were used for generating AI Overview.

Also on 21 April I noticed the same and posted about it on X and later on I wrote a LinkedIn post about this as well.

Another important thing to know is that as per Google AI Overviews show up for logged in users but in this case its showing up for some non-logged in users which is interesting.

22 July 2024

Google is testing showing AI Overviews summaries for Youtube videos

I noticed this today while using Google Search and have shared a screenshot + video recording of this over at my Twitter account.

For any Youtube video showing up in usual search results – if little expanding icon on top right corner of thumbnail is clicked then video is expanded (this doesn’t to Youtube)

And just below that there is a summary of video and on top of which it says “AI Overviews are experimental”.

Also another important is that I noticed this while using Google Search in Australia where officially AI Overviews are not available.

Interesting I think that just like UK Google might be testing showing AI Overviews in Australia for some features.

21 July 2024

Google is testing SAVE functionality for AI Overviews

Glen Gabe on X shared some screenshots and said

“I saw the option in labs to SAVE my AI overviews. That button saves AI overviews in a private collection in the Google Search App. There was a button for saving, then I saw a message once saved, and then you could access the collection like any other in the Google Search App. Interesting to see that.”

If you don’t already know about functionality of saving page links in Google App – here is more about it 👇

Right now in Google App there is a functionality to save the pages – so if your visiting a page in Google App then in the top right corner there is a littler save icon.

Once clicked that page is saved to collection by default and in some Android smartphones it provides a list of collections to save into – once a specific collection is selected and save button it clicked.

Google App saves that page in collections which can be accessed through by going to www.google.com/interests/saved

Also to know more about this I would recommend reading this post by Google itself – Manage your collections & saved items in Google App.

NBCUniversal Commentators will demonstrate use of AI Overviews while covering Paris Olympics

TvTech reports that NBCUniversal commentators during coverage of Paris Olympics will show “How to use AI Overviews” – seems like an Ad campaign by Google to spread awareness about AI Overviews.

21 July 2024

Google is testing new layout for links in AI Overviews

Lily Ray shared these screenshots on X and said

“Sentences in AIO have a little link icon next to them, which expands into a new Google window showing that citation.”

I think that this UI for linking to citations is somewhat similar to what Perplexity is doing. They have citations as numbers like 1, 2 …. next to sentences but in case of AI Overviews its a link icon.

Also later on Glen Gabe shared some screenshots of this new AI Overviews UI as well and a screenshot of links overlay containing all links which were referenced in the whole answer generated by AI Overviews.

Glen added “Tapping the overflow menu and getting a list of links in an overlay is a GREAT way to inject ads into the AI overview experience. Would be so easy…”

Also to add more on what Glen said about ads in AI Overviews – Google is already testing showing ads in AI Overviews they announced this back in May in their Marketing Live 2024 event. Here is a screen recording of what Google demoed.

18 July 2024

Google is testing showing AI Overviews in UK – for Workspace Accounts

Many Google Search users from UK have reported that they are seeing AI Overviews in Search Results when using Workspace accounts in Google Chrome.

Even though AI Overviews are live in US and that too for personal accounts but not for workspace accounts.

You can read more about this on Search Engine Roundtable – Google Tests AI Overviews in Workspace Accounts in The UK.

Right now the updates timeline is starting from 18 July 2024 – but over time I will update it to add stories from the past as well. My goal is to start from the time when SGE (now AI Overviews) was first launched by Google to some users as an experiment in Google Search Labs.

Search Engine Journal is organising a session about AI Overviews – its on 28 August 2 PM ET. In the session there will be Scott Stouffer, CTO – Market Brew and host is Heather Campbell she is Director of Marketing at Search Engine Journal.

Following are the points which will be discussed in this session.

• An understanding of the technical side of embeddings & how they work, enabling efficient information retrieval and comparison.

• Insights into AI Content curation, including the criteria and algorithms used to rank and choose the most relevant snippets for AI-generated overviews.

• A visualisation of the step-by-step process of how AI overviews are constructed, with a clear perspective on the decision-making process behind AI-generated content.

Also Market Brew has created this tool – AI Overviews Visualizer which can be used for getting insights about how snippets and AI Overviews are curated by Google’s Machine Learning models. In this session, Scott will also demonstrate functionality of this tool and how SEOs can leverage it to do analysis & optimise their client’s sites to show up in AI Overviews.

Here is the link to register for this session – AI Overviews Explained: Expert Embedding Techniques For SEO Success

I’ve been tracking everything about AI Overviews (previously known as SGE – Search Generative Experience) and have been book marking it. Just for fun and have like a notes reference for myself and have used those to share with clients as citations whenever they ask me something about AI Overviews.

Here on this page – I will be sharing whatever news, updates or literally anything that I’m noticing about AI Overviews. I plan to create this page as a timeline resource for people to learn about different developments which are related to AI Overviews.

Also I would be super thankful and appreciate you – if you can share new stuff about AI Overviews with me – if you notice something – please reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn.