Study shows: Google is throttling its AI search results

According to a recent study, Google is increasingly reducing its AI search results. The company had previously experimented with some features, but they showed strange results.

Google's AI search results have declined significantly in recent months. This is the result of a recent study by the SEO platform SE Ranking. According to the study, the US company would reconsider the use of artificial intelligence in its search.

Background: In May 2024, Google integrated the AI ​​Overview function into its search engine. An AI summarizes answers to search queries and displays them at the top of the search. However, questionable or even nonsensical content often appeared there.

Google scales back AI search results

The researchers at SE Ranking have investigated how often AI-generated content appears in the search results and which sources were cited there. A test in July 2024 showed that 7.47 percent of around 100,000 search queries contained the AI ​​overview. This would correspond to a decrease of 1.24 percent compared to the previous month of June.

The researchers also concluded that the length of AI Overview content has decreased to 2,633 characters, a 40 percent decrease from the previous month. The sources are again Forbes, Business Insider and Entrepreneur appeared most frequently.

AI Overview provides false and misleading answers

Google had already announced at the end of May 2024 that it wanted to scale back its AI search results. Before that, there had been numerous complaints because many users received incorrect or strange answers to their queries. AI Overview, for example, suggested using glue as a pizza ingredient to prevent the cheese from slipping.

SE Rankings also found that Google's AI search results would no longer cite Reddit or Quora links on July 11, 2024. Previously, the company had strongly favored the two platforms in its search.

According to the researchers, there was an increase in AI search results for some niche topics. For example, searches on relationship topics triggered the AI ​​overview in 40.64 percent of all cases.

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