Google against website operators: AI overview in search even larger

Google is expanding its AI overviews and is now displaying even more information and details in the search query summaries generated by artificial intelligence. This is not good news for the free web.

AI overviews completely fill the ‘first page’

Google Search continues to shift towards a pure showcase for AI-generated content. Google has recently started to focus even more on AI summaries, also known as AI overviews, and to present them to users in an even more noticeable way. As Search Engine Roundtable reports, Google now displays “complete” AI answers above the actual search results on its answer pages. The “Show more” button disappears. The behavior basically corresponds to what users see when using Google’s separately offered “AI mode”: AI content takes up practically the entire screen, results from the web can only be seen at second glance.

Input field for queries displaces web results

In some cases, Google also appears to load the so-called “Ask Anything” box, which allows the user to enter additional queries to the AI ​​search. The Internet company has now confirmed this approach to colleagues, but also made it clear that the changes are not made equally for all search queries. Instead, “AI overviews will only be dynamically expanded when our systems determine that this is most useful,” said Robby Stein, Google’s vice-president of product for AI search a post on X/Twitter. Stein continues that ongoing tests and changes are being made, which is why further adjustments are to be expected based on feedback from users.

Google apparently designs the whole thing in such a way that the user first receives a full-screen answer from the AI ​​search on the search results page, while the input field for further queries appears at the bottom of the screen. In most cases, the user no longer sees the search results shown below from the free web. Search engine specialist Barry Schwartz, who was one of the first social media users to become aware of the change, warned in one X/Twitter post that Google is not doing anything good for website operators with this step. Although Google uses them generously for the AI ​​answers, it only actually redirects users to external offers in a fraction of cases.