Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) uses newspaper and publishing content to create quick summaries of questions on Google Search, which poses a threat to content producers. content.
In May, Google began introducing a new form of search with support from generative AI. The product called Search Generative Experience (SGE) uses AI to generate summaries for certain search queries. They appear at the top of Google’s search home page, with links to “dig deeper.” Google said the information generated by AI is aggregated from many different websites and links
According to Reuters, SGE is currently present in the US, India, and Japan. The product is still in development but raises concerns for content publishers as they try to find their place in a world where AI could dominate the way users search and take information.
Accordingly, the new tool raises concerns related to website traffic. Whether the publishers are acknowledged as the source of the information appearing in SGE summaries and whether their accuracy is assured.
Significantly, publishers want to be paid for the content that Google and other AI companies use to train AI engines. In response, Google said it is working to create better awareness of the business model for generative AI applications and to receive input including from publishers
In late September, Google announced a new tool, called Google Extends, that gives publishers the option to block Google from using their content to train AI models. However, for SGE, blocking means the original content disappears from Google’s traditional search pages.
executive According to one publisher, SGE’s design pushed links that appeared in traditional searches down. This has the potential to reduce traffic to those links by up to 40%.
More alarming is the possibility that web surfers avoid clicking on any links if the SGE summary meets their information needs. For example, users are satisfied with Google’s summary of the best time of year to go to Paris, so they don’t want to click on a link to a website to learn more.
Publishers’ concerns about SGE boil down to one important point: Google is crawling their content for free to create summaries that users can read rather than click on links to web pages. They also believe that Google is not clear about how it can block Google from crawling content for SGE