Google Is in Trouble, Deep

computerworld.com

5 pointsCrankyBear3 comments

> So what happens when publishers and advertisers start seeing less and less return? They stop spending money on Google ads, don’t they?

I think the assumption is that they won't, because they have no alternative.

> the “presence of an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page.”

I think most of the article points out real problems, but this seems a bit synthetic. From what I can tell, the "AI Overview" usually appears in the top spot, but some portion of the time (A/B testing? predicted quality based?) it appears in the second spot, after the top-ranking page. Assuming a significant number of users (myself included) instinctively scroll past the slop to see the real results, this will lead to a bias towards increased clickthrough for the second-ranking page, at the cost of the top-ranking page, because the top-ranking page is now put where they're training users not to look.

This seems like something they could turn off if it really is impacting their bottom line. What’s much harder to deal with is if we all switch to ChatGPT because the experience is so much better.

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