Google’s AI Overviews Will Now Show Ads in the US

Google announced today that it’s bringing ads to AI overviews, the AI-generated answers it has started displaying at the top of search results in select markets. The company is also testing a new design for AI Overviews that better surfaces links to external sources.

“We’ve been carefully testing ads in AI Overviews for relevant queries,” wrote Liz Reid, VP and Head of Google Search. “We’ve seen that people are finding ads directly within AI Overviews helpful because they can quickly connect with relevant businesses, products and services to take the next step. Following positive feedback, we’re starting to bring ads in AI Overviews to the U.S. for relevant queries, so we can continue to connect people with the products and brands that are helpful to their searches.”

Google’s AI Overviews have been quite controversial. Earlier this year, Google had to make changes to how the AI-generated answers work after many users noticed that they sometimes gave nonsensical and sometimes potentially harmful answers. Google acknowledged that AI Overviews could sometime misinterpret language on webpages and fail to understand sarcasm.

While Google AI overviews are still a work in progress and not available globally, users apparently find value in the ChatGPT-like answers. “People who use AI Overviews use Search more and are more satisfied with their results,” Reid said today. By showing more prominent links to external sources in AI overviews, Google also says that it has noticed an “increase in traffic to supporting websites compared to the previous design.”

Besides these changes to its AI Overviews in the US, Google is also rolling out AI-organized search results pages in the country this week. With this new feature, mobile users will see more personalized results for queries related to recipes and meals, with information coming from articles, videos, forums, and more.

“In our testing, people have found AI-organized search results pages more helpful. And with AI-organized search results pages, we’re bringing people more diverse content formats and sites, creating even more opportunities for content to be discovered,” Reid said today.