No more being told to eat rocks
After a lot of hype at Google I/O, the tech giant’s AI Overviews aren’t popping up in search results as much as they used to. According to a new analysis by SEO platform BrightEdge, AI Overviews appeared in less than 7% of Google search queries at the end of June, compared to 11% when the month began. While not in the higher percentiles of search results regardless, the downward trend is notable after so much was made of the AI-powered search results.
AI Overviews use the Google Gemini AI models to compose a summary based on the search results of a user’s query. Google was very keen on the feature at first, but the downward trend for AI Overviews actually goes back to April, even before the official announcement at Google I/O. While AI Overviews appeared in response to approximately 15% of queries at first, that number has dropped ever since. The decrease accelerated in June, with BrightEdge’s data showing a drop from 11% to 7% in the span of a month.
This trend has been consistent in basically every case in June, but some saw particularly steep drops. Searches about education saw AI Overviews appearing 26% of the time at the beginning of the month and just 13% by the end.
