[xp84]

My observation with Google is that an astonishing high percentage of their users stopped clicking organic search results around 2010 or so. They exclusively choose from amongst the top two or three ads, which they don’t even realize are ads since the indication of “what’s an ad” has gotten more and more subtle and the position of the first organic result has gotten lower and lower on the page to the point where today you generally would have to scroll a bit to find the first organic research result. The same users who only clicked the sponsored links before now don’t click any links, usually preferring to simply read the AI generated summary of some random spam results (which notably is far worse in accuracy than what you would get if you simply asked an LLM directly).

I think as a result, Google doesn’t really care about the quality of their organic search results since on the scale Google cares about, “nobody” clicks them anyway.

[mint2]

I like how the AI summary has had a 50% rate of directly contradicting itself between the first and last paragraphs in my recent searches.

It’s like an overly confident bullshitter with no shame and the memory of a fruit fly. And I’m sure many people trust it.

[AndrewStephens]

My conspiracy theory is that Google has been deliberately making its search results worse to subtly train users into engaging with ads and the AI assistant.

There is little reason why the AI Assistant can be a summary of the exact page you want, while that page is buried 8 deep in the search results behind a bunch of spam.