Monday, December 23, 2024

Google Search AI Overviews rolling out to six new countries, adding more prominent links

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Following the US launch in May, Google Search AI Overviews are coming to six more countries, while links will appear in a new “right-hand link display.”

AI Overviews are coming to Google Search in the United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil. The experience in each country will have local language support. 

This is rolling out gradually “over the course of several weeks.” Google says it has done “extensive testing.”

Through our testing in these markets, we’ve found that people prefer using Search with AI Overviews, and they find their search results more helpful.

Meanwhile, AI Overviews will more prominently surface links with a right-hand column on desktop. Instead of a card carousel, you’ll get this list that shows the page name, description, and other details.

On mobile, you’ll get a row of favicons in the top-right corner that you can tap to pull up the list. This is starting to roll out in stable for the seven countries.

Google is also testing inline URLs directly in the AI Overview as depicted below. The company has found that this approach is “driving higher traffic to publisher sites.” 

Google continues to say that “people have been visiting a greater diversity of websites for help with more complex questions” with AI Overviews. 

As part of “AI Overviews and more” in Search Labs, Google is testing a “Save” feature next to thumbs up/down. When you search for that query again, the same AI Overview will appear. Besides performing the same lookup, you can find saved Overviews from the Interests page (“Saved” tab in the mobile Google app). 

Finally, AI Overviews are also testing the ability to “simplify the language” of a generated response.

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