Summaries by Google & Microsoft on Search Could Hurt Website Traffic

May 17, 2024

Google’s AI overviews, which summarize information from various websites, could lead to a decline in traffic for website publishers, potentially resulting in billions of dollars in lost ad revenue. This is because users may not need to click on links to access the information they want. The increasing use of AI technology to summarize information has raised legal questions about whether companies are illegally pulling from copyrighted material to advance their services. This could lead to lawsuits, especially if Google’s AI overviews siphon away traffic and ad sales from websites that believe the company is unfairly profiting from their content. The development of AI technology in search engines like Google is a significant shift in how people interact with information online. It has the potential to revolutionize search quality, traffic flow, and monetization, making it a major chapter in the evolution of search.