BBC.com published an interesting article on Google using AI overviews to impact search. Along with changes to their algorithm many small to mid sized content websites are feeling the pinch.
One of the beneficiaries seems to be Reddit.
From the article:
SEMrush data shows that other user-generated sites such as Quora and Instagram saw similarly astronomical rises, and there were impressive spikes at LinkedIn and Wikipedia as well. In one sense, Google was just following a trend. Over the past few years, swaths of savvy internet users started adding the word “Reddit” to the end of their web searches in the hopes it would bring up people sharing their honest opinions, as opposed to websites trying to game Google’s system. It’s something Google’s public liaison for search, Danny Sullivan, has noted.
Now the story goes that people are adding Reddit wanting to go there so they can read honest debate and user experiences.
You can see the owner of a U.K. based entertainment site has taken a big hit to their traffic.
The change was instant for Daniel Hart, editor-in-chief of the UK-based entertainment news site Ready Steady Cut. “After Google’s September update, our traffic halved immediately, and it’s only gotten worse. We’ve just been blitzed by the Reddit stuff in particular, but we’re also being replaced by spam websites that are stealing our content. It makes no sense,” Hart says. In the months following, the lost income forced Ready Steady Cut to reduce its team of 20 writers and editors down to just four, Hart says.
BBC.com is not the only one sounding the alarm on these changes.
TheVerge.com wrote, Google scrambles to manually remove weird AI answers in search The company confirmed it is ‘taking swift action’ to remove some of the AI tool’s bizarre responses.
Some of the answers have been straight bat shit crazy. Things like doctor’s recommend smoking while pregnant.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, some discussion on X seemed to think it will put a greater value emphasis on domain names. At least really, really good domain names.
