People are increasingly turning to generative AI tools to help them find, sort and understand information. As the way people want to search for information changes, we’re designing our features in Search to highlight the web while providing new resources, insights and controls for site owners to navigate these shifts.
New possibilities with generative AI in search
With our generative AI Search capabilities, people are more satisfied with Search and they search more often. AI Overviews now has over 2.5 billion monthly active users, while AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users. And people are asking Search entirely new kinds of questions, creating new opportunities for brands, publishers and creators to reach people.
Features like AI Overviews and AI Mode are designed to help people find and visit great websites and to help publishers and websites empower their audiences. These features include prominent links to websites, and we continue to upgrade these experiences to make it easier for people to use generative AI as a starting point. For example:
- We’ve increased the number of inline links directly in the answers and added helpful site previews to encourage people to click through.
- We recently brought Favorite Sources to AI Overviews and AI Mode, and launched new subscription labels in these features so people can choose the sites they want to see more prominently.
- Looking forward, we continue to experiment with a number of new link designs in our AI experiences to make them more useful.
Additionally, we’ve shared updated guidance to help website owners improve their sites’ visibility in generative AI search capabilities. This includes tips on the importance of providing unique, non-commodity content to readers, and information for websites on how to organize their content, create a great page experience, and provide high-quality images and video to enhance their pages.
New controls and insights for website owners
We also actively listen to feedback from publishers and creators and engage with regulators such as the UK Competition and Markets Authority to ensure website owners have the right tools as user preferences evolve. Today, we’re starting to test a new control that lets website owners manage how their links and content appear in generative AI search features.
This new on/off button in Search Console allows site owners to decide whether they want their site to appear on and help answer the ground in our generative AI search features (such as AI Overviews, AI Mode, or AI Overviews in Discover). Sites that opt ​​out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features. This control will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI search features. This work builds on our long history of designing tools, such as snippet controls and Google-Extended, that give websites more choice.
We’re also starting to roll out new insights for site owners in Search Console about the appearance of their pages in generative AI search capabilities. This insight includes exposure metrics and information about which pages appear in AI responses and in which countries. We continue to work with site owners to understand what insights will be most useful for their strategies, and we will introduce additional metrics over time.
We are starting to roll out these features to a subset of website owners in the UK, allowing for thorough testing before rolling out to website owners globally. As AI opens up new opportunities for discovery, we’ll keep improving our experiences to help people explore the web and keep building tools for websites to better engage their audiences.