Google search results will soon look very different, thanks to AI

Google has been going big on generative AI, and that's changing even its original product: Google Search. In the US, search results have already started to look quite different due to the incorporation of AI summaries at the top. That's going to roll out everywhere, and there's more to come, particularly when it comes to ads.

Advertisers are singing the praises of new ad placements and tools that will allow quicker customisation and segmentation. But it means Google is slowing turning from a search engine that helps users find useful content to a kind of AI assistant that provides the answers directly, whether those answers are right or not.

At Google Marketing Live 2024, the company presented a vision that sees AI powering the entire advertising cycle, from creating tailored assets to monitoring results. Advertisers will be able to adjust strategy on the fly, with AI even analysing campaigns before they launch. Google Ads VP Vidhya Srinivasan does recognise that "AI does not have taste" or expertise but outlines how it opens up new opportunities to transform businesses.

Ads already appear above and below the AI overviews that now appear at the top of search results in the US. But Google is now testing ads inside AI overviews too. Users will be able to click through to buy the product being plugged. 

Meanwhile, shopping ads will soon be able to show a 360-degree '3D spin' of a product rather than just a static image, starting with shoes. Google's Vice President and General Manager of Merchant Shopping and resident sneaker head Matt Madrigal said this will make search results feel "more like window shopping". Google will also introduce interactive tools to shopping ads, which will allow users to see items of clothing on different body shapes, for example.

Google's also giving merchants 'brand profiles', noting that more than 40% of Google shopping searches mention specific brands or retailers. Profiles will appear at the top of search results and will feature things like brand imagery, videos, customer reviews, deals, promotions and shipping policies from Google Merchant Center and Google’s shopping graph data.

Want to see even more ads? Don't worry, you will. Google's also packing them into image search results. Ads will appear right at the top of Google Lens searches – potentially helpful in the case of the acute attack of luggage envy described by Group Product Manager Sylvanus Bent, perhaps less so if you merely want to know what something is.

While many advertisers are enthusiastic, the upshot is that it seems Google will be showing less and less of what it was originally created to help us find: useful website search results. And while Google insists the incorporation of AI results is about answering users' questions more quickly, it could actually making it more difficult for users to find reliable, trustworthy information that answers their queries. If fake news and incorrect data is already being spread by social media, it's likely that it will only get worse when if it's amplified through the unattributed use of incorrect AI search summaries.

While Google has presumably run forecasts, the tools could also cannibalise its own revenue streams. More ads in search results themselves may result in less traffic to websites and therefore less traffic through the ads on those sites. That could also harm the revenue of the websites search engines require for their existence.

Meanwhile, Google is being sued by artists for alleged “massive copyright infringement” with Imagen AI.