How Google profits even as its AI summaries reduce website ad link clicks

Alphabet, Google's parent company, is making money hand over fist. In its latest quarterly report, Google's revenue grew 14 percent year-over-year to $96.4 billion. While Google's cloud revenue, $13.6 billion, with 31 percent year-over-year growth, is growing fast, the bulk of its cash, $54.2 billion worth, still comes from …

[msknight]

I use Perplexity for more search

I also use Perplexity for search where the query lends itself to it. When the search is basic I use DuckDuckGo, only reverting to Google as a last choice... knowingly scrolling past the AI overview, because I don't trust it.

There is an issue about to come up because my employer is moving to ban all AI except CoPilot, because they believe Microsoft are the most secure of the bunch in terms of query data storage location... but it seems that the question over data sovereignty has taken priority over quality and accuracy of results. (some of which can be accounted for by tailoring the question to account for it)

We are in for interesting times.

[Shuki26]

Re: I use Perplexity for more search

I use the same stack. The advantage of Enterprise Copilot is that it is probably offered relatively cheaply in the MS suite and also it does not learn what you are prompting so we are allowed to even insert proprietary code.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I use Perplexity for more search

And you trust that they aren't snaffing your code anyway?

[Irongut]

I generally scroll past AI overviews without reading them to get to the links I searched for. Yesterday I read the overview for something I searched on, it was completely wrong on both DDG and Google.

[Anonymous Coward]

I ask for the links. Using AI almost daily I know it regularly goes off the rails. It's dangerous as many will just accept what it tells them as gospel. So, the owners can shape narratives and have plausible deniability.

[Matt Collins]

Don't forget you can disable Google's AI overviews

See https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/14/openwebsearch_eu/ for details. I've been using it and it's a breath of fresh air

[nematoad]

Re: Don't forget you can disable Google's AI overviews

You can also do it with DDG. Just use

[Anonymous Coward]

Geese and Golden eggs?

LLMs depend upon content created by humans, human creators depend upon clicks ...

I see port 1043 is free. How about we start a new Web?

[DS999]

Re: Geese and Golden eggs?

How you gonna keep the AI generated content out? I'm not gonna have to identify traffic lights and bicycles for every click I make on your new web, am I?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Geese and Golden eggs?

The bicycles and buses ..... aaaaarghh...... I'm losing the will to live. The deep state designed those to increase the suicide rate.

[Herring`]

Re: Geese and Golden eggs?

Current LLMs never swear or disagree with you. You silly poo.

[TotallyInfo]

Haven't used Google for search for quite a few years now. Since I noticed that their response accuracy took a nose-dive long before the influx of AI slop.

Currently using mostly Brave search and finding that it's Leo AI overview is actually mostly quite good. Though for anything important, I always want to check the sources anyway. It seems to be a decent balance though. And Brave are (or claim to be anyway) privacy-oriented.

[Ken G]

I've often seen Brave mentioned as private and secure but I have never seen any independent security tests of it published.

[MOH]

At this point website owners may as well start blocking Google crawlers.

There's no benefit to appearing in SERPs, they're just scraping your content

[TheMaskedMan]

"At this point website owners may as well start blocking Google crawlers."

Indeed. I suggested as much a few weeks ago. Of course, not all sites rely on search for traffic, picking it up instead from socials. But for the vast majority of sites, search traffic - primary from Google - is their oxygen. No Google traffic, no money and pretty soon no site.

I've found the Google AI summarise to be variable. Some are ok, some are bizarre. Either way, I wouldn't rely on them without verification.

I don't think this is going to end well for Google. I can see the benefit for them in keeping the user on their site and ramming ads down their throats, but it overlooks why the visitor is on Google's site in the first place. They're there looking for something, and if they don't find it they have no reason to stay or come back.

They will go elsewhere, creating an opportunity for an actually good search engine. Preferably one not drowning in AI summaries. So that lets Micos~1 and Apple out - who else might be in a position to do it?

[Ken G]

The great thing about AI search results is, if you don't like the answer, rephrase the question and they'll give you a completely different one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something will change that's for sure. Maybe it will knock AI back or they'll need to be something to stop the closed loop of summaries of summaries of summaries of .....

[Anonymous Coward]

AI Overviews?

They're shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: AI Overviews?

Disagree. When they tell me the answer I wanted to hear they're great .... oh.

Seriously, they're not shit but they are dangerous if you just accept them.

[Terry 6]

AI overviews and summariies are less than even the AIs

Most of the AI searches will give a reasonably reliable, and verifiable, answer to narrowly defined, quite specific queries. at least no worse than the kind of search that we get from Google these days. i.e. the AI is giving the sort of information that Google used to, as far as I can see. So far I've found the AI overviews etc.to be pretty much irrelevant and superficial- a pointless waste of bandwidth.

Using the AIs for more nebulous stuff, like creating or locating an opinion or prediction is close to requesting a story- and may be fiction. iow Asking the AI how an internal combustion engine works, or comparing energy efficiency between two sources will probably give a good answer. I wouldn't want to ask which was the best ICE - it may give a valid answer, but I wouldn't know if it was and certainly wouldn't trust it- even if I'd provided specific criteria.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: AI overviews and summariies are less than even the AIs

When I research something I find the response is littered with the manufacturer's marketing. Which I have to identify and discard. Even if I ask for independent reviews or data you still get some responses that are clearly commercially biased.

[johnrobyclayton]

What is search good for?

Why do people use Google or other search engines?

1.To find out some piece of information.

2.To find something to buy.

3.To learn about something.

4.To find someone selling something.

Lot of other reasons, all different.

AI summaries do 1 quite well most of the time. No need to click on anything.

Amazon, EBay, Temu etc are the best for 2 so go there instead.

A website concerning some particular subject matter is the best for 3 so the best way to find those is to actually go through the search results.

The advertisements that are presented are effective for 4 so just click the first thing you see.

Why do individual websites want to be at the top of web results?

So they can sell ads.

So they can convince visitors of something.

So they can show others that they are useful or influential or that they are worth something.

All of these are the same thing.

Does a website that contains information on some particular subject matter for the purpose of making such subject matter available to anyone who wants to learn about stuff need to care if lots of people are visiting? Not really. It achieves its purpose simply by existing and being available.

Google sells ads,

They succeed by convincing advertisers that they are worth purchasing advertising on,

They do this by showing searchers that they are useful for searching for stuff,

They do this by providing results to searches that are good enough to convince lots of searchers to use google for searching.

It is not Google's place to support the business of competitors.

It is not Google's place to help searchers as its primary goal.

In fact lots of people get grumpy when Google provides useful information to a wide array of different searches. There is a whole industrial infrastructure that supports the creation of takedown notices to remove useful search results.

Thinking that Google is anything other than a machine for generating advertising revenue or might still be a tool that primarily serves the goal of making things easy to find on the internet is silly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What is search good for?

"There is a whole industrial infrastructure that supports the creation of takedown notices to remove useful search results."

I'd like to hear about that? Maybe I should ask Google ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What is search good for?

"They do this by providing results to searches that are good enough to convince lots of searchers to use google for searching."

You missed out "After poisoning the first page of results with sponsored content and input from marketing aggregators, laced with the uniformly useless results garnered from behavioural targeting, they do this by...."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What is search good for?

Find porn with no age verification

[Tron]

Lower your expectations and worry less.

I just checked and my site is still the first two links on Google's search results. So if it is the end of the world as we know it, I still feel fine.

To some extent, you lost me when you announced you had a favourite chatbot and used the term 'guardrails'. But I manfully ploughed on. It is always disappointing when someone on El Reg actually admits to using AI. How can you look at yourself in the mirror next morning without feeling dirty.

Google search has almost always been a pain, especially the curtailing and censoring of results - 1 million page response found, here are 20 etc. This is just the latest version of that pain.

But it's free and everyone uses it, and even if only 1% still actually go to your site, they will be the ones that really want to use it, and are worth the bandwidth.

AI is a self-reinforcing fail machine. Over time it will all implode, messily on anyone stupid enough to have laid out cash on it. It is best ignored.

Google's advertising model never worked very well. It's amusing that the arch con-artists of the advertising sector have been so royally played for so long, believing it was worth the money. Ebay do a slightly better job..

A better search engine with many more features would be easy, and distributed search would be better, but you need rich people investing for that, and they are all enjoying life on their own islands, and no longer care about us proles.

The sky isn't falling in, despite the endless moral panics we have now. This will sort itself out. Google will make a tonne of money. Those who make an effort with their search queries should still find the sites they want.

The best context I can offer is that nothing works very well - on the net, with tech, OSs, software, ISPs, governments or public services. And everything gets worse over time. Life is all about making the best of a bad job.

[ChaosFreak]

And the enshittification begins...

Before long the sponsored content will be embedded in the results themselves, without any notification to the user.

https://jbai.ai/index.php/jbai/article/view/31/18

[sketharaman]

"The search giant is putting advertisers' ads within or directly above and below AI Overviews themselves." Screenshots of a few examples would help. Personally, I have never seen an ad above or within a Google AI Overview box. While I've seen tons of ads right on top for ad-intensive search keywords like "smartphone", "digital camera", etc., I have not seen any AI Overview for them.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Google is a thieving monopoly player. Who knew.

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It's disgusting that some cults have recently succeeded in pressuring Google to change AI Overview answers to the question "Is X a cult?" from yes to no. Which X, I can't say on an open forum, because I'd lose my house to libel tourism even when true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has been barely usable for years ever since they removed or degraded your ability to taily search queries with set strings and other options.

I hate the web today it's significantly less useful than it was 20yr ago, the tech Bros should be ashamed although I think they will dab their tears with wads of cash.

I'm a lazy person but even I have started to move away from the usual suspects where I can (knowing the alternatives are hardly virtuous themselves).

I'm moving my W10 machines to 'nix as I won't throw away viable hardware just for the sake of it.

The family are moving to Apple, yeah not popular here but it's not MS or Google and stuff will just work.

Google being replaced by DDG on search

I've used Firefox for years anyway

VPM in place

Next on the list is some storage to replaced the OneDrive I got sucked into when it was a free offering with WinPho.

It's only me and I'm not going to make any impact on my own but if enough people switch they will take notice when it impacts the bottom line.