Google launches AI overviews in India, Japan, UK, Brazil, Indonesia & Mexico

Google finally launched its latest offering in the search engine “AI Overviews” in India, Japan, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, and Mexico.

Initially, this feature was available in the United States starting from May 2024 and in a few other countries as a testing feature, but now these new countries will have AI overviews in local languages too and Google is aiming to gradually release these features to 120 countries.

While many publishers and bloggers were worried about Google’s turn to AI overviews due to fear of losing their web traffic, Google made a few changes in the AI overview feature to include more links to the sources and also show website icons next to the AI Overview title.

On the other hand, Google claims that these AI Overviews are sending more quality traffic to the websites. Here’s what the official statement claims:

“And when people click from search result pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality for websites — meaning users are more likely to spend more time on the sites they visit,”

While all of the AI-based search engine companies are claiming that they are sending traffic to original sources, none of them are actually showing any numbers at all.

In my own research, I found out that most of the sites are losing traffic every month and that’s just because AI Overviews are making people do more searches without leaving Google or clicking on any external link at all.

However, in another attempt to monetize AI-based features, Google shared that:

As we launch in these new countries, ads appearing above or below AI Overviews will continue to provide valuable options for people to take action and connect with businesses.

This means Google may soon start showing ads in AI Overviews, not just above or below.

That’s also why Google is consistently changing AI overview design to test what works and what doesn’t for the end publishers and advertisers.

Hopefully, one day Google will learn to implement AI and still make content creators happy and not just the advertisers.