A study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University compared Google overviews as the Answer Box and established that they are present in the featured snippet box for 3.9% of the trending news queries. With the increase in frequency and popularity, these short TLDR overviews, generated by Google to give a brief of the articles in searches, raise concerns about the reliability of the summaries and the effect on the media’s revenue. Here in this article, we will delve into the significance of this study and how it leaves an impact on the performance of every Digital Marketing Agency in Dubai.
Frequency of AI Overviews in Search Results:
As we have seen, the development of automated business summaries can be traced back to the late 1940s, with the first attempts at automation being made in the context of translating texts between languages.
Google began using featured snippets, powered by artificial intelligence in 2014 to offer users the information, within a shorter period. When the search engine decides that a query can be helped by an instant preview of information from a WWW page, it shows a preview at the top of the list.
From this platform, Google has greatly developed these auto-summaries over the years. Overall, featured snippets are rarely shown in searches; in 2018, it was reported that only 10% of searches Show the featured snippet. Today, some estimates have it at a slightly lower number, zero of every twenty searches. Here are some key takeaways from this study:
Dispute over Reduction of News Content:
As it was mentioned earlier, featured snippets could be useful for users who have immediate information needs, but their application in news content has been the source of controversy. Some of the criticism from media companies is that summarizing news stories directly into the search results lets users obtain the core information without even clicking on the link to the full story. This could also affect the amount of revenue it receives from its published work.
The study method used at Northwestern was to identify how often Google uses AI to provide an overview of trending news topics in a given duration of six months. The findings offer a glimpse into how often consumers employ automated summaries over original articles when it comes to present affairs. Since we are one of the prime Digital Marketing Company Dubai, we thought that it was important to do more research on the results.
Analysis of the Google Trend in News Summarization:
The researchers found over 1700 related search queries that topics trending news stories in the period under consideration. Among those, 3.9% of the 66 searches got a featured snippet which consisted of an artificial intelligence-generated overview of the news.
Although the frequency of 3.9% appears to be small, it translates to millions of searches daily that are fed the algorithm-generated summaries, not actual reporting. At this level, still, some media analysts still contend that Google’s snippets can cause a quantifiable impact on new media publishing income eventually.
As a part of the study, Northwestern classifies the types of content to understand if there are any trends in the kind of information that gets summarized into snippets or sent to the original article instead.
What kind of news content was summarized?
Variation like news content to the automated overviews was seen in the study. The most common categories were:
- Overview of news events: Analyzing the results, 31.8 % of patients expressed the desire to be treated in an MRI environment.
- Background details on people/organizations: 22.7 percent
- Answers to common search questions: Here the figure is 19.7%.
- Explanation of uncommon concepts: 13 point six percent
- Paraphrasing quotes from original reporting: According to the survey, the following were the responses of the people; 12.1%
The first three categories of featured snippets correlate well to provide faster access to information – brief updates, background information about some of the entities, and answers to the provided questions.
Nevertheless, the last two categories pay some attention to the allegations claiming that Google offers encapsulated extracts of the original scooping performed by the news publications. They found that 25% of summaries were either quoting the original sources or providing further definitions or analysis of concepts that were covered extensively in the media.
What Does This Mean for Users and Companies?
This study highlights that although AI overviews are available but not common. In simple words, this means people who are searching for a specific query will get the answer to their questions in no time. Let’s discuss how AI overviews help users and companies.
Provide a Direct Answer to Users Questions:
To do so, the study also looked into how the users phrased their queries to elicit the snippets created by the AI. Scientists discovered that the automated summaries gave straight solutions for the problems outlined in 79% of these search queries. This means that the degree to which Google’s algorithms can evaluate information requirements from query language is becoming higher.
For the publishers, this means that original reporting may scarcely be read by the audience who come across a related trending news article. Indeed, if the user’s question can be satisfied by just the overview snippet, the desire to go further into the full article is reduced significantly. We do, however, acknowledge this emerging disadvantage for Internet media even if we are one of the top Digital Marketing Agency Dubai.
Help Companies in Cost Reduction:
AI summaries help media companies reduce costs, and improve revenue – But also help users with their experiences. Currently, at a rough 4% frequency for trending topics, the current threat to media revenue does not pose much harm. However, opponents argue that featured snippets give the reader all the necessary information from the article and the user does not need to go to the original journalism. This means that even if the application of AI in summaries is at a small percentage of searches, there is potential to contribute significantly to digital subscriptions, advertisements, and the general sustainability of internet journalism.
However, from the user’s point of view, the overviews are easier and therefore afford faster access to information. As we learned earlier, in terms of straightforward information provision or general context of breaking news, the AI summaries are rather useful and appropriate. Google insists that snippets help the publishers as more and more users are directed to original articles from searches – despite this, more research may be required.
Having been an active stakeholder within the Digital Marketing Services Dubai arena, we acknowledge the practicality of both assertions of this debate. In response to Google’s effort to make the user search experience better through AI, the following should be done with some consideration of its impact on content creators.
Conclusion:
All in all, it could be stated that the usage of Google’s AI has indeed improved over the years in terms of delivering summarized information from the web about specific search queries. The Northwestern study also gives firm figures about how often exactly such overviews emerge for trending news in particular — about 4 percent of related queries, which translates to millions of cases per day.
However, the bell curve does seem to have some merit when it comes to the concise summaries for many simple questions where the paid subscription may be bothersome for some users though there are certainly legitimate concerns regarding the revenues. The way ahead seems to involve these all as interconnected issues best managed more or less in a rhyme and more probably more studies on each of these. As a top digital marketing agency in Dubai that is strongly connected to both the user side and the media environment, we will continue to observe these trends.
