{"id":50066,"date":"2025-04-25T18:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/50066\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T18:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:37:10","slug":"googles-ai-search-numbers-are-growing-and-thats-by-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/50066\/","title":{"rendered":"Google&#8217;s AI search numbers are growing, and that&#8217;s by design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Google started testing AI-summarized results in Google Search, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/11\/08\/googles-ai-powered-search-experience-expands-globally-to-120-countries-and-territories\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AI Overviews, two years ago<\/a>, and continues to <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/05\/14\/google-is-adding-more-ai-to-its-search-results\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expand<\/a> the feature <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/10\/28\/google-expands-ai-overviews-in-search-to-more-than-100-countries\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">to new regions<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/08\/16\/google-is-bringing-ai-overviews-to-india-brazil-japan-uk-indonesia-and-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">languages<\/a>. By the company\u2019s estimation, it\u2019s been a big success. AI Overviews is <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/inside-google\/message-ceo\/alphabet-earnings-q1-2025\/#introduction\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">now used<\/a> by more than 1.5 billion users monthly across over 100 countries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">AI Overviews compiles results from around the web to answer certain questions. When you search for something like \u201cWhat is generative AI?\u201d AI Overviews will show AI-generated text at the top of the Google Search results page. While the feature has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cmswire.com\/digital-experience\/ai-took-my-readers-inside-a-publishers-traffic-collapse\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">dampened traffic to some publishers<\/a>, Google sees it and other AI-powered search capabilities as potentially meaningful revenue drivers and ways to boost engagement on Search.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last October, the company launched <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/10\/03\/google-brings-ads-to-ai-overviews-and-rolls-out-ai-organized-pages\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ads in AI Overviews<\/a>. More recently, it <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/03\/05\/google-searchs-new-ai-mode-lets-users-ask-complex-multi-part-questions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">started testing AI Mode<\/a>, which lets users ask complex questions and follow-ups in the flow of Google Search. The latter is Google\u2019s attempt to take on chat-based search interfaces like ChatGPT search and Perplexity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During its Q1 2025 earnings call on Thursday, Google highlighted the growth of its other AI-based search products as well, including Circle to Search. <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/01\/17\/google-introduces-circle-to-search-a-new-way-to-search-from-anywhere-on-android-using-gestures\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Circle to Search<\/a>, which lets you highlight something on your smartphone\u2019s screen and ask questions about it, is now available on more than 250 million devices, Google said \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/abc.xyz\/assets\/e0\/99\/7331ada54f6a9f65d08eeadd25d5\/2024-q4-earnings-transcript.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">up from around 200 million devices as of late last year<\/a>. Circle to Search usage rose close to 40% quarter-over-quarter, according to the company.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Google also noted in its call that visual searches on its platforms are growing at a steady clip. According to CEO Sundar Pichai, searches through Google Lens, Google\u2019s multimodal AI-powered search technology, have increased by 5 billion since October. The number of people shopping on Lens was up over 10% in Q1, meanwhile.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The growth comes amid intense regulatory scrutiny of Google\u2019s search practices. The U.S. Department of Justice has <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/03\/08\/new-doj-proposal-still-calls-for-google-to-divest-chrome-but-allows-for-ai-investments\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">been pressuring Google to spin off Chrome<\/a> after the court found that the tech giant had <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/08\/05\/google-loses-massive-antitrust-case-over-search\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an illegal online search monopoly.<\/a> A federal judge has also ruled that <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/04\/17\/judge-rules-google-illegally-monopolized-ad-tech-opening-door-to-potential-breakup\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google has an adtech monopoly<\/a>, opening the door to a potential breakup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google started testing AI-summarized results in Google Search, AI Overviews, two years ago, and continues to expand the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,21901,19393,1942,867,26977,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-50066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-overviews","10":"tag-ai-search","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-google","13":"tag-quarterly-results","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114400057497661253","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}