Google has started adding the Search Generative Experience (SGE), its AI-powered search feature, to a “subset of queries, in a small percentage of search traffic in the US,” as reported by Search Engine Land.
The most striking thing about this is that many US users could have this experimental AI-generated Google section enabled even if they haven’t activated it before.
The company introduced SGE at its I/O developer conference in May of last year, shortly after opening access to its AI Bard, now called Gemini. In November, it extended the feature to 120 countries with additional languages besides English, but it remained optional.
Those residing in the United States may see a new shaded section at the top of Google search results with a summary that answers their queries, along with links for more information. This section, generated by Google’s generative AI technology, previously only appeared if you had enabled SGE on the Search Labs platform.
According to Search Engine Land, Google will start showing you the experience even if you haven’t enabled it in Search Labs if you perform complex queries or if it believes that you could benefit from obtaining information from multiple websites. For example: “How to remove marks from painted walls”.
Google stated to the media that, for these tests, it will only display AI summaries if it is confident that they will provide better information than what search results could show. Apparently, the company is conducting these tests because it wants to gather feedback from more users, specifically from those who did not choose to activate the feature.
In this way, Google will be able to get a better idea of how generative AI can be useful for all those who are not technology experts or simply do not care about generative AI at all.
