Google Expands AI-Powered Search Experience to India and Beyond
AI Overviews Now Available in Six Countries, Including India, UK, and Japan
Google has announced the expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search experience, AI Overviews, to consumers in India and five other countries. The feature, which provides users with a quick AI-generated summary of a topic along with links to go deeper, will be available in English and Hindi languages in India.
India-First Features
The rollout in India includes several India-first features, such as the ability to listen to search responses and toggle between English and Hindi results. These features were piloted in the country last year and have been well-received by users.
Global Rollout
The expansion of AI Overviews comes more than two months after its introduction in the United States. Google aims to make the feature available to over a billion people by the end of the year.
Reimagining Search in the AI Era
The launch of AI Overviews is part of Google’s efforts to reimagine its flagship search product in the generative AI era. The company faces renewed competition from rivals such as Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as upstarts like Perplexity.
Conversational Search
The way people engage with information is changing, becoming more conversational. AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Anthropic’s Claude have seen widespread adoption.
Challenges and Limitations
However, shortly after the rollout, users encountered bizarre and erroneous search responses. Google has since put limits on the feature to tackle the issue, including detection mechanisms for nonsensical queries and restrictions on satire and humor content.
Gradual Rollout
The company will roll out AI Overviews gradually over several weeks, focusing on maintaining Search’s high bar for information quality.
Surfacing Relevant Websites
Google is also testing the addition of links to relevant web pages directly within the text of AI Overviews, making it easier for users to visit websites that interest them.
Addressing Publisher Concerns
The move comes amid concerns raised by web publishers about a potential loss in traffic and revenue. However, Google’s experiment has shown early positive results, driving higher traffic to publisher sites.
New Features
AI Overviews will also start showing a new right-hand link display on desktop, enabling users to browse through relevant websites while searching. This feature will also be accessible on mobile devices.
Quality Protections
Google has stated that it will not show AI Overviews for hard news topics or certain health topics, where freshness and factuality are important. Additional triggering refinements have been added to improve quality protections.