Introducing AI Overviews in Australia, a new generative AI experience on Search
In May at Google I/O, we shared our first steps in a new era of Search by introducing AI Overviews – first in the US and followed by more countries this past August. Last month, we began testing this feature locally and starting today, we’re rolling out AI Overviews Australia wide.
How AI Overviews work
AI Overviews use generative AI to help you quickly find what you’re looking for – providing an AI-generated snapshot about a topic or question, along with key information and links to dig deeper. AI Overviews are particularly helpful for more complex questions that might have previously taken multiple searches. For example, if you’re looking up travel tips, or need swift and reliable step-by-step instructions to remove a stain. AI Overviews can help people get to the gist of a topic or question more quickly, while also providing a jumping off point to learn more from sites across the web.
What we’ve learned
Every year in Search, we do hundreds of thousands of quality tests and experiments to figure out how to make Google more helpful. Since launching AI Overviews in other countries and testing in Australia, we've found people who use AI Overviews are more satisfied with their results. It's clear that people who are looking for help with complex topics find them especially helpful. Already, people are asking longer questions, diving deeper into complex subjects and uncovering new perspectives — which means more opportunities for people to discover content from publishers, businesses and creators. Additionally, we continue to see stronger engagement from younger users (18-24) with AI Overviews.
Connecting to the best of the web
Helping people discover content from publishers, businesses and creators remains central to our approach with AI Overviews in Search – both globally and in Australia. Since the feature first launched in the US in May, we’ve introduced more prominent ways to show links to relevant websites within AI Overviews, with a right-hand link display on desktop and a similar experience on mobile, accessible by tapping the site icons in the upper right. And earlier this month, we started launching in-line links that appear directly within the text of AI Overviews, making it easier for people to visit sites that interest them. In our testing, both of these updates drove an increase in traffic to supporting websites compared to the previous designs.
Our bold and responsible approach to AI
There are known limitations with generative AI and LLMs, and Search. We’re taking a responsible and deliberate approach to bringing new generative AI capabilities to Search. We’ve trained these models to uphold Search’s high bar for quality. They rely on our hallmark systems that we’ve fine-tuned for decades, and we’ve also applied additional guardrails, like limiting the types of queries where these capabilities will appear. We will continue to make improvements over time.
As AI Overviews roll out in Australia, we’ll continue to gather feedback and understand how we can make Search and AI Overviews more helpful to Australians as they search for diverse information - whether they’re looking up tips or discovering the world around them.
