Google's VP of Product at Google Search, Robby Stein, has responded to concerns from publishers around the new AI Mode. Specifically, the concerns around this new AI search interface not being all that encouraging for users to click over to publishers' sites.
Mike Futia asked Robby Stein:
How do you quell legitimate concerns from web publishers that you are scraping all their content and removing the incentive for users to click over to their sites?
In which Robby Stein responded:
The team is really focused on how we make it easy to click to sites -- we have a lot more UI updates coming that we showed in our announcement post. It's something we hear from users that they want and core to how we're building AI Mode. Also, AI Mode is going to respond to new types of questions, let people ask follow ups to explore different facets, and ultimately create new opportunities for sites to rank.
I mean, we heard this from Google before when Google released AI Overviews. Google event said it leads to more clicks but no one believed it and without Search Console reporting, no one believes it either. In fact, third-party studies and evidence shows the CTR from AI Overviews is horrid. Google is even being sued over this.
Google's AI mode has tons of links and citations, sure. But who will click on such comprehensive and detailed responses, with so many links.
Here are those posts from above:
The team is really focused on how we make it easy to click to sites -- we have a lot more UI updates coming that we showed in our announcement post. It's something we hear from users that they want and core to how we're building AI Mode. Also, AI Mode is going to respond to new…
— Robby Stein (@rmstein) March 7, 2025
Forum discussion at X.
