Speakers at Google’s Marketing Live event demonstrated how they will use user search queries and content from AI Overviews to display interactive shopping ads that will push organic search results even further down, and explained that Google is “ffocuses on opening up new opportunities for your business.”
We like to assume that Google Search engineers are responsible for the search results, but as the DOJ’s antitrust trial showed, the engineers are increasingly just contributors to the SERPs, along with other teams in advertising and layers of business SVPs contributing and making decisions about what those SERPs ultimately look like. I suspect that if the search team got its way, the SERPs would look different than they do today.
Google: We’re not just building a better search engine
The first speaker, Philipp Schindler, SVP & Chief Business Officer at Google, said out loud what Googlers don’t normally do when he said that the purpose of search results is to display advertising.
He made the remark in connection with a new AI video tool that will help YouTube creators create more content.
At 18:19 minutes into the event, Schindler boasted:
“We worked with some really talented filmmakers, musicians and artists and the results were simply incredible. Soon we’ll be incorporating videos into short films, opening up a whole new world of creative possibilities for you and your brands. Imagine every creator having the power of AI in their pocket.
What does all this mean for you? More creators creating higher quality content attract more viewers, which means more reach, engagement and ROI for you. We’re not just building a better search engine or a better YouTube. We’re focused on opening up new opportunities for your business.”
The claim that Google is using AI insights and search to increase reach and ROI for advertisers is not the only one. The next two speakers made the same argument.
Search and shopping ads in AI overviews
The next speaker was Vidhya Srinivasan, VP/GM, Advertising at Google. She begins by describing how search experiences drive traffic to websites, then quickly switches gears to show how interactive advertising literally shifts organic search results from the perspective of the users making the searches.
At the 30th minute of the video, Srinivasan stated:
“AI insights will appear in search results when they go beyond what search offers today. As we continue to test and evolve the search experience, we will remain focused on sending valuable traffic to publishers and developers. But more opportunities for user exploration leads to more choice, and more choice leads to more opportunities for advertisers.
You may have noticed that we already run ads above and below AI overviews. These ads are tailored to the user’s search query. We will now begin testing Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews for users in the US.
What’s also new is that we not only assign these ads to the query context, but also to the information in the AI overviews. And as always, the ads will be clearly labeled.”
1. AI Overviews – No organic entries
2. Scroll down for Shopping Ads
Next, she describes an example of wrinkled clothes while traveling and how she uses Google search to find ways to avoid those wrinkles. It shows search activity for travel tips and how organic search results are being moved under the AI Overviews feature and new search and shopping ads that contain product images and stand out much more often than all search results.
She explained how the new AI Overviews shopping ads will help convert searchers:
“Using the AI overview, I quickly found some common travel hacks that sounded promising. As I browsed through the many options displayed, I found a really good solution, an anti-wrinkle spray that I had never heard of before. So perfect. I want to try this.”
Now with this feature I can just click on that ad right there and buy it.
As you can see, we’re making it easier and faster for consumers to take action right now. So this is just one example of how we’re using Gen AI. There are many more, and we’ll start to see more applications in search ads.”
3. Targeted ads based on AI overviews
Google search is the bait
Google’s search engine engineers use the most advanced technology and data to create the most useful search results ever in Google’s history. These are the best ever. But according to the people who really call the shots at Google, the purpose of search isn’t to “organize the world’s information and make it widely accessible and useful,” but rather to provide more “reach, engagement, and ROI” for advertisers to accomplish. Sam Altman was right when he called Google’s actions dystopian.
SEOs were manipulated with social engineering
Social engineering is the control of people’s behavior in order to get them to perform a certain way. Google has encouraged much of the web ecosystem to embrace concepts like Core Web Vitals (CWV) and Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (EEAT) to rank on Google and keep users happy. A lot of time, effort and money went into updating websites, and it was all managed by Google.
But for what purpose? Was this all in the service of “opening up new opportunities” for advertisers?
It’s not the fault of Google employees who put their heart and soul into perfecting search. You do an excellent job. But it’s clear that Google’s mission may no longer be about making information accessible and useful. If we take what was said at this conference at face value, it appears that it was all designed to create more reach and ROI for advertisers.
Watch the Google Marketing Live Keynote 2024
Featured image from Shutterstock/pikselstock