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It's been over a month since Google introduced AI answers at the top of search results and faced heavy criticism for the feature's inaccurate answers.
A new study by SEO platform SE Ranking shows that Google has reduced the frequency of AI overviews and changed the websites it uses to obtain answers.
Wednesday's study examined 100,000 keywords from 20 niches, including business, politics and wellness, and conducted Google searches for those keywords. The researchers found that AI is now significantly less present in Google search results than it was five months ago when they conducted the same searches.
Related: Site traffic declining? Google just made some big search changes
Most of the 100,000 searches, or over 90%, now do not result in an AI result, compared to over 63% in January, the researchers found.
The share of AI summaries automatically generated by Google has fallen by over 52%.
The “sharp decline” is likely due to Google trying to make AI overviews more accurate and trustworthy, the SE ranking researchers wrote.
“The search engine is more selective in generating AI content than before,” they added.
Related: Google's new AI search results are already hallucinating
Reddit and Nerdwallet were in the top 10 list in January but are now out. The same goes for Quora, Investopedia and Local.google.com (or Google Maps with local businesses).
In their place are five new additions: Runner's World, Healthline, Run Repeat, Very Well Mind and Men's Health.
Runner's World and Healthline fall into the sports, exercise, self-care, wellness and healthcare niches, which “may indicate that Google favors sites with deep expertise in certain subject areas,” write SE Ranking researchers.
Sites like Reddit and Quora have nevertheless benefited from an August Google update that prioritizes discussions and forums. Reddit traffic nearly tripled in the eight months since the update through April.
Related: Reddit traffic triples, posts prioritized in Google search
Google is the world's leading search engine with a global market share of over 90%.
These are the ten websites that Google's AI overviews most frequently referenced in 100,000 searches:
- Runnersworld.com (linked 1,200 times)
- Healthline.com (linked 1,114 times)
- Linkedin.com (linked 1,027 times)
- Runrepeat.com (linked 933 times)
- En.wikipedia.org (linked 775 times)
- Youtube.com (linked 761 times)
- Forbes.com (linked 680 times)
- Webmd.com (linked 583 times)
- Verywellmind.com (linked 562 times)
- Menshealth.com (linked 547 times)
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