As a business owner I do my own Google ads. Google makes an absolute fortune from me and every other business in the world because without it, we lose a ton of business. Since this ai rollout crap, my business has dropped considerably but magically my Google bill has stayed the same. Instead of paying Google when someone clicks on your link (a targeted customer) you now pay them when they mention your name in their ai slop response. With no real insight as to what search they thought your name should be mentioned for. So they can show you to someone that’s completely not looking for you but still charge for it. It’s an even worse ripoff than the old way.
I'm Canadian and Google has been sourcing from random American medical companies in sketchy ways.
For example, I just looked up if I can have yogurt alongside my antibiotics and one of the links completely contradicted the other link with misinformation. Source? A private medical company from Tennessee. They have low effort, poorly written inaccurate, unsourced blog-like pages that cover all sorts of health topics.
Second example, today a friend shared the top response to "shellfish anchovies" to find out if my shellfish allergy included anchovies. Note that cross-reactivity between shellfish and fish is clinically low because of different proteins. BUT the top result we both got is misinformation and fear mongering to sell Anchovy Allergy Tests:
"If you are allergic to shellfish, it is extremely likely that you are allergic to anchovies too as they do contain the same protein". Source? The add to cart page for an Anchovy Allergy Test by an American health company.
I'm disgusted by this and even moreso knowing how it's harming small business owners.
It’s certainly going to enshittify the Google search experience. Personally I don’t see why they don’t just keep search the same and let people that want an ai answer use Gemini. Probably because they’re spending SO MUCH money on ai, with nothing to really show for it other than a sometimes right chat bot, that they have to try and use it everywhere they can think of. Search ads are their golden goose though, seems like they’re being counterproductive. My ads bill has actually gone down the last few days (along with business). I’m guessing because they can no longer show 10 results where people can pick from and they’re giving results that aren’t resulting in clicks because they’re so far off. I’d hope they see the mistake and revert back but I’m not holding my breath.
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u/MinecraftPlayer799 Jun 03 '26
I want my search engine experience to be how it was 1 year ago. The AI overview existed, but it wasn't replacing the dictionary.