Publishers say blocking the Google’s AI search will mean less traffic and also prevent their sites from showing up in search results.
Google has recently been ruled a monopolist by the US Justice Department for illegally quashing competition and now the company is offering websites the choice to join the monopoly or face relative obscurity.
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With the implementation of a new AI function, users of the search engine can now see a summary in answer to their query that has been pulled from relevant web pages, this however can make clicking through to the sites redundant.
The option businesses have is to not allow Google’s AI to summarise their website, however this could cost them ranking in Google search results completely.
According to publishers, the tool that crawls websites to produce its AI answers is the same one that keeps track of web pages for search results, so blocking the AI would hinder a site’s ability to be discovered online.
“It becomes like an existential crisis for these companies,” said Joe Ragazzo, publisher of the news site Talking Points Memo. “These are two bad options. You drop out and you die immediately, or you partner with them and you probably just die slowly, because eventually they’re not going to need you either.”
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By GlobalDataThe summaries are intended to provide higher quality information for searchers according to Google, a spokesperson said: “Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and we intend for this long-established value exchange with websites to continue.”
Many businesses which often rely on the Google monopoly on search engines for at least half their traffic, are not willing to take the risk of minimising their reach.
Search engine DuckDuckGo said the technological shifts underway in search make “Google’s index related to antitrust concerns even more problematic.”
“The search indexes are extremely important in the age of generative AI,” said Kamyl Bazbaz, the senior vice-president of public affairs at DuckDuckGo.
Regardless of the outcome of the antitrust case, the changes underway in the search landscape underscore the importance for publishers of controlling their own destiny and not becoming overly reliant on any one tech platform – including Google, said TPM’s Ragazzo.
