The AI ​​and search duo has more than half of users frowning.

53% say they don’t trust AI-powered results returned by search engines, and 61% would like to disable such results altogether.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has burst onto the scene in search engines, which have been unable to resist the charms of this trendy technology. The AI-generated summaries that Google places at the top of its results pages (and are, therefore, the first thing users of the famous search engine encounter) are rapidly changing search habits. However, despite the fact that such summaries initially seem extremely useful, the truth is that users don’t fully trust them, and many would actually like to disable them.

According to a recent Gartner study, 53% say they don’t trust the AI-powered results returned by search engines, and 41% also feel that such results are generally more frustrating than conventional results. And not only that. 61% of users specifically express their wish for some kind of option to stop AI-generated summaries from appearing in search engines.

It’s also worth noting that 51% of users admit that AI is having a major impact on the way they access information about products and services. And more than a third of the 377 consumers surveyed by Gartner say they trust the AI-generated summaries made available to them by traditional search engines.

The relevance of AI-powered results decreases as you move down the sales funnel.

Despite the preeminence enjoyed by AI-generated summaries on Google and other platforms (they are, not surprisingly, placed at the top of the results pages), their influence on product and service searches remains limited. And while most consumers rely (at least to some extent) on these summaries when searching for information about products and services, only 10% rely exclusively on them. Forty-two percent of consumers rely on a combination of AI-generated summaries and conventional results when seeking information about products and services.

«AI-powered results represent an important evolution in search, but it’s crucial to understand their specific purpose in the customer journey,» Gartner emphasizes in its study.

Ultimately, consumers rely on search engines for a wide range of purposes, from searching for new products and services (70%) to comparing products and services (62%), to finding ideas and inspiration when making purchases (44%).

In the eyes of consumers, AI-generated summaries that make their way into search engines are particularly useful in the discovery phase of the customer journey (whether or not they have specific brands in mind). And the value placed on such summaries diminishes as you reach the lower stages of the sales funnel.

In its research, Gartner recommends that brands optimize their positioning for both traditional SEO searches and the new era ushered in by Answer Engine Optimized (AEO) searches. To do so, brands should prioritize publishing in-depth content that anchors in multiple sources and emphasize formats with FAQs and lists whose content can be easily extracted by both search engines and AI.

Source: www.marketingdirecto.com