For a quarter of a century, the Google search engine has been the foundation of the Internet. Thanks to its revolutionary search engine, Google has almost completely replaced other search enginesand the term “google” replaced “search”. People have come to trust Google and its unspoken promise that the page you find – the link you click on – will be the page you get and where you will find the answer to your question.
However, currently Google is starting to replace article titles and headlines in search results with those generated by AI. Google already did something similar with Google Discover a few months ago. Now it's also starting to mess with the headlines in traditional search results. The Verge found numerous examples where Google replaced headlines in their articles with headlines they didn't write, sometimes changing the meaning.
The Verge gives an example of how Google replaced the headline “I used the 'cheat on everything' AI tool and it didn't help me cheat on anything” with just a few words: “Cheat on everything AI tool.” This completely reverses the message, which almost sounds as if the website is recommending a product that it actually does not recommend at all.
It's just an “experiment”
The portal's editorial team asked Google for a comment. The answers received from the company's representatives show that this is what you see this is a “small” and “narrow” experiment for nowone that has not yet been approved for wider implementation. Its goal is “better matching titles to user queries and facilitating engagement in Internet content.” Unfortunately, the interlocutors did not want to say how small this experiment actually is.
Over the last few months many staffers at The Verge have seen examples of headlines they never wroteappearing in Google search results – headlines that are not consistent with their editorial style, without any indication that Google had replaced the words they had selected. Additionally, Google says it is also changing the way other websites appear in the search engine, not just the news itself.
The full title is “I Met Olaf – The Frozen Robot Who Could Be the Future of Disney Parks” Google displays this version even when you type “olaf sitethevergecom”
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TheVerge.com
Some consolation is that, for now, changed headlines seem to be few and far between and are not yet the kind of nonsense or even misleading fake news that can be found on Google Discovery.
An example of misrepresentation by a changed title. Artificial Intelligence Google claimed that “the US is withdrawing the ban on foreign drones”, citing and linking to the PCMag article as a source of information. This is NOT TRUE – PCMag wrote in the article linked to by Google that the opposite is true
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PCMag
But such changes may be just the beginningand over time, Google may change the rules even more. Although the company says it is an experiment, it cannot be assumed that it will not be implemented more widely and permanently. In the case of Google Discover headlines, the company also originally claimed they were just an experiment. Barely a month later it was announced that such headlines were now a permanent featurewhich “performs well in terms of user satisfaction.”
What Google shows when you click “see more”
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Ars Technica
When in January Google decidedthat it will not stop replacing article headlines in Google DiscoverThe Verge compared it to ripping off the covers of books on display and changing their titles.
Authors spend a lot of time trying to write headlines that are truthful, interesting, funny, noteworthy and catchy, but without resorting to clickbait. But Google seems to believe that authors have no right to decide and title their own work in the desired way.
Creating links with titles in the Google search engine
Google didn't explain why the company no longer recognizes headline identifiers, which it has long encouraged newsrooms to use.
According to the section on title links from Google Search Central, originally published in 2021, Google creates title links on the search results page in a completely automatic manner, taking into account both the content of the page and references to it elsewhere on the Internet. The purpose of the title link is to present and describe each result as best as possible.
Google search uses the following sources to automatically determine title links:
- content in elements
- main title visible on the page
- header elements such as
- content in og:title meta tags
- other content that is large and easily visible thanks to style tags
- other texts on the website
- anchor text on the page
- text of links pointing to a given page
- WebSite Structured Data
However, Google no longer respects the headings set by the author and changes the elements presented in the search results.
But such changes may be just the beginning. Although Google says it is just an experiment, it cannot be assumed that it will not be implemented more widely and permanently. Google in search results it masks the actual message of the articles and interferes with what the author wrote. That's it a step away from when artificial intelligence will completely replace the content of articles written by humans.
