Google is bringing AI Overviews to more countries

Google rolls out its AI-enabled Search feature, AI Overview, to six additional countries: India, the UK, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil. This is part of a significantly greater scheme in which Google integrates generative AI into the nucleus of its main search engine, thus enabling users to procure much more detailed and nuanced answers to queries, thereby driving much more high-quality traffic back to publishers and content creators.

A New Era of Search Begins

Now, since the U.S. introduction of AI Overviews earlier this year, Google has started tests on ways those features can transform search. So far, what it has been seeing is early results showing users asking more complicated questions and then spending more time engaging with the content served up by those AI-driven summaries. According to Google, AI Overviews are a way people can get into topics with more depth and significantly expand their content discovery, thus benefiting both users and publishers.

Expanding to New Markets with Localized Features

The expansion to six more countries is just but a calculated step as Google moves to tap into markets that are diverse and with specific needs. In India, for instance, the AI Overviews will be in both English and Hindi, which is a depiction of the country’s linguistic diversity. Some features, including the bilingual toggle and text-to-speech that were first tested in India during the Search Labs experiment, have been major hits.
These characteristics make the search experience more accessible and user-friendly for millions of non-English speaking users.

Driving Traffic to the Open Web

One of the biggest concerns arising from the rise of AI in search has been its effect on web traffic. The company states that AI Overviews are driving users not only to answers served directly on the search page but also to a wider array of websites. This was accomplished through a new right-hand link display on desktop and additional in-text links within the AI Overviews, helping to ensure higher-quality clicks—which Google says are leading to users spending more time on sites they visit.

The company is also experimenting with ad placements that show both above and below the AI Overviews, providing even more opportunities for businesses to reach their potential customers.