Google Search Generative Experience Gets Quality Updates & Major Speed Boost
Google has released its first set of quality updates to the new Google Search Generative Experience that began to roll out a few weeks ago. The most noticeable update is that it is much faster, in fact, twice as fast, in responding with an AI-generated snapshot/answer.
Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, said on Twitter, "we've made a number of quality updates, including a major improvement that reduces the time it takes to generate AI snapshots by half!"
Two weeks ago, we started opening up access to SGE. Since then, we’ve made a number of quality updates, including a major improvement that reduces the time it takes to generate AI snapshots by half! We hope everyone testing it out enjoys the speedier experience. If you haven’t…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 8, 2023
It is for sure much faster, it feels more than twice as fast. I only see the AI generation animated for a few seconds or so.
One of the biggest complaints and feedback was around speed. In fact, just a few days prior to this Google SGE improvement, The Verge wrote Google's AI-powered search experience is way too slow.
Well, no longer, it is now just really fast. It is not as fast as a search result set being returned, but it is faster than other AI search engines. And yes, it will get faster.
The other "quality updates" that was included here are unknown, I did ask:
Two weeks ago, we started opening up access to SGE. Since then, we’ve made a number of quality updates, including a major improvement that reduces the time it takes to generate AI snapshots by half! We hope everyone testing it out enjoys the speedier experience. If you haven’t…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) June 8, 2023
What other improvements did you notice outside of speed?
Here are some guesses from me:
Previously, I don't think Google gave a recent answer, now it does:
I think this might be an example of a Google SGE quality update, before I don't think it showed information from today for a query like this? pic.twitter.com/qKvGdvrAZ9
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) June 8, 2023
Also seems like Google updated this one:
This is one of many examples I am finding but something that is a bit alarming about SGE is that it seems to directly plagiarize content.I thought generative AI almost always switched words around. I'm finding many examples where the answer is pulled from the page verbatim... pic.twitter.com/u9aTMaxcYU— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 26, 2023
Glenn Gabe posted some before and after shots:
Google pushed quality improvements w/SGE recently (announced yesterday). I'm def. seeing some changes on that front. I'll provide a few exs. First, a search for "strep throat symptoms" yields different carousel links, less aggressive visuals, & a tighter answer. Before/after: pic.twitter.com/if6l65qm7l
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 9, 2023
And how about diversifcation? At least for me, a search for "AMP test" now yields more info about Google's AMP test versus other AMP topics. The initial carousel links are more about Google's AMP test vs pages about other topics. Aligns more w/the organic results for this ex: pic.twitter.com/mDPuKp9yCT
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 9, 2023
Here is a video of how fast it is:
Yep, that's pretty fast compared to how long it took previously. I barely had to wait... @dannysullivan do you know when this went live? Maybe I just didn't realize how fast SGE was returning results for my latest searches. Or maybe this rolled out today?? pic.twitter.com/Xx313dtfZ4
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 8, 2023
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