New directions given to Google’s quality raters tell them to look for signs that a page’s main content is AI-generated or otherwise made using automated tools. If a page is found to be primarily made with AI, according to Google’s John Mueller, raters are asked to rate it as “lowest quality.”
Though this policy shift was apparently part of the January 2025 Search Quality Rater Guidelines update, Mueller first publicly revealed it this week while speaking at Search Central Live Madrid.
Why This Matters
Though Search Quality Raters do not directly affect Google’s search results, their work is used to improve Google’s algorithms. The way they are asked to rank pages typically reflects Google’s overall internal guidelines.
Here’s what Google had to say when they updated the raters’ guidelines in January:
“As a reminder, these guidelines are what are used by our search raters to help evaluate the performance of our various search ranking systems, and their ratings don’t directly influence ranking. The guidelines share important considerations for what content is helpful for people when using Google Search. Our page on how to create helpful, people-first content summarizes these concepts for creators to help them self-assess their own content to be successful in Google Search.”
If Google is instructing its raters to give AI-generated content, it is a sign that the company is hardening its stance on AI content and moving to reduce its presence in search results.
AI content has always been a risky prospect when it comes to SEO, but this is the one of the most significant signs we’ve seen from Google itself that AI-generated content may be unwelcome in search results.
According to Brendon Kraham, the vice president of global search ads and commerce, Google Ads is gearing up for an AI-led “seismic shift” in how people use the internet.
In an interview with MediaPost, Kraham recently discussed Google Ads’ plans for 2025 including how it plans to adapt to the growing integration of AI in nearly every facet of technology.
Why AI Is The Focus In 2025
Kraham says we are in the middle of a transformation in discovering information and interacting with businesses that is even bigger than the mobile revolution.
As he said:
“We’re in the midst of a massive shift toward AI, and frankly, it’s even bigger than the mobile revolution was. It’s about using AI to fundamentally improve how people search for information and connect with businesses.”
Google has to adapt to this on multiple fronts.
“For users, this means getting better answers to their questions, whether they’re simple or complex. From a business perspective, this AI-powered approach is going to drive a significantly better ROI for advertisers.”
How Kraham Sees 2025
When asked about his predictions for the new year, Kraham lays out three main areas that Google is focused on moving forward.
The evolution of search behavior beyond traditional keywords
“This means moving beyond simple keywords and embracing a multimodal search landscape where visuals, context, and even our surroundings play a crucial role in how we find what we need. For marketers, this means adapting to a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior, where capturing attention and fostering genuine engagement will be paramount.”
The development of AI-powered creative tools for marketers
“This new era of search and ads means we will witness a surge in marketers embracing AI-powered tools — not to replace their creative spark, but to amplify it. Imagine personalized creative solutions that scale effortlessly, unlocking new avenues for expression and delivering measurable results.”
Integrating enhanced measurement capabilities across all digital channels
“Third, in 2025, measurement will be everything. Marketers will need to get laser-focused on their data, figuring out how to connect the dots as users move between searching, streaming, scrolling, and all those different ways of interacting online.”
Google has already been aggressively pursuing the development of AI tools in every area of its platform. Kraham indicates this is only going to accelerate further in the coming year, with new AI developments coming for Performance Max ads, Demand Gen ads, and Google Search products.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GoogleAdsGoogleAdwordsManagementPageFeaturePicture2.jpg4001000Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-01-03 18:38:442025-01-03 18:38:45Google Ads Exec Talks AI and Major Developments Coming in 2025
In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he expects that search will “change profoundly” in 2025 led by advancements in AI and increasing competition from AI search, social media, and hardware advancements.
Below, we’ve collected highlights from the interview that may give us a peak at Google’s plans for 2025 and beyond.
Google Aims To Be a Leader With AI Development
When asked about where Google is today in comparison to the rest of the market, Pichai emphasized that the company is in the early stages of developing radically powerful new AI tools. Additionally, he emphasized that AI developments that may not seem connected to the company are largely built on the back of research and development made possible with Google’s open-sourced technologies.
“Look, it’s a such a dynamic moment in the industry. When I look at what’s coming ahead, we are in the earliest stages of a profound shift. We have taken such a deep full stack approach to AI.
…we do world class research. We are the most cited, when you look at gen AI, the most cited… institution in the world, foundational research, we build AI infrastructure and when I’m saying AI infrastructure all the way from silicon, we are in our sixth generation of tensor processing units. You mentioned our product reach, we have 15 products at half a billion users, we are building foundational models, and we use it internally, we provide it to over three million developers and it’s a deep full stack investment.
We are getting ready for our next generation of models, I just think there’s so much innovation ahead, we are committed to being at the state of the art in this field and I think we are. Just coming today, we announced groundbreaking research on a text and image prompt creating a 3D scene. And so the frontier is moving pretty fast, so looking forward to 2025.”
Using AI To Enhance Search Instead of Replace It
Increasingly, AI is viewed by many as a competitor to traditional search, leading the interviewer to ask what Google is doing to protect the “blue link economy” in order to not “hurt or cannibalize” its search engine and the market around it.
In response, Pichai discussed how AI has been a major part of Google’s development for longer than most people realize. Going back as far as 2012, AI has been part of Deep Neural Networks used to identify speech and images. Since then, artificial intelligence has been a core part of the search engine’s development.
“The area where we applied AI the most aggressively, if anything in the company was in search, the gaps in search quality was all based on Transformers internally. We call it BERT and MUM and you know, we made search multimodal, the search quality improvements, we were improving the language understanding of search. That’s why we built Transformers in the company.
So and if you look at the last couple of years, we have with AI overviews, Gemini is being used by over a billion users in search alone.”
Where Is Search Going In 2025?
Looking forward, Pichai says he believes Search will be radically changing – and soon. While he says that advancement is becoming more difficult because the easiest innovations have already been done, he still believes that people will be surprised at how much is coming in just the first part of 2025.
“And I just feel like we are getting started. Search itself will continue to change profoundly in 2025. I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before. You know, I think we’ll be surprised even early in 2025, the kind of newer things search can do compared to where it is today…
I think the progress is going to get harder when I look at 2025, the low hanging fruit is gone.
But I think where the breakthroughs need to come from where the differentiation needs to come from is is your ability to achieve technical breakthroughs, algorithmic breakthroughs, how do you make the systems work, you know, from a planning standpoint or from a reasoning standpoint, how do you make these systems better? Those are the technical breakthroughs ahead.”
Will AI Replace Traditional Search?
As increasing numbers of people seem to be relying on AI tools to get quick answers instead of using traditional search tools, some have suggested that AI could eventually replace search as we know it. At the same time, there are concerns that AI may be delivering less reliable or accurate answers, which Pichai believes will ensure that Google’s search tools remain relevant if not more valuable.
“In a world in which you’re flooded with like lot of content …if anything, something like search becomes more valuable. In a world in which you’re inundated with content, you’re trying to find trustworthy content, content that makes sense to you in a way reliably you can use it, I think it becomes more valuable.
To your previous part about there’s a lot of information out there, people are getting it in many different ways. Look, information is the essence of humanity. We’ve been on a curve on information… when Facebook came around, people had an entirely new way of getting information, YouTube, Facebook, Tik… I can keep going on and on.
…I think the problem with a lot of those constructs is they are zero sum in their inherent outlook. They just feel like people are consuming information in a certain limited way and people are all dividing that up. But that’s not the reality of what people are doing. “
The full interview touches on several other questions including potential upcoming regulations, how the search engine views its responsibility towards creators, and other Google platforms like YouTube’s future direction. You can watch it here or below:
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-12-20 17:30:372024-12-20 17:30:39Google’s CEO Gives Wide-Ranging Interview On The Future of Google and Search
Google is launching an exciting new ad format called Demand Gen Campaigns which uses the latest AI tools to create highly targeted video and image ads for YouTube, as well as Google’s other platforms.
The new ad product is designed to motivate advertisers to invest more outside of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram – Google Ads’ biggest competitors.
What Are Demand Gen Campaigns?
Demand Gen Campaigns are video ads up to 15 seconds long, primarily intended to run as pre- or mid-roll YouTube placements. However, the company says the ads will show in other places as well, including as image carousels on mobile and bumper ads..
Most importantly, Demand Gen includes a suite of creative tools to help deliver messages and ads that are tailored for your audience.
The ad product also generates “lookalike” audiences filled with potential new customers who match your existing customers.
As with most Google Ad formats, advertisers can manage a wide range of ad delivery and budget options, allowing you to deliver more clicks, traffic, and conversions.
Demand Gen Helps Target Shifting Audiences
Google says that Demand Gen Campaigns are intended to help businesses reach consumers during a time when shopping habits are quickly changing.
The company cites recent surveys that show viewers typically split their time on social media between traditional platforms like Facebook and Instagram with others like YouTube.
Additionally, more than 90% of people said they had watched content from a specific creator or artist across multiple platforms and formats in the past year.
These ads are designed to help pull users onto YouTube, which Google believes offers a more genuine connection with creators.
The ads are intended to do this by using visually engaging ads that are highly tailored for specific audiences across the entire Google ecosystem.
Demand Gen Campaigns Will Replace Discovery Ads
Demand Gen ad campaigns started rolling out to advertisers worldwide earlier this week, and will be replacing Google’s current ad option for its Discovery feed. Discovery campaigns will be phased out sometime in early 2024.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Demand-Gen-Ad-Campaigns-Banner.jpg338600Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2023-10-12 18:03:292023-10-12 18:03:55Google’s New Demand Gen Campaigns Use AI To Reach Shifting Audiences
Online retailers who hate trying to come up with compelling product listings for all your products can breathe a sigh of relief. Amazon is making it easier to develop engaging and attractive product listings with a new generative AI tool.
As was revealed at the recent Amazon Accelerate event, the new AI tool can craft product listing details including product titles, bullet points, and descriptions using large language models (LLMs).
Retailers only need to provide a short description (it can even just be a few keywords) and the AI system will generate in-depth product details.
As Robert Tekiela, vice president of Amazon Selection and Catalog Systems, said in the announcement:
“With our new generative AI models, we can infer, improve, and enrich product knowledge at an unprecedented scale and with dramatic improvement in quality, performance, and efficiency.
Our models learn to infer product information through the diverse sources of information, latent knowledge, and logical reasoning that they learn.
For example, they can infer a table is round if specifications list a diameter or infer the collar style of a shirt from its image.”
While early feedback for the tool is reportedly very positive, brands are still encouraged to review their product descriptions before using them in product listings.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Amazon-Ads.jpg360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2023-09-14 18:22:132023-09-14 18:22:16Amazon Launches New AI Tool To Generate In-Depth Product Listings From a Few Keywords
After months of rumors and speculation, Google’s AI-powered generative search experience is here – sort of.
The new conversational search tool is available to users as a Google Labs experiment only accessible by signing up for a waitlist. That means it is not replacing the current version of Google Search (at least, not yet), but it is the first public look at what is likely to be the biggest overhaul to Google Search in decades.
Though we at TMO have been unable to get our hands on the new search experience directly, we have gathered all the most important details from those who have to show you what to expect when the generative search experience becomes more widely available.
What The AI-Powered Google Generative Search Experience Looks Like
The new Google search experience is present at the very top of Google search results, giving context, answering basic questions, and providing a conversational way to refine your search for better results.
Notably, any AI-generated search information is currently tagged with a label that reads Generative AI is experimental.
Google will also subtly shade AI content based on specific searches to “reflect specific journey types and the query intent itself.” For example, the AI-created search results in the shopping-related search below are placed on a light blue background.
Where Does The Information Come From?
Unlike most current AI-powered tools, Google’s new search experience cites its sources.
Sources are mentioned and linked to, making it easier for users to keep digging.
Additionally, the AI tools can pull from Google’s existing search tools and data, such as Google Shopping product listings and more.
Conversational Search
The biggest change that comes with the new AI-powered search is the ability to follow up queries with follow-ups using context from your previous search. As the announcement explains:
“Context will be carried over from question to question, to help you more naturally continue your exploration. You’ll also find helpful jumping-off points to web content and a range of perspectives that you can dig into.”
What AI Won’t Answer
The AI-powered tool will not provide information for a range of topics that might be sensitive or where accuracy is particularly important For example, Google’s AI tools won’t give answers about giving medicine to a child because of the potential risks involved. Similarly, reports suggest the tool won’t answer questions about financial issues.
Additionally, Google’s AI-powered search will not discuss or provide information on topics that may be “potentially harmful, hateful, or explicit”.
The rise of AI continues as Google Ads has started testing using artificial intelligence to help advertisers create the message for their ads.
The feature seems to be a very limited test that uses AI to generate suggestions for headlines and description texts. Notably, when Google Ads Liaison Ginny Martin confirmed that the ad platform is testing AI tools, it is “unrelated to Bard”, Google’s recently released AI system.
From user reports, the AI tool helps to create responsive search ads within Google Ads.
Responsive search ads are a type of ad option that already uses machine learning to optimize your ad for those who see it using a premade set of headlines and descriptions.
In this small beta test, users can instead let AI create headlines and descriptions suggestions based on information about your business. Specifically, the prompt asks you to “describe the product or service you’re advertising and what makes it unique in a few sentences.”
You can then select from the suggestions Google offers or decide to write your own.
It is unclear how soon you can expect to see this feature rolled out to more advertisers but it shows that Google is seriously working to utilize AI technology in every area of its platform, including Google Ads.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GoogleAdsGoogleAdwordsManagementPageFeaturePicture2.jpg4001000Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2023-04-06 17:31:282023-04-06 17:31:30AI Is On The Way To Google Ads According To New Test
Google has started giving users in the US and UK access to Google Bard, its answer to Bing and ChatGPT’s AI chat tools. The company is doing a gradual rollout through a waitlist at bard.google.com.
What Is Bard?
Bard is a generative AI. That means it will generate content for you based on prompts that you submit through a chatbot.
In today’s announcement (partially written with the help of Bard), the company suggested a variety of ways users might be able to take advantage of the AI tool:
“You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post.”
Is Bard an AI Search Tool?
Yes and no.
Bard is something of a complementary tool to Google’s search engine. While it is not directly integrated into Google Search, it is “designed so that you can easily visit Search to check its responses or explore sources across the web.”
Along with suggesting queries, you can immediately open a new tab with search results for a given query.
At the same time, Bard is not considered a direct part of Google search. Instead, the company suggests it will be adding other AI tools to its search engine in the future.
Bard Is In Early Stages
Throughout the announcement, Google repeatedly described Bard as an early experiment, As with Bing’s AI tools, Bard is likely to have some early quirks and weirdness as users get their hands on it.
Additionally, Google pointed out that the AI tool is far from perfect. It can get information wrong or phrase things in misleading ways. Some of these errors may be small. In Google’s example, Bard got the scientific name for a plant wrong – Zamioculcas zamiifolia, not Zamioculcas zamioculcas. However, the company cautions it may be inaccurate in other ways.
Still, it will be fun to see what Bard can do now that it is coming to the public.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/BardBanner.jpg3901034Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2023-03-21 17:27:192023-03-21 17:28:20Meet Google Bard – Google’s Response To Bing and ChatGPT’s AI Tools
After an… interesting rollout, Bing is making some changes to its much-talked-about AI chatbot. As the company announced yesterday afternoon, Bing will limit users to 50 questions per day and 5 questions per session to rein in the new system.
Since its rollout, users have been sharing examples of the chatbot, created in a partnership with OpenAI, getting up to all sorts of bad behavior. Some of the most notable include gaslighting users about the year, committing accidental racism, and even trying to blackmail a user by threatening to release personal information.
Early AI Chatbots “Somewhat Broken”
Addressing the situation in a tweet thread, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that the current AI tools are “somewhat broken” but stressed the importance of letting the world see and influence these early stages to help “get it right” down the line.
“We think showing these tools to the world early, while still somewhat broken, is critical if we are going to have sufficient input and repeated efforts to get it right. the level of individual empowerment coming is wonderful, but not without serious challenges.”
At the same time, Altman says it is important to regulate these tools while they are more bark than bite, saying “we are potentially not that far away from potentially scary ones.”
What Bing Is Changing
Bing is limiting chat sessions to 50 chat “turns” or questions a day, with each session being limited to 5 “turns”. Specifically, Microsoft defined a turn as a complete exchange including a question from a user and a reply.
“Our data has shown that the vast majority of you find the answers you’re looking for within 5 turns and that only ~1% of chat conversations have 50+ messages. After a chat session hits 5 turns, you will be prompted to start a new topic. At the end of each chat session, context needs to be cleared so the model won’t get confused. Just click on the broom icon to the left of the search box for a fresh start.”
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/bing-new-logo-1200x675.png6751200Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2023-02-21 18:51:142023-02-21 18:51:16Bing Is Limiting Its AI Following Rocky Rollout