search – Tech News

DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search

In response to Google’s changes, many have begun defecting to DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused alternative that has never been able to break past Google’s dominance, accounting for only around 2% of the U.S. search market. “Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out,” Weinberg said Tuesday in a statement, referring to Google’s Search overhaul. “As a result, their results are getting worse, not better. We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.”
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/26/duckduckgo-installs-are-up-30-as-users-reject-being-force-fed-googles-ai-search/

OG Conversational Search Engine Ask.com Has Answered Its Last Question

Ask.com, one of the earliest attempts at conversational search engines, has shut down 30 years after its debut. “Every great search must come to an end,” reads the headline on the now-defunct website. “As IAC [parent company] continues to sharpen its focus, we have made the decision to discontinue our search business, which includes Ask.com. After 25 years of answering the world's questions, Ask.com officially closed on May 1, 2026."
https://www.pcmag.com/news/og-conversational-search-engine-askcom-jeeves-has-answered-its-last-question

Businesses scramble to get noticed by AI search

For many businesses their website is a vital shopfront, so losing 140 million visits in a single year would be a big problem. That's what happened to HubSpot, and the cause was AI. For companies like HubSpot there are several causes for the drop in traffic. Search engines rejigged their algorithms to fight AI slop, which made it more important for a website to be seen as credible on a core topic.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70n2rjgxeyo

Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines

Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the traditional “10 blue links,” too. We’ve found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not, sometimes changing their meaning in the process.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/896490/google-replace-news-headlines-in-search-canary-coal-mine-experiment

Google pulls AI overviews for some medical searches

As of this morning, the AI overviews for questions like “what is the normal range for liver blood tests?” have been disabled entirely. Spokesperson Davis Thompson told The Verge that, “We invest significantly in the quality of AI Overviews, particularly for topics like health, and the vast majority provide accurate information. Our internal team of clinicians reviewed what’s been shared with us and found that in many instances, the information was not inaccurate and was also supported by high-quality websites. In cases where AI Overviews miss some context, we work to make broad improvements, and we also take action under our policies where appropriate.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/860356/google-pulls-alarming-dangerous-medical-ai-overviews

Google avoids break-up but must share data with rivals

Google will not have to sell its Chrome web browser but must share information with competitors, a US federal judge has ordered. The remedies decided by District Judge Amit Mehta have emerged after a years-long court battle over Google's dominance in online search. The case centred around Google's position as the default search engine on a range of its own products such as Android and Chrome as well as others made by the likes of Apple. The US Department of Justice had demanded that Google sell Chrome – Tuesday's decision means the tech giant can keep it but it will be barred from having exclusive contracts and must share search data with rivals.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8zdrenm1zo

The old internet is dying. What’s next?

Everyone knows traditional search is dying. No one quite knows what comes next. But the rise of AI search comes with a brutal cost for traditional websites. According to the same Pew research, searches with AI Overviews result in dramatically fewer clicks to other websites. When Google shows an AI summary, users click through to other sites just 8% of the time, compared to 15% for searches without AI answers, which represents a nearly 50% drop. Even worse, only 1% of AI Overviews generate clicks to the sources they cite. What's emerging from the chaos is a discipline marketers are calling GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) or AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), essentially SEO for the AI era. But unlike traditional search optimization, which followed somewhat predictable patterns, AI optimization feels more like reading tea leaves.
https://qz.com/internet-future-google-search-ai