• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 2, 2023

Google wants to make content faster and easier to find in a sea of information across the web. The company on Wednesday released three updates to its search generative engine (SGE) powered by artificial intelligence (AI). 

For example, users can quickly get up to speed on a new topic, uncover quick tips for specific questions, and discover products and things to consider, the company said.

Article links to publisher sites will help those searching for information dig deeper into topics and get a better understanding through images and videos. 

Seeing something in an image of video often times helps someone understand what words cannot describe. Google recently brought images to more AI-powered overviews.

For example, when someone searches for something like the “tiniest birds of prey,” the image tells the searcher what the bird looks like, so they can find relevant information from across publishers' websites.

Google said that during the next week, searchers will begin to see videos in some overviews where it’s helpful to see a visual representative of the words in motion, such as a demonstration of a yoga pose, or how to get stains out of marble. 

SGE is designed as a “jumping off point” to explore information on the web, links in Search results alongside each AI overview will give searchers more information. To help better understand how recent the information is from these web pages, Google added publish dates to each link.

AI-powered overviews from Google now come faster whether looking for somewhere to get lunch nearby or researching something more complex, such as how to upgrade to a bigger apartment on a budget. The company announced major improvement in June that reduces the time it takes to generate AI overviews by half, and has since been working since to give more searchers access to faster speed time.