Google Refutes Apple's Claims of Search Traffic Decline

Google has pushed back against Apple executive Eddy Cue's testimony that Safari searches declined last month, asserting it continues "to see overall query growth in Search" with "an increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms."

The statement comes as Apple's Senior VP revealed under oath that the company is "actively looking at" revamping Safari to focus on AI-powered search engines, potentially threatening the estimated $20 billion-a-year deal making Google the default search provider on Apple devices.

Cue testified that AI search providers including OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic will "eventually replace standard search engines." Google, in its response, pointed to ongoing enhancements to its search product, noting users are "accessing it for new things and in new ways, whether from browsers or the Google app, using their voice or Google Lens."

Poll please

[seoras]

I personally use google search a whole lot less now in favour of my preferred LLM.
This is one of these headlines that makes me wish we had an in comment section poll pinned to the top of it rather than just reading opinions and trying to weigh the sentiment.

Re:

[ArmoredDragon]

I never find LLMs to be particularly useful. Because they hallucinate so god-damn much, I end up having to search for the terms they mention on a regular search engine just to make sure it's not bullshit.

As for google itself, it's so stupid how fucking hard it gets to look up anything that might be even tangentially political, especially if it involves a particular event that happened a few years ago, and end up with the top ten search results mentioning something about Trump in the fucking title, and some

Re:

[NotRobot]

I never find LLMs to be particularly useful. Because they hallucinate so god-damn much, I end up having to search for the terms they mention on a regular search engine just to make sure it's not bullshit.

So I take it you haven't tried Perplexity?

It not only gives you an LLM answer but also links its sources so you can check them out. Personally, I have found it quite useful. In fact, tons more useful than anything Google, for any serious (work-related) stuff. You can formulate a very complex query and even refine it, if it didn't quite get you the first time, plus validate if it got the answer right. With Google, no matter how well formulated your query is, it will spam you with a dozen loosely related (but

Re:

[ddtmm]

That's a pretty accurate description. I couldn't agree more.

Re:

[larryjoe]

I never find LLMs to be particularly useful. Because they hallucinate so god-damn much, I end up having to search for the terms they mention on a regular search engine just to make sure it's not bullshit.

So I take it you haven't tried Perplexity?

It not only gives you an LLM answer but also links its sources so you can check them out. Personally, I have found it quite useful. In fact, tons more useful than anything Google, for any serious (work-related) stuff.

That's also my experience with LLMs. The hallucination rate is low enough to be useful. Plus I treat LLM results the same way I treat Google results, Wikipedia, webpages, and anything I hear, i.e., I filter everything through my own sanity and reasoning process.

Re:

[buck-yar]

The Google SEO leak shed a lot of light on how Google's search operates. On controversial topics, they create special authorities of sites they deem accurate on things like covid or the election

References in several places to flags for “isCovidLocalAuthority” and “isElectionAuthority” further suggests that Google is whitelisting particular domains that are appropriate to show for highly controversial of potentially problematic queries.

For example, following the 2020 US Presidential election, one candidate claimed (without evidence) that the election had been stolen, and encouraged their followers to storm the Capital and take potentially violent action against lawmakers, i.e. commit an insurrection.

Google would almost certainly be one of the first places people turned to for information about this event, and if their search engine returned propaganda websites that inaccurately portrayed the election evidence, that could directly lead to more contention, violence, or even the end of US democracy. Those of us who want free and fair elections to continue should be very grateful Google’s engineers are employing whitelists in this case. https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-... [sparktoro.com]

Shilling for the Democrats and Big Pharma, echoing standard liberal talking points. They also like to maintain the status quo, deferring to the establishment:

Brand matters more than anything else Google has numerous ways to identify entities, sort, rank, filter, and employ them. Entities include brands (brand names, their official websites, associated social accounts, etc.), and as we’ve seen in our clickstream research with Datos, they’ve been on an inexorable path toward exclusively ranking and sending traffic to big, powerful brands that dominate the web > small, independent sites and businesses.

Easy to see how Google's results are now trash from the SEO leak. They try and steer your thinking with biasing results favoring their preferred narratives. I

Re:

[ddtmm]

Same here. In my role as IT and audio studio technical support I have found Perplexity to be amazing at helping me problem solve. Google's results are getting less and less relevant and it's not all that uncommon for Google search to still be bringing up results from as far back as 2008. 2008?? If you haven't tried Perplexity give it a shot. You will not be disappointed.

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[Anne Thwacks]

Google's results are getting less and less relevant

^^^^ This! A thousand times this!

Re:

[Z00L00K]

I can definitely agree that more and more searches are ending up in irrelevant results so you have to refine your searches.

Unfortunately the prompt interpreter isn't smart, so it have a hard time to understand.

Re:

[Local ID10T]

I personally use google search a whole lot less now in favour of my preferred LLM.

I do not. When I search, I want links to facts & sources as my result. For simple queries, I can make do with the AI generated summary at the top of the Google search results, or jump to the Wikipedia article on the topic. If the topic is more complex, I want to see multiple links to multiple sources where I can read the competing opinions myself.

I do not want someone to tell me a story. I want to follow the rabbit hole myself. Curiouser and curiouser, all the way down.

Why?

[Luscious868]

Eddie Cus channeling his best inner Eddie Murphy circa Beverly Hills Cop: âoe That searches are down story... was working okay. It was working. You guys just messed it up.â

I don't need answers from a search page

[JamesTRexx]

I need a list of websites based on my search keywords.
The answer to my question, I will derive from the websites provided.

Also, have only used DuckDuckGo in many years.

Re:

[CallMeTim]

If it could accurately tell you an answer, why do you want links?

90% of the time they search, people just want an answer. The issue is with the accuracy with the current tech. But I think it's obvious as that improves they will replace classical search.

Re:

[Deal In One]

If I have to read the LLM output first and then verify it by going to it's various links, making sure the links are from reputable sites, etc, doesn't it mean double work?

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

I'm the opposite. Usually, I don't *want* to have to click on a bunch of links, scan each site for the details, in hopes that one of them will answer my question. The fact that Google (Gemini) gives me a summary that directly answers my question, is a *huge* time saver for me.

Google killed the search engine

[doc1623]

I just don't believe search engines work that well anymore. Of course, we are moving to AI. It actually works, more than not. If search engines still worked and allowed syntax still, then I would be able to use normal search engines, but that's gone because google killed it, maybe bing helped... but all other searches including the ones I used (ddg) use their results, so they don't work either.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I just don't believe search engines work that well anymore.

Google certainly doesn't work as well as it used to. People blame volume but I don't agree, or at least, that's not the bulk of the problem. Most of it is Google deciding what I wanted to see instead of using my search terms faithfully.

Re:

[crunchygranola]

Bingo. It could be called the Raghavan Effect, as when this former academic took over Google search several years ago quality decline set in swiftly. It is the effort to constantly increase the monetization of search that is the root to all search evil. Google deliberately created the situation where its search engines work less well for users, because those engines are working better for Google management.

"AI search engines" will make this dramatically worse. We will be getting a synthetic "reality" align

Re:

[doc1623]

Yeah, that make sense. You can find shopping results (those that can pay google) but not older manuals or info.

Re:

[doc1623]

Sounds good to me. I haven't researched it, as it was taking me too long to do normal research. Just started using perplexity. It took me too long to try it. At least, I did get brave ai results, that sometimes helped, but it still has the same problem the search engine has and can pick up only a word are two and give me completely erroneous results

Different units

[mccalli]

Eddie Cue says Safari, Google state Apple's 'devices and platforms' - emphasis mine. The one need not contradict the other. If people are backing Siri/Apple Intelligence with models that search the web, they're likely hitting Google at some point. So what is Google counting as a 'platform' here?

Actually refutes?

[johnw]

Do you mean "refutes" or just "denies"?

Re:

[UltimateRobotLover]

Exactly! Thank you!

Google still has a search engine?

[clambake]

I searched for something random on Google a few months ago and got ZERO results. Literally nothing. It wasn't even trying to do a keyword search, it just decided there was nothing to sell me so there was no point in returning a result. That was basically the last day I used Google as a search engine.