Google announced that its AI Overviews is getting several new features and being expanded to new regions on Thursday. With this update, the Google Search-based snapshot feature will be available in India and six other countries. The expansion will also include local language support in each country. Notably, AI Overviews was rolled out in May and was made available only in the US. Alongside expansion, the tech giant has also rolled out a minor redesign and is also testing two new experimental features.
Google AI Overviews Gets an Update
In a blog post, Google announced multiple updates around AI Overviews. The most significant among them is the availability of the artificial intelligence (AI) feature in more regions. The tech giant has expanded it to six countries including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and the UK, in addition to the US. The feature will show text in the local language of each of the country. However, it is unclear whether the snapshots will be available in all regional languages of the country.
Besides the expansion, one minor design change has also been added. Now, at the end of each paragraph within the AI Overviews, users will see a URL icon to prominently display the relevant websites from which the content has been referenced. The particular sentence which contains content from the website will still be highlighted.
Google said that it is also testing the option to add the link within the text as well to help users easily click and see the source of the information. “Showing links to supporting web pages directly within AI Overviews is driving higher traffic to publisher sites,” claimed the company.
Apart from this, two new experimental features are also being tested by the tech giant. The first feature allows users to save a specific AI Overview in case the user wants to refer to it in the future. This Save button will be present at the end of the text, next to the thumbs up and thumbs down option.
Once done, searching for the same query will bring up the same AI Overview. These can also be checked by tapping on the profile icon and navigating to the Interests page.
The second experimental feature will allow users to see the snapshot in a simpler language. This can be toggled with a single tap, and the option will be available only on some specific topics which are technical in nature. Both of these features are only available to those who have enrolled in the ‘AI Overviews and more” experiment in Search Labs and reside in the US. The experimental features are only available in English.