AI Overviews Use FastSearch, Not Links

A sharp-eyed search marketer discovered the reason why Google’s AI Overviews showed spammy web pages. The recent Memorandum Opinion in the Google antitrust case featured a passage that offers a clue as to why that happened and speculates how it reflects Google’s move away from links as a prominent ranking factor.

Ryan Jones, founder of SERPrecon (LinkedIn profile), called attention to a passage in the recent Memorandum Opinion that shows how Google grounds its Gemini models.

Grounding Generative AI Answers

The passage occurs in a section about…