Google Expands AI Overviews to India, Brazil, Japan, UK, Indonesia, and Mexico: Enhancing Information Access Worldwide

Google is expanding its AI-powered search summaries to six additional countries: India, Brazil, Japan, the U.K., Indonesia, and Mexico. This rollout also includes local language support for AI overviews, enhancing accessibility for users in these diverse markets.

In tandem with this expansion, Google is revamping how it displays source material links. A new feature will showcase site icons in the upper right corner of both desktop and mobile screens, positioned above AI overviews. Users can easily tap these icons to visit the cited links and delve deeper into the topics of interest.

Alongside this update, Google is experimenting with showing relevant links directly within the text of AI overviews. This initiative aims to drive more traffic to external sites, enhancing user engagement with content beyond the search results.

According to Google's blog post, “With AI Overviews, we’re observing that users are exploring a broader array of websites for assistance with intricate queries. Moreover, clicks generated from search result pages featuring AI Overviews tend to be of higher quality, meaning users are more inclined to spend additional time on the sites they visit.”

AI-driven tools have faced criticism for not adequately displaying source links alongside summaries, prompting concerns about plagiarism and unethical web scraping. Notably, Perplexity AI has drawn scrutiny from news outlets on this front. Earlier this month, Perplexity's CBO, Dmitry Shevelenko, revealed that a significant portion of visitors engage with external links. However, Google has not yet disclosed any specific metrics on the traffic generated by its AI-enhanced search results.

Focused Features for India

In this rollout, Google has introduced specific features tailored for Indian users. The company previously tested a toggle allowing users to switch between Hindi and English results seamlessly while remaining on the same page. This functionality will now be integrated into AI overviews.

Additionally, Indian users will have the option to listen to responses generated by clicking the “Listen” button. Google has noted that Indian users utilize this feature more frequently than users in other countries.

During our initial testing, we encountered challenges with certain Hindi queries when altering sentence structures or word choices. We have reached out to Google for clarification on their strategy for responding to Hindi inquiries and will update the article upon receiving a response.