AI Is Now the First Search Result. Consumers Seem Fine With It.

You’ve probably noticed over the last couple of years that when you do a search on Google, there is a new section at the very top called AI Summary. This has had a huge impact on SEO since it is changing what users encounter before they reach traditional links. With that in mind, we wanted to see how consumers felt about the AI-generated summaries.

Let’s dive into what we uncovered:

Overall

Overall, consumer sentiment toward AI-generated summaries is positive. Seventeen percent of respondents feel very positive about Google’s AI-generated summaries or answers, while another 26% feel somewhat positive. Combined, 43% express a positive view. Negative reactions are less common, with 10% feeling very negative and 9% somewhat negative, for a combined 19%.

Gender

When segmented by gender, we see that men are more positive about the feature than women. Just over half of men (51%) report a positive view, compared with 39% of women. Negative sentiment moves in the opposite direction, at 15% among men and 21% among women

Age

Age produces some of the clearest differences in attitudes on the summaries. Positive sentiment peaks among adults aged 25–44 . It declines to 43% among respondents aged 45–64, 38% among those aged 18–24, and 29% among adults 65 and older.

The youngest group records the highest negative sentiment, at 27%, followed by those 65 and older at 22%.

Income

When looking at the data by income, we found that positive sentiment for AI-generated summaries increases as income increases. Interestingly, negative sentiment is fairly static across all income levels.

Region

When the data is broken down by region, we see that respondents in the South and West regions have a 6-point higher positive sentiment than respondents from the Midwest or the Northeast.

Negative sentiment is fairly consistent across the West, Northeast and Midwest, but several points lower in the South.

Ethnicity

There are some significant differences in sentiment around AI-generated summaries or answers when looking at ethnicity. On the positive side, there is a 16-point gap between Asians (55%) and Caucasians (41%).

African Americans have the lowest negative sentiment at 10%, as much as 11-points lower than other ethnicities.

Panel

We also observed some large differences in sentiment when we look at the data by panel source. There is as much as a 16-point difference in positive sentiment between panels. There is a 19-point difference between panels regarding negative sentiment to AI-generated summaries.

This data reinforces the need to incorporate respondent attitudes and behaviors into your panel selection criteria. If you used panels K and R, your data would show bias towards a lower positive sentiment than others and the overall average. This is why you need EMI and our Strategic Sample Blending approach. Click the button below to learn more.