This is another area where DDG shines - it doesn't have a commercial relationship with Reddit, so doesn't push it in its results.

DDG's 'Search Assist' AI overviews are pretty basic but they tend to be sourced from Wikipedia and traditional media outlets rather than forums and blogs - they can be out of date, but are generally a lot less "spicy" than the sources that Google use.

I guess Google is much better-optimised for engagement but that's not what I'm looking for, meaning that DDG is a better choice for me.

I started noticing that for a lot of niche questions, AI overview often uses things like Reddit comments as the source, which are often partially or completely wrong.

If only! I've seen it sourcing reddit comments, but when you follow the link, the comment is either completely unrelated or does not say what the LLM claims it is saying.

The actual scary part is that people already manipulate and poison the google overviews on purpose.

It is very easy to bring your bs to the TOP spot on google at the moment with carefully crafted reddit comments and blogs, and it's not hard to get to the traffic and clicks this way.

This is what the new SEO is about, I know a bunch of people who are doing this and they are praying it is not getting fixed anytime soon.

Poisoning the well with fake/made up reddit posts is incredibly common these days.

Certain people have realised that if you start feeding the machine this poisoned data eventually it reaches millions of eyeballs. It's the new SEO.

I've seen medical specialist take Google's AI answer as truth. Nutty.

If I type exact document identifiers, the LLM either tells me that I have either mistyped something or that I am searching for a specific document. Hell yeah, I am doing exactly that! Give me the link instead of babbling about it!

The web search gives the impression that it's grounding its answers, but if you ask it for something new or non-existent it'll still make shit up.

> people taking the AI overview answers as truth

One of the most disappointing things to me is people I previously respected appealing to the authority of LLMs.

I'm in several facebook groups for cars and bikes, and holy smokes, someone asks a question and usually the top response is someone literally pasting in a screenshot of a google AI generated response....which is wrong like, solid 50% of the time. And then you point it out and people get aggro on you. I hate it.