Google’s AI-generated summaries in their Search Generative Experience (SGE) interface have raised concerns about whether they unjustly take clicks away from website publishers. While discussions about the generative AI and language models used in SGE are important, it’s also crucial to consider the search experience itself. Google recently made changes to SGE, displaying links more prominently, which has been seen as an improvement. However, there is a debate about whether SGE can be considered a “plagiarism engine,” as it is similar to featured snippets. The fear of losing traffic to zero-click searches was also present when featured snippets were introduced. Overall, SGE is seen as the latest iteration of “instant answers” in search results.

source: A tale of two snippets: What link attribution in SGE tells us about search