Are Google and other search engines getting worse, or should we change how we look for information?   Ever punched a question into a browser and been served a bunch of poorly written, ad-filled websites which don't really give you an answer?

Or a summary generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that doesn't make any sense — or is incorrect?

Search engines, particularly Google, are most people's gateway to the internet. And sometimes, they fail to get people the results they want.

But in recent years, there's been increasing scrutiny on their quality. From social media to academia, there have been questions about whether search engines deliver information like they used to.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) also raised concerns about declining quality in a report it released on search engines late last year.

With generative AI making low-quality websites easier to build, and sometimes questionable AI summaries now sitting at the top of many Google searches, you may think it's getting harder to look something up and get a reliable answer on the internet.

... Search engines are also increasingly putting AI summaries in their results — including Google. (Although, if you're not a fan of Google's AI summaries, here's a tip: adding "-ai" to your search query will remove them.)

These AI overviews can present a new suite of problems with inaccuracy.

Ashwin Nagappa, a researcher in social science and digital media at Queensland University of Technology, points out a recent article that found Google's AI overviews could be prompted to produce gibberish by searching for fake sayings.

"If you are not a native English speaker or you are using words that are in different language, AI summaries may not get it right," Dr Nagappa says ...