Mar 23, 2026
3 min read
Google is starting to replace news headlines in search results with AI-generated headlines.After the stupid AI clickbait in his Google Discover news feed, he also starts messing with the headlines in the "10 Blue Links."
Since nearly the turn of the millennium, Google has been the cornerstone of Internet search.People love Google's trusted "10 blue links" search experience and its unspoken promise: The page you click on is the page you get.
Google Search is now using AI to change headlines
We see Verge headlines rewritten by Google AI.
We see Verge headlines rewritten by Google's AI.
Google is now starting to replace news headlines in search results with AI-generated headlines. After doing something similar with the Google Discover news feed, we also started experimenting with traditional "10 blue links" headlines. We found many cases where Google replaced headlines we wrote with headlines we didn't, sometimes changing the meaning in the process.
For example, Google reduced our headline "I Used the 'Cheat Everything' AI Tool and It Didn't Help Me Cheat at Anything" to just five words: "Cheat Everything AI Tool."It almost seems like we're endorsing a product we don't recommend at all.
What we're seeing is a "small" and "limited" test, one that hasn't yet been approved for a fuller rollout, Google spokespersons Jennifer Coates, Mallory DeLeon and Ned Adriance told The Verge.They didn't say how "small" the test really is.In recent months, several Verge employees have seen examples of headlines we never wrote appearing in Google search results: headlines that don't follow our editorial style and there's no indication that Google has replaced the words we've chosen.And Google says it's also changing how other websites appear in searches, not just news.
As I wrote in January, when Google decided not to stop rotating news headlines on The Verge and its rival Google Discover, it was like a bookstore with book covers on a shelf and changing headlines.We spend a lot of time writing headlines that are true, interesting, funny, and engaging without using clickbait. But Google seems to believe that we don't have the inherent right to market our work this way.
(Disclosure: Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge, has filed a lawsuit against Google, seeking damages from its illegal commercial technology monopoly.)
The good news, for now, is that these changed headlines look a little bit different, and they still aren't the same tour we saw on Google Discover.(For example, Google Discover told me this week that the PlayStation Portal was getting a 1080p streaming mode, when it actually got a higher bitrate mode instead.)
Compared to fake Google Discover stories like “US lifts ban on foreign drones” — in a story reporting the opposite — the useless headlines we see on Google Search are actually mild:
But this is only the first headline that Google has changed.They could be canaries in the coal mine.Google may change the deal even more.
When Google says this is an "experiment," you shouldn't think that means the company won't roll it out, because Google originally told us that its AI titles in Google Discover were also experimental.A month later, we're told that those AI titles are now a feature that "works well for user satisfaction."
Google hasn't explained why the company won't honor the key identifiers it has long encouraged newsrooms to use.However, the company did respond to some specific questions via email.
The general idea, Google told us, is to "identify the content of the page with a title that is useful and relevant to the user's query."The goal, Kutz says, is to match the best titles to user queries and make it easier to interact with web content.
This test "is not specific to news publications. It is about seeing how we can improve the topic horizontally", according to AdrianceGoogle. Google confirmed that the experiment used generative AI, but stated that "if we are really going to launch something based on this experiment, we will not use a generative model and we will not create titles with gen AI".According to De Leon, Google has not explained how to replace our titles without AI.
Basically, Google's responses sought to normalize the idea of replacing titles in search — suggesting that it's just one of "tens of thousands of real-time traffic experiments" that Google is running to test possible improvements to Google Search — and reminding us that it's been changing web page titles in Search for years to help users.
But I want to be clear: this is not normal.I've been editing tech news for 15 years, with an emphasis on SEO, and I've never seen Google rewrite a title in search results with something it can do.
The changes that Google makes to the news headline are very simple.If the Google algorithms decide that the headline is too long or curvy, sometimes only part of the title will be shown, cutting the beginning or the end.Here are two recent examples of this:
or, have two headings, one that we label as "search title" and one that we label as "on page title", Google will sometimes display the title of the page instead of what we have created for most searchers.to other backends too.) This Google Search trend has been annoying over the years, but nowhere near as annoying as the AI that creates "Copilot Changes: Ad Groups at It Again" out of whole cloth.
Changing headlines and their meaning makes journalism less credible at a time when powerful institutions seek to discredit it, and when many news organizations struggle to continue reporting the news.
We've been warning for years that Google's search AI is prioritizing the "10 blue links," and I'm often disappointed that its Gemini AI search discourages clicks from real news sources.But I guess I can always go back to those blue links for a relatively untainted experience.Now, I have to ask myself.
