Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines | The VergeSkip to main contentThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.The VergeThe Verge logo.TechReviewsScienceEntertainmentAIPolicyHamburger Navigation ButtonThe homepageThe VergeThe Verge logo.Hamburger Navigation ButtonNavigation DrawerThe VergeThe Verge logo.Login / Sign UpcloseCloseSearchTechExpandAmazonAppleFacebookGoogleMicrosoftSamsungBusinessSee all techReviewsExpandSmart Home ReviewsPhone ReviewsTablet ReviewsHeadphone ReviewsSee all reviewsScienceExpandSpaceEnergyEnvironmentHealthSee all scienceEntertainmentExpandTV ShowsMoviesAudioSee all entertainmentAIExpandOpenAIAnthropicSee all AIPolicyExpandAntitrustPoliticsLawSecuritySee all policyGadgetsExpandLaptopsPhonesTVsHeadphonesSpeakersWearablesSee all gadgetsVerge ShoppingExpandBuying GuidesDealsGift GuidesSee all shoppingGamingExpandXboxPlayStationNintendoSee all gamingStreamingExpandDisneyHBONetflixYouTubeCreatorsSee all streamingTransportationExpandElectric CarsAutonomous CarsRide-sharingScootersSee all transportationFeaturesVerge VideoExpandTikTokYouTubeInstagramPodcastsExpandDecoderThe VergecastVersion HistoryNewslettersArchivesStoreVerge Product UpdatesSubscribeFacebookThreadsInstagramYoutubeRSSThe VergeThe Verge logo.Google Search is now using AI to replace headlinesComments DrawerCommentsLoading commentsGetting the conversation ready...TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AINewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsGoogle Search is now using AI to replace headlinesWe’re seeing Verge headlines rewritten by Google AI.We’re seeing Verge headlines rewritten by Google AI.by Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Sean HollisterMar 20, 2026, 2:30 PM UTCLinkShareGiftIf you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.Photo by Michele Doying / The VergeSean HollisterCloseSean HollisterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Sean Hollister is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.Since roughly the turn of the millennium, Google Search has been the bedrock of the web. People loved Google’s trustworthy “10 blue links” search experience and its unspoken promise: The website you click is the website you get.Now, Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the traditional “10 blue links,” too. We’ve found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not, sometimes changing their meaning in the process.For example, Google reduced our headline “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” to just five words: “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.” It almost sounds like we’re endorsing a product we do not recommend at all.What we are seeing is a “small” and “narrow” experiment, one that’s not yet approved for a fuller launch, Google spokespeople Jennifer Kutz, Mallory De Leon, and Ned Adriance tell The Verge. They would not say how “small” that experiment actually is. Over the past few months, multiple Verge staffers have seen examples of headlines that we never wrote appear in Google Search results — headlines that do not follow our editorial style, and without any indication that Google replaced the words we chose. And Google says it’s tweaking how other websites show up in search, too, not just news.RelatedGoogle won’t stop replacing our news headlines with terrible AIGoogle is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsenseLike I wrote in January, when Google decided it wouldn’t stop replacing news headlines in Google Discover from The Verge and our competitors, this is like a bookstore ripping the covers off the books it puts on display and changing their titles. We spend a lot of time trying to write headlines that are true, interesting, fun, and worthy of your attention without resorting to clickbait, but Google seems to believe we don’t have an inherent right to market our own work that way.(Disclosure: Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, has filed a lawsuit against Google, seeking damages from its illegal ad tech monopoly.)The good news, for now, is that these changed headlines seem to be few and far between, and they’re not yet the kind of tripe we’ve seen in 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 that and other lying Google Discover headlines like “US reverses foreign drone ban” — on a story reporting the opposite — the nonsense headlines we’re seeing in Google Search are downright tame:I’m particularly annoyed by “Copilot Changes: Marketing Teams at it Again,” as I hate reading Headlines That Cap Every Word and we never do that at The Verge. Images: GoogleBut these are just the first headlines we’ve seen Google change. They may be the canary in the coal mine. Google may alter the deal even further.While Google says this is an “experiment,” you shouldn’t assume that means the company won’t roll it out more widely, because Google originally told us its AI headlines in Google Discover were an experiment too. A month later, it told us those AI headlines are now a feature, one that “performs well for user satisfaction.”The actual story that Google Search boiled down to “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.”The actual story Google turned into “Copilot Changes: Marketing Teams at it Again.”Google did not explain why the company is no longer respecting the headline identifiers it has long encouraged newsrooms to use. The company did answer some specific questions via email, though.Google told us that the overall idea is to “identify content on a page that would be a useful and relevant title to a users’ query.” The goal is “better matching titles to users’ queries and facilitating engagement with web content,” according to Kutz.This test is “not specific to news publications, but looking at how we can improve titles horizontally,” according to Adriance. Google confirmed that the test uses generative AI, but claimed that “if we were to actually launch something based on this experiment, it would not be using a generative model and we would not be creating headlines with gen AI,” according to De Leon. Google did not explain how it might replace our story titles without generative AI.Mostly, Google’s answers tried to normalize the idea of replacing headlines in search — suggesting that this is just one of the “tens of thousands of live traffic experiments” that Google runs to test possible improvements to Google Search, and reminding us that it’s already been tweaking the titles of webpages in Search to help users for many years now.But I want to be clear: This is not normal. I’ve edited tech news for 15 years, paying close attention to SEO, and I’ve never before seen Google overwrite a headline in search results with something it created itself.The changes that Google typically makes to a news story’s title are far simpler. If Google’s algorithms decide a headline is too long or lopsided, it’ll sometimes show you only part of that headline, lopping off the beginning or end. Here are two recent examples of that:The full headline here was “You can’t replace the battery in Lego’s Smart Bricks — and many of its sensors aren’t active yet.” Weird, Google used to respect my em-dashes. Image: GoogleThe full headline is “I met Olaf — the Frozen robot who might be the future of Disney Parks.” Google displays this version even if I search “olaf site:theverge.com.” Image: GoogleOr, if a story has two headlines, one that we flag as the “search headline” and one that we flag as the “on-page headline,” Google will sometimes display the on-page headline instead of the one we crafted for a more general search audience. (We currently set those headlines inside WordPress, the popular content management platform behind many leading websites, but I’ve used those fields inside other backends too.) This tendency of Google Search has been annoying over the years, but nowhere near as annoying as an AI creating “Copilot Changes: Marketing Teams at it Again” out of whole cloth.Changing headlines, and their meaning, makes journalism less trustworthy at a time when powerful institutions are trying to discredit it, and when many news organizations are struggling just to keep the lights on.We’ve warned for years that Google is prioritizing AI search over the “10 blue links,” and I am frequently frustrated that its Gemini AI search doesn’t encourage clicking through to actual news sources. But I figured that I could always fall back to those blue links to get a relatively unadulterated experience. Now, I have to wonder.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Sean HollisterAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIGoogleCloseGooglePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All GoogleNewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All NewsTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechWebCloseWebPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All WebMost PopularMost PopularBelkin’s wireless HDMI adapter freed me from a long annoying cable when I travelMarc Andreessen is a philosophical zombieValve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long-awaited features — and supports Steam MachineA rogue AI led to a serious security incident at MetaCasio’s new $600 calculator is a work of artThe Verge DailyA free daily digest of the news that matters most.Email (required)Sign UpBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. 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Google Search is currently undergoing an experiment where it’s replacing headlines in its search results with AI-generated versions, a shift initiated by The Verge. This initiative, spearheaded by senior editor Sean Hollister, began with Google rewriting headlines from The Verge and other publications. A notable example highlighted is the transformation of the headline “I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything” into the abbreviated “‘Cheat on everything’ AI tool.” This alteration significantly impacts the original’s meaning and tone, suggesting a potential endorsement where none existed. Hollister reports that this experiment, categorized as a “small” and “narrow” test, isn’t yet fully approved for wider deployment.

Over the past months, multiple Verge staff members have observed instances of headlines not written by The Verge appearing in Google Search, displaying inconsistencies with editorial style and lacking any indication of Google’s intervention. Google’s rationale behind this experimentation centers on “identifying content on a page that would be a useful and relevant title to a user’s query,” aiming to “better matching titles to users’ queries and facilitating engagement with web content,” according to spokesperson Jennifer Kutz. The experiment expands beyond news publications, targeting titles across various websites to improve search relevance. Google acknowledges that it has been tweaking webpage titles for years to aid user experience, but this new AI-driven approach represents a more significant departure.

A key point of concern is Google’s apparent disregard for established journalistic practices, particularly the use of identifiers within WordPress, the content management system used by many news organizations. This has resulted in instances where Google presents the "on-page" headline instead of the headline specifically crafted for a general search audience. While Google emphasizes that this is part of a broader suite of “tens of thousands of live traffic experiments,” the extent of the alterations raises serious questions about trust and the integrity of search results. Hollister stresses that this is a fundamentally different approach from Google’s traditional methods of tweaking headline lengths, a practice that has previously caused irritation.

The underlying concern is that an AI, without the nuanced understanding or editorial judgment of a human, can distort the meaning of a headline and, consequently, the content it represents. This raises broader implications for journalism, particularly at a time when the industry is already grappling with issues of credibility. Google’s motivations, as described by spokesperson Ned Adriance, involve focusing on “how we can improve titles horizontally,” demonstrating a broader effort to optimize search results rather than simply addressing concerns about news headlines. It's crucial to note that Google's actions are occurring amidst a legal battle with Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, over Google’s alleged monopolistic control of ad technology. The company’s responses attempt to normalize the shifting of headlines and emphasize its long-standing efforts to enhance user experience through algorithmic adjustments – a strategy which Hollister characterizes as a troubling trend. He further points to past instances of misinformation within Google Discover, such as falsely reporting a US reversal of drone bans, as indicative of a lack of control over AI-generated content.